visual data

“Open data” — the philosophy and practice of making the data collected by government agencies freely available to the public — is critical to increasing citizens’ engagement with their governments. Since 2010, hundreds of nations, regions, and cities across the world have launched their own open data initiatives.

For example, datacatalogs.org maintains centralized lists of local, regional, and national data catalogs. Europe is heavily represented: nearly every country publishes open data, geospatial files and maps and statistics. Within each nation, local councils, regional governments, and autonomous regions are publishing their own locally-relevant open data. Spain, Italy, and France each boast over a dozen internal data catalogs created by local agencies...

Whether or not open data portals eventually lead to open, transparent, and accountable democratic governments is still up for debate, but they remain indispensable to the citizens, researchers, and journalists using data from these sites.

Read the complete post for a better understanding of open data in a concise, yet informative article with numerous links and specific initiatives referenced for further research...