The false economy of Statistics Botswana incapacity
Brian Benza | Friday January 30, 2015 18:00
The Open Data Barometer (ODB) global report released recently says that Botswana has been lumped into a cluster of ‘capacity constrained’ countries that are facing challenges in establishing sustainable open data initiatives as a result of limited government or civil society capacity.
Open data refers to data that is proactively published, and made available without charge, in readable file formats and without restrictions on use. While there is a willingness to make government data available in Botswana, observers say in practice, availability is constrained by lack of resources, as Statistics Botswana is terribly under-resourced in relation to what is required.
“The result is that public data is not available in machine-readable capacity for example, on the SB website all the data is in PDF format, not excel spreadsheets. SB will generally make the excel files available on request, but nevertheless, that does not qualify as readily available.
“There are also long delays in publishing some data - for instance it is now 2015 and the most recent data we have on employment is for 2012.
There are also real problems with the quality of some of the key economic and social data. Furthermore, there are major gaps in the coverage of the GDP data, and data on information on education, health is despairingly inadequate and out of date,” said Econsult managing director, Keith Jefferis.
According to the ODB 2015 report, Botswana is among the least open and transparent countries in a global index of government data, with the absence of a right to information exacerbating the situation. In the ODB, Botswana fell 23 places down the rankings from position 55 last year, to 78 this year.
Eighty-six countries were ranked in the ODB on how readily their governments make data available, including information on government budgets and spending, public sector contracts, company ownership, health services and education. Currently only the data published by Bank of Botswana (BoB) qualifies as truly ‘open’ data, as it is generally published quickly, and is in excel format.
“Apart from BoB, I think there is insufficient appreciation of the need for high quality, timely, open data. It is a false economy to provide insufficient resources for statistical surveys, data compilation, analysis and publication, as it results in poorer quality policy decisions that have long-term economic and social costs,” said Jefferis.
According to the ODB survey, Botswana scored poorly in two of the three categories used in measuring openness leading to the country’s overall score falling from 16.08 out of a 100 in 2013 to 8.39 last year.
The categories included, readiness, implementation and impact. On readiness, which identifies how far a country has in place the political, social and economic foundations for realising the potential benefits of open data, Botswana score improved from 12.16 in 2013 to 26.
The implementation category which identifies the extent to which government has published a range of key data sets to support innovation, accountability and more improved social well-being was largely responsible for Botswana’s tumble as the score fell from 21.57 out of a 100 in 2013, to seven in 2014.
The score for emerging impacts category, which identifies the extent to which open data has been seen to lead to positive political, social and environment, as well as economic change, was stagnant at zero in both years.
From the 86 surveyed countries, 22 of them were from Africa, with 16 of them like Uganda, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and Namibia, regarded as more open than Botswana. Only five African countries including Mali, Ethiopia, Cameroon and Sierra Leone were ranked below Botswana. According to the OBD, Africa’s top five open countries were South Africa, ranked at position 41, Tunisia (45) Rwanda (46), Ghana (46) and Kenya (49).