#HackFrancophonie Day 1
Workshops on open data between French-speaking governments.
For the first day of
#HackFrancophonie, on 18 February 2016 Etalab welcomed around 15 representatives from seven French-speaking countries: Burkina Faso, Belgium, Côte d'Ivoire, Haiti, Mauritius, Mali and Senegal.
Organised in partnership with the World Bank and the Open Government Partnership, the aim of this day was to share best practices in open data policy. Participants also made preparations for the open data camp held on the next day by gathering data and identifying projects.
In parallel, on its premises CFI gave a training session on open data to representatives from French-speaking civil society organisations, who had travelled from the same countries as those mentioned above and also Benin, with the aid of Etalab, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, Regards citoyens and AEF Développement durable.
Workshops for sharing best practices led by Etalab
In the morning, small groups rotated between six 30-minute workshops on a range of subjects, led by the Etalab team. These subjects included how to set up an open data portal or create an ecosystem of data re-users, the legal foundations underlying open data and crowdsourcing of geographical data using the example of the
National Address Database.
Participants made the most of this informal and friendly format to gain as much information as possible and to stimulate debates.
Another factor that added value to their experience was the presence of two open data correspondents from the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea and the Ministry of the Interior to discuss their role and their mission in relation to open data within their administrations. For their part, the teams from the Open Government Partnership led a workshop on the procedures for becoming a member of the Partnership, which Côte d'Ivoire has just joined.
These two workshops show the key role that cooperation plays in drawing up open data policies.
Burkina Faso's achievements honoured
In the afternoon, the teams from the Burkina Open Data Initiative (
BODI), supported by the World Bank, gave a presentation of their recent work. As well as developing the first open data portal in French-speaking Africa, the BODI presented two of its flagship projects: Our schools, our data, a collaborative platform for collecting information on schools, and Open Elections, which provides electoral results in real time and is a model of success in a region where results can often be subject to challenges.
Burkina Faso expressed its desire to push on with the development of these projects, with the aid of other participants, during the open data camp.
Time to prepare for the open data camp
As a conclusion to the first day's work, the Etalab teams and the participants made a final sprint to make an inventory on #HackFrancophonie's collaborative wiki of as many datasets available in French-speaking countries as possible, bringing the total number to almost a hundred, on diverse topics including education, democracy and justice.
By enabling the players who are actively involved in gathering open data in French to get together and share their experiences, Etalab and its partners want to give fresh impetus to the world of French-language data, with a strong emphasis on practical cooperation. Initial efforts had been begun at the session "
La Francophonie: The New Frontier of Open Data" held during the 3rd International Open Data Conference.
The French presidency of the
Open Government Partnership has high hopes that other initiatives will also be launched in the next few months.
