An archive of data science, data analytics, data engineering, machine learning, and artificial intelligence writing from the former Towards Data Science Medium publication.
Trust • Corruption • Transparency • DataViz • Journalism
I’m currently volunteering at a in Cali, Colombia. In the past two weeks I’ve had meetings with business owners, students, mayoral candidates, and government officials to dive deep into data.
I’ve learned some interesting things.
The city of Cali is one of a few places in Latin America that has really begun to push for open data. Two years ago, the Alcaldía (Town Hall) created the to aide in their efforts. As part of the ongoing (open data) movement here in Colombia, Cali has created an where the public can have easy access to data about their city.
Open data is important everywhere, but it is especially important in places like Colombia. When government data is revealed to the public, trust builds between citizens and the state. Transparency promotes integrity. In this case, integrity can help battle corrupt politicians and systems.
This has happened before: whistleblower(s) in Panama uncovered extreme government corruption with the help of a German newspaper that combed through 2.6 terabytes of confidential data. leaked information about dozens of countries and politically exposed many government officials responsible for illegal…
Published in TDS Archive
An archive of data science, data analytics, data engineering, machine learning, and artificial intelligence writing from the former Towards Data Science Medium publication.
Written by Jessie J. Smith
PhD Student, Researching and Creating Technical Solutions to Ethical Problems in Society. Talking about AI Ethics at