The City of Cape Town approved the open data portal and policy on Thursday, it said.<\/p>\n
“As part of the City of Cape Town’s commitment to ensuring transparent, accountable and accessible government, council today approved the City’s Open Data Policy,” the city said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“In having done so, the City of Cape Town is embracing the use of open data to promote economic growth, development and inclusion.”<\/p>\n
The policy would allow residents to have access to economically relevant metro data which would help to drive personal agency, creativity and innovation.<\/p>\n
Mayoral committee member for corporate services Xanthea Limberg said the city generated a significant amount of data that was potentially useful to residents.<\/p>\n
“In the Information Age, making public sector data available allows us as government to tap into the creativity and innovative thinking of business and society,” she said.<\/p>\n
“This will help us build a better city and allow us to truly make progress possible together.”<\/p>\n
After an extensive internal and external public participation process, the city had decided to implement the portal within the next three months.<\/p>\n
“While we are committed to being open and transparent in this process, we need to be mindful of certain data that cannot be placed in the public domain,” Limberg said.<\/p>\n
“This will include copyrighted third party data; information that infringes on the privacy of individual citizens; information that the City cannot legally disclose and information that is deemed to be confidential.”<\/p>\n
An open data steering committee, which would include members of the public, would monitor the implementation of the policy as well as approve requests for additional data sets.<\/p>\n
Information that was determined to be inappropriate by the committee would not be made available on the portal.<\/p>\n
The city said the African National Congress in council voted against the measure.<\/p>\n
“Had this policy decision been up to the ANC, the City’s vast wealth of information would have remained inaccessible to the communities which need it most,” it said.<\/p>\n
BlackBerry Passport launched, confirmed for South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n