Author(s): Presidency of the Government, E-Government Unit
Resource Type: Case studies
Countries: Tunisia
SDG: GOAL 16. Peace and Justice Strong Institutions
Keywords: Open Data
National Open Data Portal of Tunisia
Source in English: ESCWA-OECD Case Study - National Open Data Portal of Tunisia
The National Open Data Portal represents a single access point for all data produced and published by public institutions at the central and local levels. It was developed within the framework of the first Open Government Partnership national plan (2014-2016) to replace the website put online since 2012 as the first open data website and to keep up with global standards adopted in the field.
Implementation: 2017
Contributor(s)
The portal was developed by the e-Government Unit at the Presidency of the Government, with the technical support of the African Development Bank and in collaboration with all ministries.
Purpose
The objectives of the Tunisia Data Portal include:
- Enhancing citizens' trust and engagement.
- Strengthening public structures transparency and integrity.
- Enabling a proactive publication of public data in a structured and open format.
- Promoting the reuse of open public data in activities that stimulate innovation and economic growth and improve the quality of public services.
- Enriching analysis and research and improving strategic decision-making.
- Applying the provisions of the Right to Access Information law.
Functions
The platform contains datasets covering around 15 themes and is interconnected with five sectorial open data portals, covering cultural affairs, industry and energy, municipalities, transport, and agriculture. It can be fed either manually through a central office or automatically through harvesting data from the sectorial portals. In addition, it allows developers through an application programming interface (API) to automatically use published datasets in developing mobile applications and services; and it also features the cases of open data reuse.
Clients
This portal benefits public institutions, citizens, the private sector, the academic sector, start-ups and developers, and non-governmental and civil society organizations.
Outcome
- The portal provides over 1,200 datasets from 37 public providers, in Arabic and French.
- More than 30,000 users visited and used the portal in the period of 2017-2020.
- Seven sectoral open data portals were developed.
- An assessment grid was established for monitoring and evaluating the open data portals.
- A public data inventory project was developed with six ministries.
- Hackathons were organized to enhance the use of public datasets.
It is envisioned that the project will also result in adopting a decree on open data, launching new value-added services, completing the public data inventory project, and continuing the capacity-building programme on open data.
As a key pillar of the open data ecosystem in Tunisia, the portal contributes to building an economy based on data reuse and innovation as well as enabling the use of advanced technologies through the development of new services. Through free access to open public data, it increases opportunities for civil society and small businesses to undertake new projects.
Challenges
- Keeping pace with international technological trends in open data.
- Raising awareness on open data and increasing public involvement.
- Limited financial and human resources dedicated to the project.
