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The World Bank has opened its database for public use, the benefits are unquantifiable

Seated on his magnificent chair at the University of Benin, Professor Izua Obaze logs on to a website and delightfully smiles as the figures which he would have had to comb several sources to assemble are displayed in beautiful graphs and downloadable spreadsheets.

The ease with which the professor navigates the site gives the impression that he is not a first timer. On it, he is able to access data and content that helps him compare countries’ performances along indicators, analyze the effect of specific policies, and teach his students. This kind of access is what the World Bank’s data base website is giving researchers, academics and policy maker around the world.

Last year, the Bank announced that it is adopting an open access policy that requires its research and knowledge products and the associated datasets that underpin them to be deposited in an open access repository and that these works be released under a Creative Commons license. A Creative Commons license allows the distribution and free use of copyrighted works as long as the Bank is acknowledged.

Within the same period, the Bank launched a new version of its data query system, DataBank, thereby offering users a platform to create custom reports with tables, charts, or maps. These live reports can then be saved, shared between users, and embedded as widgets on websites or blogs. As a stup to further its openness, there were steps to make data base multilingual. It now offers a multilingual interface across the different databases and fully-translated data from the World Development Indicators.

The journey to really open up its content really began in the fall of 2009, when Robert Zoellick, former World Bank President gave a speech at Georgetown University in which he advocated for an environment of more openness at the World Bank.

According to Zoellick, “Knowledge is power…making our knowledge widely and readily available will empower others to come up with solutions to the world’s toughest problems. Our new Open Access policy is the natural evolution for a World Bank that is opening up more and more.” Indeed, this level of openness has made a huge impact already.

“It’s a miracle” Professor Izua says, a few years ago; it was a herculean task to get updated data for even countries as popular as Nigeria, not to talk of less popular countries”. We had to wait till the end of each year before getting new data” he added.

But the professor is not alone. In the past two years, the site has attracted some 19 million visits, with an average of 740,000 visits monthly. About 1.7 million file downloads have been recorded while the number of abstracts viewed is 1.5 million in the past year.

In July 2013 alone, there were 187,821 file downloads while 102,805 abstracts were viewed. In the first two weeks of this month, 66,722 data files have been downloaded while 45,251 abstracts have already been seen. But the beauty of what has happened does not only lies in the number of those that have used the site but on their locations.

Though the United States, dominates usage, countries like Vietnam, Rwanda, Afghanistan and Somalia have recorded a fair share of downloads. The United States accounts for 39% of all views and downloads over time, while Vietnam accounts for 6%, the second highest for any country in the world.

In Africa, Nigeria and South-Africa have the highest number of views and downloads; accounting for 1% of views and downloads respectively. Both countries are ahead of The Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland and a number of other countries in European.

The picture is clearer when the absolute numbers are considered. South Africa has recorded 32,150 views and downloads while Nigeria recorded 30,911 download. Other African countries recorded interesting number of views and downloads as well. Ethiopia, Egypt and Ghana have had 27 thousand, 14 thousand and 15 thousand downloads or abstract views respectively.  Rwanda recorded four thousand.

Whether in Europe, Africa or America, the primary driver of visits to the site has always been what it offers says Gloria Valencia, a reporter with SEMANA Magazine, Colombia. According to Gloria, “the World Bank provides good amount of information and updates; I frequently use their information for my job”.

“Using data provided by the World Bank has proven pivotal for my journalistic research. The amount of information, the validity and the ease of access have made the World Bank and its services a vital tool in my professional endeavors says Dimitris Pefanis, Financial Journalist, with Ta Nea Newspaper, Greece.

Of all the data available, the full dataset of World Development Indicators, in English and in Excel format, is the most popular download. Most users look for data on China, the United States, India, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Basically, the data repository has annual reports and independent evaluations; books; journals; serial publications; working papers and economic; sector work studies and raw data. It has over 8,000 time series indicators, 850 data-sets on government finances, data on over 11,000 Activities in Projects & Operations and 700 Surveys in Microdata. All of which can be accessed easily.

But it is not only professors, data journalists and policy makers that the project has affected. There have been moves to include those who would traditionally not use the material. According to Caroline Anstey, World Bank Managing Director, “Anyone with Internet access will have much greater access to the World Bank’s knowledge. And for those without internet access, there is now unlimited potential for intermediaries to reuse and repurpose content for new languages, platforms and media, further democratizing development by getting information into the hands of all those who may benefit from it.”

In the East Asia Pacific, workshops are being held to encourage more people to use data, research and information, provided by the Bank to tackle development challenges.

For the time being, the most popular indicators are GDP and its derivatives, other macroeconomic statistics such as foreign direct investment (FDI), imports and exports, measures of poverty and inequality (like Gini), and key social indicators such as life expectancy and population estimates.

Greater access to data and information is empowering people around the world. “The World Bank’s data leads policy makers to carry out panel data analysis which informs better national policies. In a nutshell, better informed decisions improves lives says Ikechukwu Kelekume, a lecturer at the Pan African University, Lagos. “But the bank has to do more since some data points are missing for some countries, it helps to have complete information all the time” he added when asked about what the bank can do to improve its offering.

Professor Izua says “ this is an asset which if the World Bank funds a hospital, it benefits mainly those in that locality but with this data initiative everyone around the world benefits while it also gives us the right insights to even determine where particular humanitarian projects should be sited”.

This is confirmed by Iryna Kuchma, Open Access Program Manager for EIFL, “the sharing of new knowledge can be vital – even life saving”. Kuchma pointed out the example of Malawi where promising research results related to AIDS in one hospital were not shared with colleagues in another. “With Open Access, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen,” she says.