Driven by data: Open Development Cambodia turns two and goes viral

— MEDIA ANNOUNCEMENT —

Phnom Penh, 15 August 2013 – Open Development Cambodia (ODC), the innovative open data website that brings together a treasure trove of economic, environmental and social data on the Kingdom in one place, is celebrating its second birthday tomorrow, 16 August. And ODC is proving to be one precocious baby. In addition to its growing wealth of information on economic development projects, the Kingdom’s environment, the census, and related law and policy, ODC is growing like bamboo. While it had an already impressive 1,552 unique visitors just two weeks after its launch, today ODC has seen more than 204,000 unique visitors from 203 countries, and the upward momentum is growing.

“ODC leads the world in presenting country-specific development information that spans a range of sources and topical areas, inviting comparison and analysis,” said Terry Parnell, ODC project manager.  “To a great extent, it displays that information visually, and allows the relationships between layers of data to be gleaned by the viewer, who can select the data sets they wish to compare.”

Some of the exciting projects in the pipeline at ODC are an Atlas of Cambodia, a venture undertaken in collaboration with Save Cambodia’s Wildlife. In late June, one month before the National Assembly election, ODC launched a one-of-a-kind Election Page in Khmer. It features maps of polling places, data on past elections, and briefings, news and videos all related to the vote on July 28. The United States Library of Congress selected the ODC website for inclusion in the library’s historic collection of internet materials related to Cambodia’s National Election of 2013.

ODC’s goal is to get people thinking about development trends in Cambodia by presenting data in an easy-to-understand form. ODC does not take a position on the data it collects; its team of mappers, programmers, and editors simply make information available. It is then up to the user to decide what he or she thinks of the events or trends the data reveals. Foreign investors, researchers, technocrats, entrepreneurs, government agencies, NGOs and other CSOs use ODC to collect unbiased information about Cambodia and its development.

“ODC provides a unique set of open information on land use in Cambodia. I was able to easily access to precise information and extract tailored maps and data for my presentations and reports to civil society organizations. Since then I’ve been recommending this website to many colleagues and friends and hope it will soon extend to other countries in Asia!” said Antoine Bouhey, Land policies consultant.

In addition, ODC is becoming well known beyond its borders, striking up partnerships and cooperative agreements with individuals and groups interested in the open data concept in Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, China and beyond. It’s proving a role model that open-data fans in several parts of the world are interested in emulating.

The site has become well networked in the open-data and mapping communities. Its open-source, open content philosophy is share, share, share. ODC participates in workshops, IT events, mapping meet-ups and regional conferences to exchange information and ideas. The more data out there and available to the public, the better, ODC believes. It seems like more and more, people are agreeing.

For more information

Contact person: Chan Penhleak, ODC Research and Volunteer Coordinator

Phone: +855 17 340 088

Email: penhleak@opendevcam.net