Open Data Day 2021: Data in time of COVID-19

On 06 March 2021, Open Development Cambodia (ODC) and the ICT Community celebrated international Open Data Day by conducting a half-day event with the theme of “Data in Time of COVID-19.” The event was live on ODC’s official Facebook page for the online public.

The event commenced with a salute to the National Anthem of Cambodia and opening remarks from Mr. Thy Try, executive director of ODC, and Mr. John Weeks, Open Data Specialist for InterNews. The year 2021 marked the 7^th anniversary in which ODC has participated in Open Data Day. Mr. Try further explained that this year Open Data Day would be conducted differently as the whole Cambodian event will be broadcasted on social media. The event was shifted to an online format due to the rising rate of COVID-19 cases in Cambodia, as well as an aim to reach a wider audience.

Mr. Try stated that the event is important because it can invite all relevant stakeholders whose works depend on data to participate, in order to develop policies and enable an environment for easily accessible Open Data. He also expressed that the theme “Data in Time of COVID-19” is relevant to the current situation as the pandemic has affected the economic and social welfare of many countries around the globe, including Cambodia. Thus, Open Data is crucial in order for the government and other stakeholders to make prompt and effective policies and decisions in tackling those issues in a timely manner.

The objectives of the event include 1) To raise awareness on the potential use of open data and the importance of availability, openness, dissemination, and use of data and information during the pandemic, 2) To bring together a diverse group of people to discuss their challenges accessing to socio-economic impacts data in Cambodia, and 3) To promote the use of open data and the data-driven storytelling to strengthen current social safety protection in Cambodia and as well as the post-pandemic recovery.

Mr. John Weeks introduced the next session, the launch of the Open Data Survey 2020 which featured a pre-recorded presentation of Mr. Vamoeurn Nimol and Ms. Julia Garcia Puig. The objectives of the study were 1) To analyze the current context of Open Data in Cambodia, and 2) To explore any opportunities to develop the accessibility of Open Data in Cambodia. Mr. Nimol expressed that Open Data contains three primary characteristics: availability and accessibility; reusability and redistribution; and universal participation. The inputs were gathered from websites and data portals from diverse institutions including universities, civil society groups, journalists, governmental institutions, and the general public. 

Mr. Nimol also noted that there are issues regarding the analysis of the sources of information from the governmental institutions because they exist in the types of file which cannot be assessed by applications in the computer. He expressed that the government needs to provide access to their data because according to the study, approximately 70% of those surveyed received their data from the government. He also presented that they faced several challenges such as the limited availability of raw data, lack of government collaboration, and limited knowledge about Open Data. He proposed policy recommendations such as institutionalizing a unified governmental body to facilitate open data development, building a strong network of Open Data infrastructure, and increasing data literacy among users and producers.

The next session was a panel discussion moderated by Mr. Ban Chanphalla, Social and Development Researcher and Editor of ODC. Among the distinguished guest speakers were Mr. Loch Kalyan, Map and Data Specialist of ODC; Mr. Nop Vy, CamboJA Director; and Mr. Ukthaun Pagna, Head of UNDP Accelerator Lab. Mr. Chhanphalla started the panel discussion by asking the first question to Mr. Kalyan about the benefits of data for individuals and society.

Mr. Kalyan observed that data is important because it helps us solve issues in our daily lives. He also expressed that his work needs specialized data as input to build maps and other types of visualizations and illustrate them on the official website of ODC.

Mr. Pagna said that data can be used differently depending on the objectives and nature of the projects. He added that the data which had been collected can be utilized by governmental and non-governmental institutions to solve societal issues.

The moderator raised another question to Mr. Nop Vy on the challenges of extracting data in Cambodia. Mr. Nop Vy stated that data is very crucial because it will provide foundations for any decision-making processes and policies. He added that data can be used in order to validate and scientifically prove our arguments. In the field of journalism, it is very vital for journalists to gather data from different sources in order to produce reliable and valid arguments in the articles so as to tackle the emergence of fake news in Cambodia. He also gave several tips to the viewers on how they can analyze the validity of the information by improving our media literacy. Media literacy involves investigating the source, date, and background of the author of the articles.

Mr. Pagna stated that in the time of COVID-19, data is very beneficial as it can raise public awareness on the negative impacts of the pandemic. Thus, data can provide Cambodian citizens the ground of understanding to take appropriate measures to cope with COVID-19.

Responding to Mr. Chanphalla’s question on how data can be utilized to be more effective in informing the public, Mr. Kalyan explained that ODC collects data published by the government and then visualizes it in other formats such as infographics and maps, as a means for viewers to easily access and understand data. Mr. Vy also agreed that data visualization (for example infographics) is very helpful for readers because it can convey a message to the audience more effectively than raw tables or statistics. 

Mr. Chanphalla raised another question about how UNDP can help in order to encourage other institutions to provide access to their data. Mr. Pagna responded that UNDP had launched a data dashboard that aims to share data and information which enable other institutions to provide their available resources. There are two kinds of the collected data. One type of data refers to traditional data such as surveys whereas another type is called ‘Big Data’ which is extracted from the internet.

In the Q&A session, one audience asked whether that data in the context of COVID-19 is widely accessible nationwide. Mr. Pagna claimed that data is yet widely accessible because of the digital divide and large geographical proximity in the rural areas. Mr. Vy recognized the government’s effort in providing data yet showing that there is still room for improvements on some challenges such as lack of human resources and cooperation with other stakeholders.

In the next session, Mr. Tong Kimsun, a representative from the World Bank presented his recent findings on the third round of results from his survey under the theme “The Social-Economic Impacts of COVID-19 on Cambodia.” Main key findings include 1) High willingness among Cambodian people are willing to get tested and vaccinated against COVID-19 for free. Most of the respondents who expressed unwillingness to get vaccinated cited the vaccine’s safety and side effects as their main concerns. 2) Almost 100 percent of people still have access to daily basic necessities such as food and medicine. In regards to primary education, children were increasingly engaged in educational activities as schools were gradually opened prior to the third outbreak of local community transmissions. 3) Employment was relatively stable with 82% responded that they were still employed. 4) The increase in the proportion of poor and vulnerable households receiving social assistance from the government. And lastly, 5) Food security has been improved.  

In the last session, Mr. Vong Pisith, Senior Data Research & GIS Officer of ODC, provided some insights regarding “Data-Driven Storytelling.”  Mr. Pisith explained that data is vast as it incorporates all the aspects we can observe and measure in society. He said that data and information are often used interchangeably. Technically, however, information is the result of data that has been extracted and analyzed. Returning to the main theme, Mr. Pisith explained that data-driven storytelling is a process of collecting and analyzing data to produce any specific story for the audience. He also further explained that data-driven storytelling involves many stages including research, collecting data, filtering unnecessary items through data cleaning, and visualizing data to produce the story.

It is also worth noting that ODC had run its outreach campaign regarding the Open Data Day for some days before the event happened. ODC had produced an ‘Open Data Day’ quiz program posted on its official Facebook page and garnered a noticeable amount of engagement from the public audience with 286 shares and 341 comments. One day before the event, ODC randomly selected 5 winners who were gifted with one drink tumbler and t-shirt each.  

Another interesting program was the Facebook live sharing session which was premiered on 5 March 2021. Guest speaker Mr. David Benaim, a Data Scientist who is well-known for his work on data, especially his article on “A year in numbers: Cambodia’s hopeful Covid-19 statistics” of which some sources were data were taken from ODC’s COVID-19 Dataset. In the session, he shared his current research finding on “Cambodia's World Class COVID-19 Statistics”, gaining more than 300 views. He explained the ways he collects data sources, cleans and analyzes data on COVID-19, as well as draws insights from the finding by demonstrating each step elaborately.

From these outreach activities, together with the unique theme of this year's Open Data Day and the participation from experts in the data field, the event was successfully completed with more than a thousand views from the public audience.