Brazil evolves in public data transparency
Brazil has improved the availability and accessibility of government information in 2015, according to a report by UK organization Open Knowledge International that measures the state of open government data around the world.
The Global Open Data Index lists 122 countries and covers information across 13 categories such as government spending, election results, government purchasing and environmental measurement information.
Brazil ranked 12th in 2015, from 26th in the prior year. According to OKI, new data sets on elections, quality of water and election data were shared for the first time last year, which contributed to boosting the country's position in the open data ranking.
However, other Latin American countries fared better, with Colombia ranking 4th and Uruguay appearing as 7th on the list. According to OKI, Uruguay was the first country in the region to promote debates around open data at a conference, which Colombia will be hosting next year.
Taiwan topped the open data list, the first non-European country to be among the top three, while the United Kingdom ranked second and Denmark third. At the bottom of the list, Libya, Syria and Myanmar make only 6, 5 and 3 percent of government data available to the civil society, respectively.