Photo: flickr/jwyg

Accessing reliable data can be difficult, especially in the developing world. Good data might not exist in the first place, and if it does, it can be hard to come by or deliberately kept under lock and key by the powers-that-be. In Cambodia, an open data site is putting data in the hands of journalists and researchers – in fact, anyone who wants it – in an attempt to shine a light on a whole variety of issues.

Open Development Cambodia (ODC) is the first of its kind in southeast Asia. Launched in 2011, it makes a wide variety of information related to the country’s development easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

ODC was the brainchild of Terry Parnell, a long-time American resident of Cambodia. Parnell works with grassroots groups on issues such as the environment and human rights at the East-West Management Institute. Her job means she regularly receives information from people on the ground from all around the country. Because of this, she came into possession of a veritable treasure trove of data, which she wanted to share with others.

Terry Parnell. Photo: flickr/International Land Coalition

Parnell felt Cambodia, which had embarked on a path of rapid development after decades of civil war, needed a place where people could find unbiased data presented in a neutral fashion, without any kind of agenda.

“She didn’t want to tell people what to think, but just give them the information,” said Penhleak Chan, ODC’s research and volunteer coordinator. “It wasn’t about telling people what to do with the data, but to have their decisions informed by it.”

Open data

ODC is part of a burgeoning open data movement, whose goals are akin to other “open” movements, like open source or open content. The idea is to make certain data available to anyone and searchable and allow them to use and republish it as they wish without restrictions such as copyrights, fees, licenses or re-use limitations.

graphic: flickr/justgrimes

Many national governments have joined the open data movement, creating websites to publish much of the data they collect. A good list of open data catalogs can be found here.

Information in Cambodia is especially hard to come by. This is because many records were destroyed during the conflict and bloodshed that wracked the country for so long. Plus, most media outlets have tight links with the government and the information they present is often selectively used to back up a certain viewpoint (that is, when the media present bother presenting information at all).

While Cambodia is one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing economies, incomplete and inconsistent data is hindering development. Add to that all the environmental and social challenges the country faces, and it’s not hard to see why journalists, activists, investors and others need to be able to get their hands on reliable information.

ODC’s data offering

ODC’s site features information on Cambodia’s laws and regulations, profiles of companies investing in the country, detailed briefings on economic sectors, oil and gas development, economic land concessions and natural resources. The site’s editors comb the local press and put article summaries and links to publications online five days a week.

The 12 staff members – web designers, editors, mappers and researchers – along with a handful of volunteers pull data from the Cambodian government, international organizations, the news media and research groups. The information sources are always presented, compared and contrasted with the goal of creating a data picture that is as accurate and transparent as possible.

One of ODC’s most popular features is a series of interactive maps with information ranging from forest cover change and election results to mining concessions and oil and gas blocks. The visuals allow users to select data sets they want to compare and find relationships between them.

Since its founding, the site has seen over 268,000 unique visitors from 203 countries. It averages over 35,000 page views per month. This more than doubled in July, when the ODC set up a series of special pages to cover controversial National Assembly elections, and more than 72,500 people came to the site.

Visitors include writers for The Guardian, TechPresident and for the New York Times. Groups such as the UN, the Mekong River Commission and the International Land Coalition have also accessed info to use in their research and presentation. And perhaps somewhat surprisingly, ODC staff has heard about the Cambodian government using the site.

The ODC team gets in the Christmas spirit

As ODC has become better known in Cambodia and beyond, it has started looking beyond its own borders. It’s cooperating with DW Akademie in January on a data journalism workshop (applications close December 31 – see here for more details). And a regional workshop earlier this year brought together open data fans from Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and China with the idea of starting an Open Development network and becoming sister sites.

But, staying true to the ODC philosophy, Penhleak Chan stressed that it’s up to the groups in each country to figure out for themselves how they want to do things. “We want to be a mentor for these groups, not tell them what to do,” she said.

Written by Kyle James, edited by Kate Hairsine

Twelve renowned journalists from Latin America and Germany are coming together to explore the future of data journalism. Under the motto “Public Data Goes Social”, the journalists and open data experts will meet for three days in Buenos Aires to discuss the most burning issues in the booming field of data journalism.

The talks are part of a Media Dialogue organized by DW Akademie and supported by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office. You can follow the event, which runs from 13-15 November, on Twitter  via @dw akademie and the hashtag #mdba.

There is a thriving community of data journalists in Germany and Latin America and the two regions are building a reputation for innovations in the field. Read more for a short introduction to the Media Dialogue participants.

Laura Zommer is Executive Director of Chequeado.com, the only NGO doing fact checking in Latin America, and a professor for the Right to Information at the University of Buenos Aires . Her area of expertise are anti-corruption, accountability and open data.

Data projects you like: ProPublica, Poderopedia.

My favorite data visualization: How rumors and unverified information spread on Twitter.

Data set I would like to work with: The designation of judges and prosecutors in the last 15 years in Argentina in order to analyze, for example, what educational background they have or the gender or regional ratio.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Sensitive information that can lead to discrimination, such as sexual orientation, religion and health issues (but only when such data is tied to an identity, obviously not when it’s purely are statistical). Also the names of juvenile offenders.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: It’s a new way of telling stories that allows you to involve citizen in the process.

Question for my colleagues: Do you have any advice on how to do great data journalism even if the data is not always the best?

___________________________________

Mariano Blejman is a Knight International Journalism Fellow at the International Center for Journalists, manages @Mediafactory_vc, runs the Buenos Aires chapter of Hacks/Hackers and is also editor-in-hack at the investigative journalist web platform @analiceme. Previously he was an editor at Pagina/12.

Data project I like: Dollars for Doctors by ProPublica.

My favorite data visualization: Betrayed by our own data by Malte Spitz at ZeitOnline.

Data set I would like to work with: Internet cables in Latin America, something like Submarine Cable Map.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Health.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Data journalism isn’t magic, it’s about building teams.

Question for my colleagues: What is more difficult? Developers learning to write or writers learning to code?

___________________________________

Christina Elmer is a data and science journalist at Spiegel Online. Before that she was part of the investigative reporting team at Stern magazine and worked as an infographics editor for the German press agency, dpa. She also trains journalists in data reporting and online research.

Data projects I like: Interactive German federal election map at Spiegel Online’s data blog and the regional analysis of health indicators at Stern magazine (partly also covered online).

My favorite data visualization: I find the visualization of the drones attacks deaths in Pakistan very impressive, well composed and narrated in an absolute meaningful way.

Data set I would like to work with: Of course, the US surveillance data, to at least be able to show the full extent of their international intelligence actions.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Private information that individuals don’t want to be published.

Something every journalist know about data journalism: Data journalism is more an enrichment than a replacement of fundamental journalistic research methods.

Questions for my colleagues: What was your most encouraging data journalism moment and what motivates you day after day?
___________________________________
 

Gustavo Faleiros is a Knight International Journalism Fellow and environmental journalist specializing in data-driven journalism. In 2012, Faleiros launched InfoAmazonia, a digital map that uses satellite and other publicly available data to monitor the Amazon rainforest. This year he has created a multidisciplinary team called Environmental News Lab and has been launching news projects based on the experience of using interactive maps and earth science data.

My favorite data visualization: the interactive feature Racing Against History by the New York Times.

Data set I would like to work with: Carbon monoxide concentrations.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Personal data, private data.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: That it is just a name for the much larger transformation happening in all journalism processes, from sourcing information to distributing it.

Question for my colleagues: What are the most innovative forms of data distribution you have seen done by a media company or a journalistic project?
___________________________________

Sylke Gruhnwald is a data-driven reporter with the Swiss media outlet, Neue Zürcher Zeitung. You can find her projects here and here.

My favorite data visualization: Kant – you can read more about it here. Besides this, I prefer bar or line chart over bling-bling maps or fancy stuff.

Data sets I would like to work with: Commercial registry, Swiss income data (Salarium), NSA files

Data which shouldn’t be open: Very personal data such as credit card details, health records, etc.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Data driven journalism is not only about fancy visualizations; it is about storytelling with data.

Questions for my colleagues: Why and how did hacking in Latin America develop to the current state? How can one individual foster that development?
___________________________________

Stefan Plöchinger started as a local reporter for Germany’s biggest broadsheet newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He was then a political journalist at the Munich tabloid Abendzeitung, a production editor for the now defunct Financial Times Germany, and copy chief and managing editor of the German news site, Spiegel Online. In 2011, he returned to the Süddeutsche Zeitung as the editor of the online edition and managing editor for online business.

My favorite data visualizations: US Gun Deaths and I also love the Partly Cloudy app just because it’s a clever redesign of a classic topic

Data set I would like to work with: Traffic jam data over the years to compare the difference made by building new streets or new railway lines – does reshaping traffic systems reduce traffic or lead to more traffic?

Data which shouldn’t be open: Intimate and private data of individuals who have committed no crime whatsoever

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: It’s not about data alone. It’s really about a new way to explore stories that otherwise couldn’t be told or researched.

Questions for my colleagues: What is your experience with readers – which projects did they like the most and which were a lot of work but didn’t resonate?
___________________________________

Juan Carlos Simo works as a journalist at the daily paper, La Voz del Interior in Córdoba, Argentina and is also part of the national journalist’s NGO, Foro de Periodismo Argentino (Fopea). Even though says he’s not a data-journalism specialist, he has worked on several data projects. One of them is Tragic Roads, a long-term project to build up data about road safety (see for example one of the monthly reports on the subject). Another is about deforestation in Córdoba.

My favorite data visualizations: I love this interactive cartogram made by Andy Tow for Cippec, a local NGO because I think is quite effective at showing the inequity in Argentina and One Race, Every Medallist Ever from the New York Times

Data sets I would like to work with: Homicides related to organized crime in Argentina and femicides. Unfortunately, these aren’t available.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Personal data that people want to remain private. In Argentina, the government publishes people’s addresses and pictures on a website for election purposes.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Data is just the beginning. Without journalism, there is no social use of it.

Question for my colleagues: How would you convince editors and publishers of the need to invest in creating specialized areas of data journalism in local media?
___________________________________

Julius Tröger originally started off writing for the German daily newspaper, Berliner Morgenpost but now also codes for them too. His latest data journalism projects are an interactive 3D visualization and analysis of the flight traffic above Berlin and an interactive map of the German Bundestag election results in Berlin by polling station.

My favorite data visualization: Gay rights in the US by Fielding Cage and Gabriel  Dance from the Guardian US.

Data set I would like to work with: Data as granular and open as this for all German states

Data which shouldn’t be open: All personal data.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Don’t underestimate the advantage of working with web developers in the newsroom.

Questions for my colleagues: I would like to ask about the state of open data in Argentina and in other Latin American countries and find out how my colleagues deal with it in their daily work?
___________________________________

 Miguel Paz is a Knight International Journalism Fellow at the International Center for Journalists and founder and CEO of Poderopedia, a data journalism
website that maps the political and economic links between members of the elite. Paz is also the president of Poderomedia Foundation, which fosters
innovation within the news ecosystem and promotes the use of new
technologies to increase transparency. He is the co-creator of the
Hacks/Hackers Chile chapter and co-creator of OpenDataLatinoamerica.org.

My favorite data visualization: A code status dashboard I saw in a newsroom. It was a small black screen on the wall that worked like a semaphore for the website performance team. Green lines of code meant everything is ok. Yellow lines of code meant beware. Red lights was “run Forrest run”!

Data sets I would like to work with: The NSA archive and metadata on Barack Obama’s emails

Data which shouldn’t be open: Who am I to say? I leave that to judges and ethic masters

What every journalist should know about data journalism: If you can think, read, write, dont’t be lazy and stay hungry, you can do this and any sort of journalism: keyboard journalism, phone journalism, recorder journalism. Names are just references to tools which are often outdated by our working practice. Someday “data journalism” will sound as dumb as “phone journalism” sounds now.

___________________________________

Sebastian Vollnhals lives in Berlin where he works with OpenDataCity. His projects include Castorticker, a platform of citizen journalism about nuclear waste transports in Germany and Lobbyplag, an evaluation of the influence of lobbyists on the European Parliament.

My favorite data visualization: The display of messages broadcast with Castorticker on a map.

Data set I would like to work with: Beauty and value can be found everywhere so I’d like to work with a data set I’d least expected to work with.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Data openness should always empower people and not be a tool for oppression. Therefore a world without inequality and oppression needs to be built where all data can be free without causing harm. Until then, the question if data should be open is a question about power.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Data contains wisdom and it’s your quest to find and share it. Wisdom brings power and it’s your responsibility to use it wisely.

Question for my colleagues: What is the question that needs to be answered next?
___________________________________

Stefan Wehrmeyer works for the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany as a developer and project lead on FragDenStaat.de, a German Freedom of Information Portal. He also likes to hack on public transport data and government transparency.

Data projects I like: OpenSpending and FarmSubsidy are both great projects I worked on that improve transparency of public money in Europe and around the world.

My favorite data visualization: Of course I appreciate good visualizations but as a developer I’m more intrigued by what possibilities are still out there and what techniques are coming up. One example are vector tiles that will change Open Source mapping. You can see an example here.

Data set I would like to work with: A GTFS (public transport schedule) file of Buenos Aires to integrate into Mapnificent.net.

Data which shouldn’t be open: I wouldn’t mind if all publicly available data was openly licensed. Of course, not all data should be publicly available.

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: It’s still journalism.

Question for my colleagues: How can we collaborate better on global stories between different countries?
___________________________________

Florencia Coelho is the Digital Media Research and Training Manager at La Nacion news organization in Argentina and a member of La Nacion’s data team, @LNdata Editor. She coordinated the translation of the Data Journalism Handbook into Spanish Coordinator and in her past life was a lawyer.

Data project you like: One of my favorites (an oldie but goldie) is the Las Vegas Sun’s 2010 Do No Harm series on hospital care. They analyzed almost 2,900,000 hospital billing records revealing more than 3,500 preventable injuries, infections and surgical mistakes and identifying more than 300 cases in which patients died of preventable mistakes. Six laws where passed after their project.

My favorite data visualizations: Visualizing The US Electric Grid by NPR from 2009 and Wind Map, a newer and cooler dataviz by Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg.

Data set I would like to work with: Argentinian hospital care data like the Do No Harm series.

Data which shouldn’t be open: Personal private data and sensitive information regarding national defense. We also need some creative solutions to certain data such as census information and health information from NGOs so that people aren’t identified (people living in rural areas with very low population can be easy to identify, for example).

Something every journalist should know about data journalism: Maybe today you think these skills are kind of nerdy but they will soon be in your daily essential journo toolbox.

Question for my colleagues: What about making a wiki list of ethical and legal circumstances which arise from the data journalism process?

Go to the event blog