Uses of open data in higher education governance

There has been phenomenal growth in government data on the internet, with an estimated more than a million datasets posted online by governments. The boom has major implications for university governance – but different types of data have varying degrees of impact on diverse levels of governance. The open data boom – driven by advocacy groups, and public funding agencies, as well as hackers and developers – opens up opportunities for improving the transparency of higher education governance and providing evidence to inform policy, says Francois van Schalkwyk, a researcher at the Centre for Higher Education Transformation, or CHET, in Cape Town. Van Schalkwyk, in a presentation drawing on in-progress research into open data usage in South African higher education governance governance, was speaking at a Carnegie Corporation of New York-sponsored convening in Nairobi on “Higher Education Policy, Leadership and Governance”, before an audience of African vice-chancellors, heads of commissions and think-tanks. (See the Open Data in Developing Countries Project website.) More...