In democracy and disaster, emerging world embraces 'open data'

PROMISING INITIATIVE: 'Open data' — the trove of data-sets made publicly available by governments, organisations and businesses — isn't normally linked to high-wire politics, but just may have saved last month's Indonesian presidential elections from chaos. — Reuters

SINGAPORE: 'Open data' — the trove of data-sets made publicly available by governments, organisations and businesses — isn't normally linked to high-wire politics, but just may have saved last month's Indonesian presidential elections from chaos. 

Data is considered open when it's released for anyone to use and in a format that's easy for computers to read. The uses are largely commercial, such as the GPS data from US-owned satellites, but data can range from budget numbers and climate and health statistics to bus and rail timetables.