USAID's Open Data Policy: Leveraging Data Through Partnerships

USAID carries out U.S. foreign policy by promoting broad-scale human progress at the same time it expands stable, free societies, creates markets and trade partners, and fosters good will abroad. USAID is a data-driven and evidence-based agency with an abundant amount of data on international development programs from a diverse set of partners. The agency's mission is to partner to end extreme poverty and to promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing U.S. security and prosperity. To gather and open data from its expansive partnerships, USAID recognized the need for comprehensive changes to its business processes and technology infrastructure. USAID established its first-ever open data policy and the Development Data Library (DDL), creating a framework that enables its partners to share valuable data on international development. The DDL is USAID's public repository of Agency-funded, machine-readable data. USAID operating units and partners are required to submit international development data to the DDL at www.usaid.gov/data. The DDL content management system enables the agency to manage and publish data in a timely and secure manner. USAID has embedded data submission requirements into its awards, receiving a steady stream of data from its worldwide projects, which it can then release to the public. The agency's policy on Development Data (Automated Directives System 579) was released in October 2014, paving the way for USAID and its partners to draw from an increasingly robust, data-rich environment to create breakthrough insights and solutions in support of its mission. Key elements to USAID's open data policy include defining the agency's data governance structure, establishing the DDL as the Agency's repository of USAID-funded data, creating Data Stewards in every USAID operating unit, outlining requirements for USAID staff and implementing partners to submit data to the DDL, and defining standard data clearance processes. The policy also outlines special considerations for research data and defines roles and responsibilities for managing information and data. USAID has established formalized organizational authorities and strategic alignments throughout the agency, governing its open data efforts. The agency has also established a centralized repository for machine-readable data, which is key to publishing international development data as a global good. USAID's open data policy provides a framework for systematically collecting Agency-funded data in a central repository, structuring the data to ensure usability, and making the data public, while ensuring rigorous protections for privacy and security. The agency has also implemented various initiatives to support its open data policy, including the use of crowdsourcing events to gather data, hackathons to generate new insights, and public engagement to create a community of practice around agency data. USAID has also established a customer feedback process to provide stakeholders with a means to provide feedback on the agency's public data assets. The agency's open data policy has been successful in promoting the use of data in international development, with various success stories, including the use of open data to improve regional water management and the use of data to inform decision-making on disaster risk reduction in Nepal.