Taiwan has come out on top among 122 nations and areas in this year’s Global Open Data Index, emerging as the first non-European nation to place in the top three, according to Open Knowledge International, which released the index on Tuesday.
The result represented a major leap for Taiwan, which finished 36th in 2013 and 11th last year in the annual index that measures how open governments are in providing key information.
However, in a statement on this year’s index, Open Knowledge International said that “significant progress is still to be made, as Taiwan’s overall score reveals that their data is only 78 percent open.”
“Crucial datasets such as government spending, postcodes and land ownership are still closed and inaccessible to citizens,” the British non-profit organization said.
Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said that open data and value-added applications are an important strategy for promoting good governance, service innovation and overall economic development, and are a solid foundation for the government’s Internet policy, called “ide@Taiwan.”
Under the policy, concrete goals and plans were drawn up for the nation to become fully digitized by 2020, according to the Executive Yuan.
Rounding out the Open Data Index top 10 following Taiwan were the UK, Denmark, Colombia, Finland, Australia, Uruguay, the US, the Netherlands and Norway.
The next-highest ranked countries in Asia were India at 19th, South Korea at 23rd and Singapore at 25th.
While the top rankings remained dominated by OECD members, three non-OECD nations broke into the top 10 this year for the first time, Open Knowledge said, referring to Taiwan, Colombia and Uruguay.
“Overall, whilst there was meaningful improvement in the number of open datasets (from 124 to 154), the percentage of open datasets across all the surveyed countries fell from 11 percent in 2014 to 9 percent in 2015,” the group said. “It is clear that little progress has been made at the global level.”
According to Open Knowledge, the index is the result of civil society collaboration to track the state of open data in countries and places around the world.
The index ranks nations based on the availability and accessibility of data in 13 key categories, including national statistics, government budgets, government spending, legislation, election results, procurement tenders and national maps.
Other categories are pollution emissions, weather forecasts, company registers, location datasets, water quality and land ownership.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS