Malaysia
Tirath Ramdas is the founder and advisor of the Big Data Malaysia professional network; a non-profit network dedicated to evangelizing Big Data in Malaysia. The network adopts a very broad view of Big Data, encompassing issues such as data journalism and open data. In August, the network organized an event in Kuala Lumpur called the ‘Open Data: Pathways for Applying Big Data for Public Service’.
Malaysia ranked #112 in the 2014 Open Data Index / Other stories from Asia/Pacific
2014 has been an important year for Open Data in Malaysia. In June, the Prime Minister’s department launched data.gov.my, and more recently Big Data Analytics has been identified as a priority area in the 11th iteration of the Malaysia Plan.
Outside of government, there are voices championing open data in Malaysia. At the forefront for many years has been Sinar Project, an independent volunteer group dedicated to making public data accessible in machine-readable form. Now Sinar is more active than ever with many creative projects in the pipeline that make use of public data, or more fundamental works (such as scrapers) that simply make public data available in machine-readable form. All their work is open source. Beyond Sinar, in a recent survey of Big Data professionals in Malaysia, two out of five respondents said that they either ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that having access to some government data will create valuable Big Data opportunities for them.
Therefore, it is apparent that there is at least some demand for Open Data in Malaysia, and as evidenced by the creation of data.gov.my the civil service is listening. But there is a long way to go. For instance, although data.gov.my is a decent first effort, the vast majority of datasets are released in non-machine-readable formats, predominantly PDF files.
Beyond the federal government, there has been virtually zero initiative from municipal or state governments (even though two states in Malaysia have freedom of information acts). On the demand side although Malaysia has a sizeable IT workforce and an active civil society, it is novel to find the two groups working together beyond the Sinar Project, who have to cope with tight resource limits, as does any organisation run part-time by volunteers.
The Global Open Data Index is important because it provides visibility about where we are and where we can go. Malaysia's entry in the Index is still relatively thin, but once a critical mass is achieved, the Index will be a boon to Malaysia in a number of ways:
1) It would be possible to gauge Malaysia's progress relative to her regional peers, such as Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. Such comparisons can be especially helpful when it comes to winning the support of decision makers in government. 2) Efforts to improve the availability and quality of Open Data in Malaysia can be measured against the Index. This is valuable given the KPI obsession of Malaysia's civil service. 3) It would clearly highlight areas with the most need for improvement, so that additional resources can be targeted appropriately, whether by the data custodians themselves, or by hacktivists building scrapers.
Most of all, the Index would help shine a light on an important civic issue in a society with a strong appreciation for technology, but that is unfortunately often lagging in issues such as openness and transparency. Hopefully, efforts to improve Malaysia's standing in the Global Open Data Index will have spillover effects into the general governance of the country, and the civic-mindedness of every Malaysian hacker.
