Feedback on Open Data Index report 2015

Good Afternoon,
I’m doing a research and I’ve come across the results of Saudi Arabia. I’ve found that three of the datasets which was scored 0 in Open Data Index report 2015 actually exists and fit the criteria (Location Datasets, National Map and Election results).

National Map & Location Datasets:

Election Results:
http://www.intekhab.gov.sa

Waiting for your feedback,
Regards

Marwah

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Based on this post you should be able to correct the information for the 2016 census.

Thanks for finding the data :smile:

Hi!

Thank you for your feedback, however, these are NOT the correct datasets. This is why -

  1. Elections - there are no general elections in Saudi Arabia, but municipal ones (See the reviewer’s comment and wiki as our source). The Index looks at the eneral elections in a country level. This data does not exist in Saudi Arabia because of the regime system. I am aware it means that the index favour democratic countries.

  2. Re postcodes: This is great, I am sure @bluechi would love to have a look at it! However, this is still not a dataset, this is a website, and you can not access the data, just look up for it. :frowning:

I hope my answers are helpful. I am sure Riyadh can help as well.

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I was aware of the municipal council elections when I was looking for Saudi data, but in my opinion this was not a qualifying dataset because the description of the dataset required “major electoral contests”. I didn’t think this qualifies because the municipal council is not part of the legislative or the executive branches of the government, i.e. parliament or cabinet. There are many ‘elected organisations’ in any given country, e.g. Chamber of Commerce, Human Rights Council, National Women Council, etc that may relate to public affairs, but in my opinion they do not fall under this dataset. This is my personal opinion, I might be mistaken.

Regarding the postcode, I was not aware of this website and I think the street and building number combination could qualify as evidence of the existence of such dataset (but it doesn’t seem to be accessible to the public). You should definitely submit this for the 2016 census here http://global.census.okfn.org/ !

Good Afternoon All, and thank you for your feedback.

  1. regarding the elections results. I believe for those who don’t have general elections system such as Saudi Arabia, the final score should be calculated out of 12 not 13th datasets. Since you can’t have a dataset for something that doesn’t exist.

  2. regarding the postcode, it’s actually accessible to the public: https://api.address.gov.sa/io-docs, I’d love to submit it for 2016.

Regard,