Open data isn’t just in English — why should open data policy be?

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Working every day on open data policies in American cities as part of the What Works Cities initiative, we at Sunlight’s local team can sometimes think we have open data policy figured out. Recently, we even wrote a model executive order for city halls and other governments to use as an “open data firestarter” — a starting point for community discussion about open data practices — and crowdsourced feedback on that that policy language to you, the open government community.

The resulting document, it is hoped, will serve as a helpful resource for any city hall or other government agency that is thinking about adopting an open data policy. But as our international policy team has suggested, in order for the document to truly serve any government agency, it must exist as more than just an English-language document.

That’s why we are proud to announce that Sunlight’s draft open data policy is now available in Spanish, thanks to a translation by our international policy intern, Isabel Vazquez.

View the model executive order in a separate window here.
Open data isn’t just happening in western, English-speaking countries — it’s happening all over the globe, including in Latin America, where cities like Buenos Aires have taken a leading role in proactively releasing public information online. Certainly any policy will need to be catered to the specific cultural and legal context in which it is adopted, but we hope that this newly translated draft executive order will complement our already translated open data policy guidelines to have a meaningful impact on efforts to promote open data for transparency and accountability in the Spanish-speaking world.