What is the aim and purpose of having NGOs in a country?

Are there any Open Data initiatives in the Arab world?

• I am interested to see if there has been any data collection sites put out there by an Arab initiative for the purpose of being used by startups, other initiatives or NGOs? The Wikipedia 'Open Data' page lists many countries that introduced Open Data online, however no Arab country is listed so far.

• Answer:

  Short Answer: No, there isn't. Long Answer: The question here really is what data you're looking for, and how really open it is. Let's take the UAE "Open" Data portal as an example. The data isn't really "open", you can access it all right, and publish it unedited, but they still have copyright over it, and you need their explicit permission before you use it. Again, let's take the UAE Data portal as an example for data. They really try to publish all of their studies online, which is very useful. But in what format is it? Is it workable? Is it presentable? Is it searchable? No, you get the data as a .doc and a .xls document. Consider me an Open Data purist, but for me it only qualifies as an Open Data initiative when the legislative side and the governmental workflow are geared towards producing truly Open Data that is free for all to use without restriction (other than attribution), and when the data is presented in a workable, searchable format. And that, we don't have yet.