Open Data Index 2015:  “Civil Society Audit of the state of Open Data – The Global Open Data Index is an annual effort to measure the state of open government data around the world. The crowd sourced survey is designed to assess the openness of specific government datasets according to the Open Definition. Through this initiative we want to provide a civil society audit of how governments actually publish data – with input and review from citizens and organisations around the world. The unique benefits of the Open Data Index include: – – Results from a citizen’s perspective and not simply reliant on government claims of openness. – A simple group of datasets that offer powerful insights into key government functions and performance, and that can be compared consistently across countries. – Pioneering methods, with topical experts reviewing global submissions for each dataset to ensure reliability. – An education and engagement tool for citizens to learn about open data, the state of government data in their own country, and how they can best make use of it. – Allows us to establish a baseline and track changes and trends in the open data world over time as the field evolves. Open data measurement is still new and experimental field. The Global Open Data Index, as well makes changes each year in order to improve the quality of the final benchmarking. This year, after multiple public consultations, we made three major changes to the Global Open Data Index – – We revised the set of datasets that we are evaluating and improved the datasets definitions to allow better consistency of the index. – We worked with regional index coordinators to reach more people and solicit more entries to the index. – We changed the review process from peer review to thematic review to allow better accuracy and reliability of the results. (read more about these changes in our methodology section). We believe that with these changes we can create a better dialogue between government and civil society around open data. This year, we have 122 countries in the sample (up from 97 countries in 2014). You can find the full geographical data in the places page, or see our insights from the index results. For more information on the Open Data Index, you may contact the team at: [email protected] or post a query on the Open Data Index forum“