The UAE ranked 16th globally out of 187 countries in the Open Data Inventory, ODIN, Report 2020, with an overall score of 75. Compiled by Open Data Watch, the 5th ODIN assesses the coverage and openness of official statistics to identify gaps, promote open data policies, improve access, and encourage dialogue between national statistical offices (NSOs) and data users.
UAE jumped 51 positions from 2018, outperforming the United States, South Korea, Switzerland, France, Spain, Japan and the United Kingdom while Singapore ranked first globally according to the index, followed by Poland and Finland.
India stood in the 63rd position with an ODIN score of 58 and the openness and coverage score showed 65 and 50 respectively. The three countries that made great progress towards open data in 2020 are St. Lucia, Uzbekistan and Tanzania.
Open data is a collection of government data and statistics available free of charge and can be used, reprocessed, distributed or shared with third parties by any individual or organization and provided to all online and without restrictions on access.
The UAE government has adopted an open data policy as part of the digital transformation process aimed at facilitating researchers and society, access to government information and statistical data related to the UAE.
The Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority of the UAE government implemented the Open Data Race in government agencies to see who could publish more open data through their official statistical portal. It resulted in the reduction of the missing indicators from 30 to 13 percent and their coverage score increased by over 20 points.
The report also shuns light on open gender data (OGDI), which refers to an index disaggregated by sex or that measure conditions and events on the welfare of women and their children.
Since 2016, the median scores on the ODIN-OGDI has risen by 21 percent, but not as fast as non-gender related categories which increased by 40 percent.