Chile

This version is translated from the original Spanish version.

Open Data and Open Government policies have had a breakthrough the last years in Chile. The process began in 2002, but gained strength with the enactment of Access to Public Information law in 2008 and with the Citizen Participation in Public Administration law in 2011. That year was also created the Modernization and Digital Government area and the first version of Open Data portal of Government (datos.gob.cl), together with the entry of Chile to the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Year 2012 was followed by an Open Government Presidential Instruction urging the public bodies to publish datasets on the Open Government portal, as well as to encourage the strengthening of mechanisms for citizen participation. Finally, this year was formulated and presented the new OGP action plan for years 2014-2016, while the government continues enlarging modernization, digital government, open government and public innovation strategies.

However, modernization policies and openness are not measured in the number of laws enacted or government efforts to release public information, but the value they actually generate. In that sense, the exercise proposed by the Global Open Data Index, makes sense and relevance to deliver a first approximation with respect to the levels of progress and effectiveness of our governments in strengthening their opening strategies, as well as analyze comparatively the national progress in relation to regional and global environment.

The process that we lived in Chile during the development of the Index was generally quite simple. Most datasets are centralized in the web of government data, followed by the corresponding website of the different Ministries in each of the topics. The main difference in this respect is that the Digital Government Unit does care to deliver the documents in an non-proprietary format (CSV) while the Ministries tend to release the documents with paid licences (XLS).

In this regard, we note that countries above Chile as well as those with the same score in the ranking, are nations with extensive development of Government and Open Data policies, hence is valuable to share that closeness and progress with them. However, we know that the exercise conducted by the index is only a small sample of all areas and datasets that we should measure, so the challenge is to continue advancing in the release of more and better information, as well as analyse usage that is effectively being given to it and the value generated for citizenship, or well, what information that people need is still not delivered by the State. That is essentially the work that must be considered on, since the goal obviously is not Open Data itself, but generating public value through them.