US provides technical support to GODI project

The United States Government has assured Ghana of its technical support to the Ghana Open Data Initiative (GODI) project.

The GODI project seeks to build an open data community bringing together government, civil society, the media, developers, academia and other key stakeholders to interact through the Ghana Open Data Portal (ODPL).

Mr Bajinder Paul, who led a US delegation to Ghana, said the team was encouraged by the progress of work they have seen from their Ghanaian counterparts.

The two-man delegation from the United States Open Government Portal paid a courtesy call on Mr William Tevie, Director General of the National Information Technology Agency in Accra on Thursday.

The delegation are on a two-day visit which forms part of the technical support to the GODI deployment of the Open Government Platform, which was jointly developed by the US and Indian governments.

Mr Bajinder said for effective implementation of the project areas like policy impact, governance, communication and technology have to be looked at very well.

He commended the GODI team for the efforts to make the implementation of the project a success.

Mr Tevie said the GODI team was committed to the project and expressed the hope that with the expertise from the delegation the necessary impact would be felt.

He explained that the GODI web team had successfully deployed the OGPL for the project and have populated it with demand-driven data sets.

He said government was very committed to the project to enhance transparency and accountability for quality governance.

Mr Tevie said the alpha version of the portal was already up and running and the beta version would be launched on 15 November.

The Beta version would have more than 80 government raw data from the ministries, departments and agencies that could be accessible by the public for analysis and re-use.

The full portal, with thousands of demand-focused data, will be launched at the end of the project phase of the initiative by December 2013.