Standard Bank supports Open Dataton Maputo 2017
Open data business value” and “Use of statistics for open data analysis” were the two topics of the workshop held on Saturday, September 9, in Maputo, under the Open Dataton Maputo 2017 initiative.
The event, which counted with the participation of two speakers from Standard Bank, aimed to equip participants with tools on how to turn open data into business, and which statistical techniques should be exploited to ensure careful management of data.
As stated by Edilson Ngulele, member of the Open Dataton Maputo 2017 organization, this workshop is a result of the launch of this initiative by Maputo City Council-CMM, on August 9 in the Standard Bank Incubator.
“After the opening, many participants questioned how they could capitalize and make open data profitable. They expressed interest in knowing what can be done with them” said Edilson, stating that it were those issues that motivated the organization of Open Dataton Maputo 2017 to schedule a series of workshops.
The speaker of the theme “Open data business value”, Marcel Saraiva, spoke, moments after the workshop, about the need of national entities, such as CMM, to inform citizens about their decisions, especially through the use of data open.
In this context, Marcel Saraiva said that in light of this type of initiative, “the first question that a programmer usually asks is how to use the open data to build a new business or to improve
the existing one”.
“What we did during this workshop was, using basic tools, share business concepts with future entrepreneurs in the technology sector”, said Marcel Saraiva, adding that the use of open data is useful for the country’s development.
Elísio Mabasso, speaker of the theme “Use of statistics for open data analysis”, defended, in turn, the need to use statistics for the analysis of open data by programmers.
To this end, during his presentation, he provided to the participants the tools and techniques needed to develop technology-based solutions for the CMM data-opening program.
It should be noted that, in addition to this event, the organizers of Open Dataton Maputo 2017 have scheduled three more workshops for the next few days, with the following themes: “Data Collection using Smartphone”, “CMM Data Management”, and “Analysis and Visualization of Geo-referenced Data”.
It is important to highlight that Open Dataton Maputo 2017 is a CMM initiative, which is financed by the World Bank and supported by other partners, including Standard Bank, which consists of the opening of data by the city council of the country’s capital and its use through technological solutions.
It is a project that aims to improve transparency in municipal management, quality of life of citizens and foster quality of services provided by the city council to the residents of this city.