USAID partners have soft-launched an innovative data portal in Myanmar. Open Development Myanmar is now available for the site’s partners and will aggregate and promote key development and environmental data about Myanmar, especially data with potential regional significance. The platform is the Myanmar sub-site of the major regional open data platform, Open Development Mekong, which gathers and contextualizes objective data on development trends in the Mekong region.
Thirty-three participants from 23 organizations in Myanmar (Civil Society Organizations, Media and International Agencies) gathered at the launch event on August 22, 2016 in Yangon. The soft launch of the platform was organized by Phandeeyar: Myanmar Innovation Lab, and aimed to introduce Open Development Myanmar and its features. The event also introduced Open Data concepts, presented cases of Open Data use, and provided opportunities for group discussion around the strengths and challenges of data-driven social movements in Myanmar and the roles of government, CSOs and media in the Open Data movement.
USAID-supported Mekong Partnership for the Environment (MPE), in partnership with Phandeeyar: Myanmar Innovation Lab support Open Development Myanmar. MPE also supports Open Development Mekong and other related country-level open data projects across the region.
The creation of Open Development Myanmar will strengthen the regional Mekong platform by enabling it to provide a more complete picture of the development issues pertaining to Myanmar and its neighbors.
Building a community of users and contributors will ensure that there is information on the platform and that this information is being used. Civil society, journalists and other stakeholders will be better connected and will have better information which will strengthen their capacity to engage with decision makers.
Through OpenDevelopmentMyanmar, the partnership between MPE and Phandeeyar is contributing to increasing public access to quality and timely information on the social and environmental costs and benefits of regional development projects in Myanmar and in the region.
The site will be fully available to the public soon, but for now, please visit the Open Development Myanmar data dashboard.
In the run-up to the site launch, Phandeeyar has also been training regional journalists on how to tell better data-driven stories on the social and environmental impacts of regional development projects.
This is an outreach announcement from the USAID–funded Mekong Partnership for the Environment (MPE), a key supporter of The Mekong Eye.
Lead Photo: Development professionals and media joined the launch of Open Development Myanmar in Yangon, Credit: Phandeeyar
