This book explores the power of greater openness, accountability, and transparency in digital information and government data for the nations of Southeast Asia. The author demonstrates that, although the term “open data” seems to be self-explanatory, it involves an evolving ecosystem of complex domains. Through empirical case studies, this book explains how governments in the ASEAN may harvest the benefits of open data to maximize their productivity, efficiency and innovation. The book also investigates how increasing digital divides in the population, boundaries to civil society, and shortfalls in civil and political rights threaten to arrest open data in early development, which may hamper post-2015 development agendas in the region. With robust open data policies and clear roadmaps, member states of the ASEAN can harvest the promising opportunities of open data in their particular developmental, institutional and legal settings. Governments, policy makers, entrepreneurs and academics will gain a clearer understanding of the factors that enable open data from this timely research.

It’s been ten years since open data first broke onto the global stage. Over the past decade, thousands of programmes and projects around the world have worked to open data and use it to address a myriad of social and economic challenges. Meanwhile, issues related to data rights and privacy have moved to the centre of public and political discourse. As the open data movement enters a new phase in its evolution, shifting to target real-world problems and embed open data thinking into other existing or emerging communities of practice, big questions still remain. How will open data initiatives respond to new concerns about privacy, inclusion, and artificial intelligence? And what can we learn from the last decade in order to deliver impact where it is most needed? The State of Open Data brings together over 60 authors from around the world to address these questions and to take stock of the real progress made to date across sectors and around the world, uncovering the issues that will shape the future of open data in the years to come.

This book explores the reliability of official statistical data in the ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and the benefits of a better vocabulary to discuss the quality of publicly available data to address the needs of all users. It introduces a rigorous method to disaggregate and rate data quality into principal factors containing a total of ten dimensions, which serves as the basis for a discussion on the opportunities and challenges for data quality, capacity building programs and data policy in Southeast Asia. Tools to standardize and monitor statistical capacity and data quality are presented, as well as methods and data sources to analyse data quality. The book analyses data quality in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, before concluding with thoughts on Open Data and the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).

This report illustrates why Southeast Asian countries need big data for pandemic recovery to radically transform the delivery of key services such as health care, social welfare and protection, and education. The final of a four-part series, it looks at the impact of COVID-19 on Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand to determine how big data could be an invaluable tool to help governments analyze the challenges they face. It outlines policy reforms and recommendations to help capture the benefits of big data. These include drawing up digital road maps, improving technical infrastructure, increasing data quality, and ramping up training programs to create a skilled workforce to lead the digital transformation.

Government at a Glance Southeast Asia 2019 is the first edition in the Government at a Glance series for the region. It provides the latest available data on public administrations in the 10 ASEAN member countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam.

This Open and Connected Government Review of Thailand, the first of its kind, assesses Thailand’s efforts to build a government that is closer and more responsive to its citizens by using digitalisation, data and stakeholder participation to drive national development. In line with OECD good practices, the Recommendations of the Council on Digital Government Strategies (2014) and on Open Government (2017), and the OECD Digital Government Policy Framework, the review looks at institutional and legal governance, digital talent and skills, public service provision and the strategic use of technologies and data in the Thai government.

Skills are the key to shaping a better future, enabling countries and people to thrive in an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world. Megatrends such as globalisation, technological progress, demographic change, migration, and climate change, and most recently COVID-19, are reshaping work and society, generating a growing demand for higher levels and new sets of skills.

The book examines the state of Open Government in Asia. Drawing on thirteen country case studies and one regional study, it analyses the application of Freedom of Information methods and assesses their implications for democratic governance, particularly transparency, accountability, participation, collaboration, inclusive policymaking and technology. The book also considers the usefulness of open participatory platforms that enable citizens’ ‘right to information’, and help them monitor and scrutinize governmental activities to ensure accountability, integrity and the quality of democracy. Contributors to the volume evaluate Open Government and Freedom of Information arrangements and relevant issues in a particular country and adjudge their performance. The book will appeal to scholars and students of public policy, digital governance and technology.

Urbanization as a process is rife with inequality, in Southeast Asia as anywhere else, but resistance and contestation persist on the ground. In this element, the author sets out to achieve three goals: 1) to examine the political nature of urban development; 2) to scrutinize the implications of power inequality in urban development discussions; and 3) to highlight topical and methodological contributions to urban studies from Southeast Asia. The key to a robust understanding is groundedness: knowledge about the everyday realities of urban life that are hard to see on the surface but dominate how the city functions, with particular attention to human agency and the political life of marginalized groups. Ignoring politics in research on urbanization essentially perpetuates the power inequities in urban development; this element thus focuses not just on Southeast Asian cities and urbanization per se, but also on critical perspectives on patterns and processes in their development.

The Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India is a bi-annual publication on regional economic growth, development and regional integration in Emerging Asia. It focuses on the economic conditions of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries: Brunei Darussalam ...