Internet Society Hong Kong’s 2nd “Hong Kong Open Data Index” reveals slight improvements on the city’s open data development
Four recommendations from ISOC HK, calling for a data governance committee and enhancement in data literacy & skills education

24th March 2022, Hong Kong -- Internet Society Hong Kong (ISOC HK) launched the new “Hong Kong Open Data Index (HKODI) 2021/22 Assessment Report” online, the organization's 2nd assessment on the city’s open data development. Report shows a slight improvement on the overall score. This time, ISOC HK also partners with Global Data Barometer (GDB), a new index covering 109 jurisdictions around the world, expanding its assessment scope from open data to a broader topic - data governance. The report has incorporated results on Hong Kong from this new global study which will be officially launched in late April.

Findings: Slight improvement on overall score; Transport and Weather data recorded substantial advancements, but Copyright licences, metadata, API and historical records remain major weaknesses

HKODI 2021/22 has witnessed a slight improvement of 2.5 points on the overall score of the city’s public data openness, which increased from last year’s 69.9 to 72.4 this year.

The most significant growths are found in the performance of Transport and Weather data. The score of the transport data category has increased by 10%, as more public transport service operators, such as KMB and green minibus, have joined the government initiative to release estimated time of arrival (ETA) data on the Public Service Information (PSI) portal. This is another breakthrough after the release of real-time arrival data of NWFB and Citybus, New Lantau Bus, and some MTR routes in 2019. The Climate & Weather data category has risen by 16%, as the Hong Kong Observatory has been releasing more real-time datasets including temperature and wind on the PSI portal in the past two years. “It is also worth mentioning that the data sets released by the government's PSI portal have increased significantly in the past two years, and its score has increased by 11%. The score difference between PSI portal and other general government websites has widened from 2.1 to 7.9 points, demonstrating the advantages of a designated open data platform.” mentioned researcher of HKODI, Benjamin Zhou.  While indicators of bulk download, API, granularity (primary) and historical records (permanent) have each increased for slightly more than 5%.

Despite the improvements, some gaps initially found in the 2019/20 assessment still remain. The lowest-scored five categories of datasets are the same: Business registration, Land, Justice & Security, Housing and Government operations. While copyright licences, metadata, Application Programming Interface (API) and historical records (permanent) are still the worst performing indicators.  For instance, copyright licenses are inconsistent across datasets and platforms, metadata for datasets are inadequate, historical records of published datasets are not well documented or disorganized in their presentation.

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Global Data Barometer (GDB) on Hong Kong: HK data governance policies are insufficient, unlikely to realize data’s public and commercial value effectively, safely and reliably

Partnering with Global Data Barometer (GDB), the new HKODI report incorporates results on Hong Kong from this new global study. GDB assesses beyond open data and it is organized around four pillars: data governance, capability, availability and use & impact. “The GDB has been designed to fill the critical knowledge gap on how data policies and practices are unfolding in different sectors, regions and countries around the world,” remarked Silvana Fumega, Director of GDB, in a pre-recorded speech shown during the press conference. The final complete result of GDB is to be launched in late April 2022.

From GDB’s research, it shows that governance is the weakest pillar for Hong Kong as it only secures a medium in GDB’s global ranking; while for the other three pillars: ability, availability, and use, Hong Kong are ranked relatively high globally, and its overall score is at an upper-middle level compared to other countries and regions. The governance module includes indicators of data protection, open data policy, data sharing frameworks, data management and accessibility. Hong Kong scores high in data protection scores for having Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance in place; however scores for all other indicators are far from ideal, policies regarding data sharing and data management were found to be barely publicly available. “We are glad to see improvements on Hong Kong’s data openness and the benefits it brought to our society,” said Ben Cheng, Director of ISOC HK, “However, Hong Kong open data governance and policies remains rudimentary, the government should employ a holistic approach in developing an overarching data governance framework to unlock more potentials”.

The report discovers that many advanced economies have successively launched all-rounded data governance strategies in recent years. New Zealand's "Government Data Strategy and Roadmap" and the UK's "National Data Strategy" are relatively mature, while Singapore is actively planning its own. In the past year, cities and provinces in mainland China also successively introduced data-related regulations, for example, Shenzhen passed the country's first comprehensive local data regulation in 2021, while Shanghai has also adopted similar legislation.

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FOUR recommendations for the government: Establish a high level committee to steer data governance, make a clear vision and goals for data governance, build up a data ecosystem that encourages stakeholder and public engagement & enhance education on data literacy and skills

Better planning and coordination are needed to unlock the benefits of data values while achieving the “data for good” vision. ISOC HK recommends the Hong Kong government to establish a high-level committee for better coordination and leadership. According to ISOC HK, a holistic approach for data governance, which usually requires a high-level leadership and governance structure comprising policy-makers and experts, should be employed. This committee should have a mandate and resources to tackle institutional obstacles and with the vision and networks to bring in new initiatives.

Secondly, ISOC HK urges the government to make a clear vision and goals for data governance, including the priority of values to achieve and datasets to open or share, legislations, administrative adjustment, data infrastructure, standards and rules. In addition, the government could set up a data officer for each department to coordinate the internal and interdepartmental data management. “The government should set up a series of key performance indicators (KPI) to demonstrate its commitment and make sure that each department is putting open data into practices”, said Ho Wa Wong, Convener of ISOC HK’s Open Data Committee, “Singapore's Digital Government Blueprint is a good example that our government can learn from. It has explicitly mentioned several data analytics related KPIs such as numbers of high impact data analytics projects and setting up an indicator to make sure core data being machine readable data and transmissible through API”.

Thirdly, ISOC HK recommends the government to build up a data ecosystem that encourages stakeholder and public engagement. For example, some consumer behaviour data, such as those collected by Octopus and online shopping platforms, are of public interest. The government could be an enabler to facilitate the industry building a trustworthy data sharing platform.The public should also be engaged on data demand and privacy issues, a more transparent consultation platform should be set up.

Last but not least, ISOC HK stresses on the importance of data literacy. Data literacy involves understanding the meaning of data, and there are a wider range of skills including using data to solve problems and communicate and knowledge of data laws and ethics, which are different from the current STEM. Given the vast scope of data literacy education, ISOC HK suggests the government to put forward a data literacy enhancement policy targeting two main groups of audience: 1) general public via school, university and vocational education; and 2) civil servants to create a culture of valuing data in the public sector.

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