Friday, April 23, 2010

World Bank opens data to the public for open research


Press release this week from the World Bank Group states the World Bank will release free access to data. According to the article there is over 2,000 financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics available for free to research.

The World Bank has created a new website to access the free data at data.worldbank.org. Skimming over the Data Catalog shows a great amount of variety in the data sets. There are tables on Global Finance, Education Statistics, Poverty in developing countries, Gender, Business, Debt, Governance just to name a few.

This is very encouraging that the World Bank will offer data openly in this manner. Openness can be a great asset to the research community and help drive improvements and reform where needed. I definitely cheer the World Bank for allowing this data to become public.

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