Good and bad news for SA in international open government report

30th January 2015

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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To start: absolutely nothing justified the murderous attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo or on a kosher supermarket in Paris early this month. Both were expressions of murderous bigotry. (Alas, bigots are to be found everywhere, but, fortunately, most are not killers.) Of course, there have been other appalling incidents and events elsewhere during this month as well, such as Boko Haram’s attack on the town of Baga, in north-east Nigeria. This was not ignored by the international media, as some claim, as a little bit of research would show; it is just that getting information out of north-east Nigeria is vastly more difficult than getting it out of Paris. And, of course, we journalists, being human, tend to feel it more directly when colleagues are purposely targeted, wherever they may be.

Meanwhile, totally unrelated, on January 19, the World Wide Web Foundation, which was set up in 2009 by the acknowledged inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, published its 2015 Open Data Barometer report. This is the second edition of the report, which ranks 86 countries in terms of their provision of open and accessible data on the performance of key public services. In its press release covering the report, the foundation noted that “governments worldwide have acknowledged the potential of OGD (Open Government Data) to reduce corruption, increase transparency and improve government services, yet over 90% of the 86 countries surveyed in this edition of the barometer do not publish key datasets in open formats”.

Where does South Africa rank in the latest report? The answer is 41. First, the good news must be stressed: this represents a dramatic jump of 11 places from the country’s position of 52 in the first edition of the barometer in 2013. This is unquestionably a big improvement.

But how does South Africa compare? Well, it is the top African country on the list. Tunisia is the number two African representative, ranked 45 (up five places since the last report), and Rwanda, Ghana and Kenya all at number three, with 46 each. But Kenya has fallen dramatically from 22 in 2013 – a drop of 27 places. Rwanda has declined, and Ghana improved, slightly – by one position in each case. On the other hand, Nigeria has jumped seven places from 75 in 2013 to 68 today.

More appropriate comparisons are with other emerging market economies. A convenient grouping, for this purpose, is the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping (which, these days, should be spelt briCs or, at the most, brICs). The top country in this group, and the top emerging market country, is Brazil, at 21 (up seven places from 28 in 2013). In fact, the top three emerging market economy countries on the list are all Latin American: Mexico is at 24 (up one from 25) and Uruguay at 25 (up nine from 34). The second Brics country is Russia, at 26 (but down six from 20 in 2013). Number three is India, at 39 (again down, five places, from 34). So far, the ranking of the Brics countries in the barometer has been following their sequence in the group’s acronym! But, at the end, the neat sequence is broken. South Africa is next. China is last, at 46 (co-equal with the three abovementioned African countries). Like South Africa, China displays a dramatic improvement, of 15 places, from its ranking in the first barometer, which was 61.

Now, to clarify: these rankings concern data about public services and so exclude the armed forces, security agencies and other sensitive agencies. That is why countries such as Russia can rank so highly and China can improve so impressively. Talking about impressive improvements, only three countries did better than South Africa. These were Indonesia, which leapt 16 places (from 52 to 36), the already mentioned China and Ecuador, which moved up 12 places from 50 to 38. So that’s also something to be glad about.

Of course, even a modest improvement is better than a decline. Kenya’s drop was the worst, followed by Thailand, which fell 26 places, from 31 to 57 (perhaps the coup in May last year had something to do with it).

Just for completeness, here the positions of the other African countries in the 2015 barometer: Mauritius 54 (interestingly, down 12 from 42 in the first barometer), Morocco 55 (down 15 from 40), Mozambique 59 (this country was not ranked in the 2013 report), Uganda 64 (down nine from 55), Egypt also 64 (again not ranked in the first report), Malawi 68 (down nine from 59), Benin also 68 (down one), Tanzania also 68 (previously unranked), Burkina Faso 74 (down seven from 67), Senegal also 74 (down three from 71), Zimbabwe 76 (down three from 73), Namibia 77 (down ten from 67), Botswana 78 (down badly, 23 places, from 55), Ethiopia also 78 (down 12 places from 66), Zambia again 78 (down three places, from 75), Sierra Leone also 78 (previously unranked), Cameroon 83 (down 12 from 71) and Mali 84 (down seven from 77). What is alarming is that, of the 20 African countries ranked in the report and which were also ranked in the previous barometer, 16 have seen their rankings fall – eleven by more than five places. To reiterate, South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia and Ghana are the only African countries to have improved their standings. For the continent as a whole, this is most disturbing.

As for South Africa, while it leads Africa, it clearly lags behind its counterparts elsewhere. Nine Latin American and five Asian countries outrank South Africa (the Asians include Japan, at 19, outranked by South Korea at 17). To adapt a phrase from many school reports: South Africa can do better! As for the top of the list, the UK is at one, the US at two and Sweden at three – the same countries in the same order as in the previous barometer.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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