Recent years have witnessed considerable speculation about the potential of open data to bring about wide-scale transformation. The bulk of existing evidence about the impact of open data, however, focuses on high-income countries. Much less is known about open data’s role and value in low- and middle-income countries, and more generally about its possible contributions to economic and social development.

The Open Data for Developing Economies project – a collaboration between the GovLab, USAID, Mobile Solutions Technical Assistance and Research (mStar,) and the Web Foundation – seeks to build an evidence base identifying:
- the conditions under which open data is most (and least) effective in the development process;
- strategies to maximize the positive contributions of open data to development; and
- means for limiting open data’s harms on developing countries.

Toward that end, we have developed detailed drafts of:
- A landscaping paper investigating the value of open data in low and middle income contexts, and
- In-depth, illustrative and detailed case studies to better understand how developing countries are responding to public demand to open their data, who is making use of that data and for what, and what impact it is having in several key domains.

OPEN PEER REVIEW: Before we publish our collection of case studies and the landscaping paper, we are looking for sector and topic-area experts to act as a Recognized Peer Reviewer.

CONTACT: If you have any questions about the review process or the case studies, please contact Andrew Young (andrew@thegovlab.org)

NOTE: We are looking for 2 reviewers per case maximum.