Oman / 2014 18% open

The data is available through a search engine in the Arabic language. Alternatively, the most recent laws can be accessed from the website of the Ministry of Legal Affairs of Oman at http://www.mola.gov.om/ Legal texts can be read in a PDF format, and can be accessed for free.

Laws in Oman are exempt from copyright protection, the second bullet point in the terms and conditions page confirm this.

Reviewer: I was not able to identify a precise mention of open licensing on the Ministry's website. Even if exemption from copyright is stated (where?), this does not mean that the conditions of the Open Definition apply. I have thus marked this indicator as 'no' given how confusing the whole status is.

The Ministry of Interior ( http://www.moi.gov.om/ ) has a website dedicated to Municipal Councils Elections ( http://www.election.gov.om/ ) that provides details of the candidates and live voting results.

Municipal Councils Elections are the second most important elections in the country after the Shura Council Elections (the lower house of the Parliament) the website for the Shura Council ( http://www.shura.om ) is currently down.

Reviewer: the Municipal Councils Elections website (http://www.election.gov.om/) was down at the time of review. It is thus unclear what the availability of elections data is in general as its publication does not seem particularly sustainable with both websites being down (the Shura Council one is down at the time of review as well).

The assessment was performed with data for the National Ferries Company data; the NFC is a government-owned company for sea transport between major cities in Oman. The data was marked as not up-to-date as the website explicitly states: "Schedule is subject to change, for latest schedule & updates or any queries kindly contact NFC – Call Centre during office office hours on 800 72 000 or (968) 98111162." Thus, there is no tangible reason to consider that the website provides timely and up-to-date information. Data is available as HTML tables only (static webpages per route). No information was identified regarding fares though.

The other systematic public transportation system available in Oman operated by the government is through the buses of the government-owned Oman National Transport Company. The website of ONTC ( http://www.ontcoman.com/ ) does not provide actual information on fares and routes (http://www.ontcoman.com/booking.php is under construction at the time of review). The available information is on the different services the ONTC provides (see http://www.ontcoman.com/services.php).

The annual budget is published in Arabic in the Official Gazette and can be accessed from the website of the Ministry of Finances, the website of the Ministry of Legal Affairs, and the official Omani law search engine. The data is available in XLS format and there are quite a few formulas in the document which motivates the definition of the format as "non machine-readable".

The Annual Budget is issued through a Royal Decree, which is exempt from copyright protection and is there available freely to use, reuse, or to distribute.

Reviewer: I have solely identified outdated data such as the one for 2012 (issued through Sultan Decree number 2013/250, see here: https://www.mof.gov.om/Portals/1/documents/Financial-reports/final-state-account/2012/Min-Decision-250-2013.pdf). I was not able to locate up-to-date budget report for 2014 or 2015. Lastly, if I consider the Ministry of Finances website, it carries a copyright mention at the bottom. Thus, in the absence of actual quote from the law the reporter refers to, I have considered this data to be non-openly licensed.

The website of the National Centre for Statistics and Information publishes a monthly statistical bulletin at: http://www.ncsi.gov.om/NCSI_website/N_ListPublications_Ar.aspx?view=31

The bulletin includes a section on "Public Finance" which shows aggregated spending data, i.e. not transactional data. For example: http://www.ncsi.gov.om/NCSI_website/book/mb/Jul2014/T4.pdf is the spending report for the month of July 2014.

The National Centre for Statistics & Information is a relatively new government entity in Oman that works on publicising national statistics in all fields. NCSI is active on social media and publishes its stats on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/OmanNCSI?ref=hl ) and Twitter ( https://twitter.com/NCSIOman ) , it also has smart phone apps for accessing the data from mobile devices. The data is currently not "open", but the website of the NCSI has a "coming soon" section that promises to have "Open Data".

Reviewer: I have introduced major amendments to this indicator as the website seems to solely provide a HTML table with very high level numbers; the key national statistics (e.g., demographic and economic indicators) are do not seem to be featured, neither on the Arabic nor on the English part of the website. There is no file associated/linked to through this table, therefore it is unknown whether the detailed data is available in a digital form at all. The promised Open Data portal (http://www.ncsi.gov.om/NCSI_website/N_open_data_ar.aspx) is under construction, so not considered in the assessment. The indicator has been downgraded to reflect these considerations.

The Commercial Register is required by law to enable any individual to access the records of any company (Article 2 of Commercial Register Law 3/74). The Commercial Register has a website ( https://www.business.gov.om/ ) that provides a number of services such as checking for the availability of a name, but it does not allow retrieving the records of other companies online.

Oman does not use a postcodes/zipcode system that translates into a physical address. The postal system in Oman uses PO Boxes which are based at postal offices in each city and which the users have to visit to collect their mail.

The body responsible for environmental issues in Oman is the Ministry of Environment and Climatic Affairs. It is unknown if they collect or release any such data.