My name is Wisdom Donkor, i am from Ghana and an engineer by profession with specialization in E-government Networks and Infrastructure, Internet Governance, Open Government Data Policies platforms and community development, Geospatial technology, Software Engineering, Databases, Human Resource Planning and Development and Open Source Technology. I have organize and facilitated many workshops, forums, and main sessions within IGF and outside of IGF. I have also facilitated many SDG data road maps forums in Ghana and few other parts of Africa. I work for government and also i also Co-Founded African Open Data and Internet Research Foundation (AFRIODIRF). I have been an ICANN Fellow and Coach Since ICANN 49 and also a member of NCSG, NCUC and AFRALO and also belong to few of the working groups within ICANN. I am commenting in my individual capacity. Asset and value potentials of data are widely recognized at all levels. Data collected or developed through public investments, when made publicly available and maintained over time, their potential value could be more fully realized. There has been an increasing demand by the community, that such updated data collected should be made more readily available to all, for enabling rational debate, increase transparency better decision making and use in meeting civil society and needs. Efficient sharing of data among data owners and inter-and-intra agencies along with data standards and interoperable systems is the need of the hour. Hence, there is the need to formulate a policy on ICANN data Sharing and Accessibility which could provide an enabling provision and platform for proactive and open access to the data generated through ICANN funds available with various communities. ICANN OPEN DATA POLICY should aims at providing an enabling provision and platform for proactive and open access to the data generated by various communities within ICANN. The objective of this policy is to facilitate access to ICANN owned shareable data (along with its usage information) in machine readable form globally in a periodically updatable manner, within the framework of various related policies, acts and rules of open data accepted policy, thereby permitting a wider accessibility and usage by the public. Different types of datasets generated both in geospatial and non-spatial form by communities within ICANN are supposed to be classified as shareable data and nonshareable data. Data management should encompass the systems and processes that ensure data integrity, data storage and security, including metadata, data security and access registers. The principles on which ICANN data sharing and accessibility should be based should include: Openness, Flexibility, Transparency, Quality, Security and Machinereadable. *Identification of Resources (Datasets/Apps) and their organization under Catalogs* As per open data policy, I expect ICANN communities to prepare it’s Negative List. The datasets which are confidential in nature and are in the interest of the global security is not opening to the public would fall into the negative list. However, all other datasets which do not fall under this negative list would be in the Open List. These datasets would need to be prioritized into high value datasets and non-high value datasets. The data which are contributed to the ICANN OPEN DATA INITIATIVE Platform have to be in the specified open data format only. The data have to be internally processed to ensure that the quality standard is met i.e. accuracy, free from any sort of legal issues, privacy of an individual is maintained and does not compromise with any national authority. While prioritizing the release of datasets, one should try to publish as many high value datasets. Grouping of Related Resources (Datasets/Apps) should be planned and are to be organized under Catalogs. That way assessing becomes more easier. I expect that, each communities within ICANN or ICANN data controllers sshould have its own criterion of high value and low value datasets, generally High value data are governed by following Principles *Completeness * 2. Primary 3. Timeliness 4. Ease of Physical and Electronic Access 5. Machine readability 6. Non-discrimination 7. Use of Commonly Owned Standards 8. Licensing 9. Permanence 10. Usage Costs *Data Formats* I will recommend that data has to be published in open format. It should be machine readable. Though there are many formats suitable to different category of data. Based on current analysis of data formats prevalent in Government it is proposed that data should be published in any of the following formats: · CSV (Comma separated Values) · XLS (spread sheet- Excel) · ODS (Open Document Formats for Spreadsheet) · XML (Extensive Markup Language) · RDF (Resources Description Framework) · KML (Keyhole Markup Language used for Maps) · GML (Geography Markup Language) · RSS/ATOM (Fast changing data e.g. hourly/daily) Rate of all data sets should meet the Tim Berners-Lee 5 star data clasification. <https://www.google.com/search?q=tim+berners+lee+5+stars+open+data&source=lnm...> *he ICANN open data initiative platform* ICANN Open Data Initiative Platform should be setup with the primary purpose to collate access to ICANN Resources (datasets/apps) under Catalogs, published by different ICANN communities or entities in open format. It also provides a search & discovery mechanism for instant access to desired datasets. The Platform should also have a rich mechanism for public engagement. Besides enabling public to express their need for specific resource (datasets or apps) or API, it also should allow pubic rate the quality of datasets; seek clarification or information from respective Data Officer or data controller. The platform should have a strong backend data management system that can be used by Communities or entities within ICANN to publish their datasets through a predefined workflow. The platform should be integrated with visualization engine to allow the creation and viewing of visualization of the various datasets. The platform should have a dashboard to see the current status on datasets, visualizations, usage Metrics or analytics as well as feedback and queries from the public. ICANN should encourage the integration of Communities component of the platform which that will help facilitates the forming of communities around published ICANN datasets. Example or could be app developers’ community etc. This will give first hand input to development community for building new components, apps for the various ICANN communities for effective ICANN engagement. The key features to consider are listed below: · Open Source Driven – Developed completely using Open Source Stack, facilitating cost saving in terms of software and licenses and also provisioning community participation in terms of further development of product with modules of data visualization, consumption, APIs to access datasets etc. · Metadata – Resources (Datasets/Apps) shoulb be published along with standard metadata along with controlled vocabularies on various communities, jurisdictions, dataset types, access mode etc. Besides facilitating easy access to datasets, this should be extremely useful in the future for integration of data catalogs. · Social Media Connect–IT should support wider reach and dissemination of datasets, anyone can share the information about any dataset published on the platform with his/her social media pages on a press of a click. · Public Engagement – The Platform should have a strong component of public Engagement. Public can express their views as well as rate the datasets w.r.t three aspects (Quality, Accessibility and Usability) on the scale of 5. They can also embed the Resources (Datasets/Apps) in their blogs or web sites. Facility to contact the Data Officers should also be made available on the Platform. · Community Collaboration – Public with specific interest can build communities and discuss online. ICANN open data policy and Platform should facilitate communities to open up online forums, blogs and discussions around various datasets, apps available on the platform. It also should provides a platform to express and discuss the kind of Datasets, APPs & APIs they would like to have. It should also give input to communities or entities as what kind of datasets is more useful and accordingly prioritize the release of those datasets. *Metadata Elements for Catalogs/Resources and their Description* 1. *Catalog Title (Required):* The title of the dataset is very important aspect of the dataset *Description (Required):* Provide a detailed description of the catalog e.g., an abstract determining the nature and purpose of the catalog. *Keywords (Required):* It is a list of terms, separated by commas, describing and indicating at the content of the catalog. Example: rainfall, weather, monthly statistics. *Group Name:* This should be an optional field to provide a Group Name to multiple catalogs in order to show that they may be presented as a group or a set. *Community name (Required):* Choose the Communities/entities those most closely appleis to your catalog. *Asset Jurisdiction (Required):* This is a required field to identify the exact location or area to which the catalog and resources (dataset/apps) caters to viz. entire country, state/province, district, city, etc. *2. ** Resources (Datasets/Apps)* *Category (Required):* Choose from the drop down options. Is it a Dataset or an Application. *Title (Required):* A unique name of the resource etc. *Access Method (Required):* This could be “Upload a Dataset” or “Single Click Link to Dataset”. *Reference URLs:* This could include description to the study design, instrumentation, implementation, limitations, and appropriate use of the dataset or tool. In the case of multiple documents or URLs, please delimit with commas or enter in separate lines. * If Resource Category is Dataset *Frequency (Required):* This should mentions the time interval over which the dataset is published on the ICANN Open Data Platform on a regular interval (one-time, annual, hourly, etc.). *Granularity of Data:* This should mentions the time interval over which the data inside the dataset is collected/ updated on a regular basis (one-time, annual, hourly, etc.) Access Type: This should mentions the type of access viz. Open, Priced, Registered Access or Restricted Access. ** If Resource Category is App * *App Type (Required):* This should mention the type of App being contributed viz. Web App, Web Service, Mobile App, Web Map Service, RSS, APIs etc. *Datasets Used:* Datasets used for making this app. *Language:* Language used for app *Date Released:* Should mention the release date of the Dataset/App. *Note:* Should capture any information the contributor/controller wishes to provide to the data consumer or about the resource. ICANN OPEN DATA Policy Compliance: This field should indicate if this dataset is in conformity with the with the ICANN Open Data Sharing and Access Policy. *Capacity Building* Finally ICANN should make it possible to build the capacity of the data controllers with the ICANN communities. I will recommend two types of training modules both as offsite and onsite models should be envisaged. Each module would be for the duration of 2-3 days and should be within ICANN events. The modules would be: · *Awareness and Sensitization Module* – for Data Officer or Controlers & other senior officers of the of the Communities · *Data Contribution Module* – hands-on training for contributing datasets to the ICANN Open Data Initiative Platform, provide advisory on conversion of data to digital format to Data Contributors and Members of ICANN Communities. I have work with the US government open data team, world bank open data team, Africa Open data collaborative, Open Data Institute, Open Data Canada, Global Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition, India Open Data team, World Wide Web Foundation. I will be more than happy to contribute my time to this laudable initiative anytime any day. Thank you, *WISDOM DONKOR (S/N Eng.)* *Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation (Co-Founder)* E-government, Internet Governance & Open Government Data and platforms Specialist ICANN Fellow / UN IGF MAG Member, ISOC Member, Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) Member, Diplo Foundation Member, OGP Open Data WG Member, GODAN Member. National SDG's data Roadmaps Advisory Board Member, Ghana Ghana Energy Data Task-force Member Ghana OGP Advisory Committee Member Email: wisdom.dk@gmail.com Skype: wisdom_dk facebook: Kwasi Wisdom Linkdin: Kwasi Wisdom