Access to information, and the Data Journalism movement in Latin America

Hamzat Lawal May 22, 2016 0

Sao Paulo, with the 3rd-greatest concentration of buildings in the world, after New York and Hong Kong hosted the biggest conference on data journalism on May 21, 2016 in Brazil. The conference organized by Escola de dados, and NIC.br  had participants from every continent of the world, thus giving a larger context of how “informediaries” are leveraging on data in writing compelling stories.

With opening remarks by Natalia Mazotte of Escola de dados, the event was kick started by thought provoking insights by panelists on how access to information has not been upheld by government institutions. “There is a particular trend in Latin America, whereby government announces to the world that they have an open data portal, however if you check the portal, you will find it was updated last a long time ago” explained Juan Manuel of SocialTIC. But isn’t this another way of “information – washing” as journalist will be deprived of the information needed? “Journalist should not wait till governments make information public, and also do not rely on the Freedom of Information Act before you start investigating, and that is why we are journalist” Manuel further said.

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Natalia Mazotte of Escola da Dados giving opening remarks

Although this was tagged a conference, it turned out to be a series of workshops in one. I love it! Rather than the conference style gathering of people, there were hands-on knowledge exchange sessions that can help participants leapfrog from being a traditional journalist to a data journalist. Sessions that followed the tea break included data analysis for journalist facilitated by Marco Tulio of the Open Knowledge International, which put journalist through how you can use rate, percentages, mode, mean and medium to tell compelling stories and how you can secure yourself digitally as a journalist facilitated by Vadym Hudyma

The data are always out there for journalist, find them, as they are locked in excel spreadsheets, PDFs etc. So Allen Johnson wanted to publish a story on how footballers and technical advisers were earning big in Europe, he found a spreadsheet from France Football Magazine, that has the 2014 salaries of football players and their technical advisers. Voila! It was also in excel, and not PDF (so he won’t be looking for Tabula or online2pdf to convert it). All he did was to use the calculation functions to find the highest paid player, convert the currency to his local currency, and find the average amount that was paid a player. Certainly, you can hand out three different stories to your editor with this table alone, and don’t forget this makes the rule of thumb easier – Start with data and end with a story.

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Marco Tulio taking the session on Data Analysis for Journalist

“I have signed up on so many website, and while doing that I use the date of which I first joined in as my password” said Cruz Delirios, “what? That can be dangerous, and I think you should see me after this digital security for journalist session, we need to do a one on one” said Vadym who was totally stricken by Cruz utterance. As journalist, and also a data journalist, hold on a second, a data journalist, also is an investigative journalist who uses data to trail his story, do let me know by commenting below, if you have other insights.

As anyone described above, you should, No! We must use passwords that are not in the dictionary as passwords; encrypt your hard drives, there are now cheaper ways to encrypt; use longer alphanumeric (combination of alphabets and numbers) passwords, so if you are using a 7 digit password, it will take up to 9.2 days, and on average 4.6 days to crack, while if you password is 12 – digit, it will take up to 2,536 years, and on average 1,268 years to crack; cultivate the habit of putting password on your start up screen (either mobile or laptop), I just did! Stop using finger patterns to unlock your screens, patterns are mostly same for everyone; if possible, do not use fingerprints, use PIN and passphrases. Don’t just get an antivirus, always update them.

Furthermore, if you have several passwords to keep, do not save them on your laptop, or write them on your work desk, or in a piece of paper, you can save them at lastpass.com Did you just say why should a newsroom be a target? Perhaps you should read how Newsweek was compromised and how much it cost them to gain back people’s trust, if they ever! Aside this digital attacks, a journalist can be targeted for  physical threats which can be confiscation of your laptop’s, video or digital camera, midget or your backpack, as such you need to always have a backup of your hard drive (probably in the cloud); always copy out data on your video or digital camera immediately after use; and always watch out for someone behind your shoulder – you can be trailed!

You might think you will be covered by human rights law as it regards information, or as a whistle blower, but that is not the case. Even in Australia,with a freedom rating of one, meaning the best in the world, their Border Force Act of last year stated that any disclosure by any current former worker of “protected information” is punishable by up to two years in Prison which led us to the discussion or privacy and transparency at the panel that followed the data literacy workshops that took place after lunch.

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Daniel Brammati sharing his work on using data to find Maria Magdalena Tiul Ac

Is Panama Papers or Wikileaks the kind of journalism we should entrench? Shouldn’t journalist consider the motives behind finding this set of data referred to as leaks before publishing them? Fernanda Becker of Intergentes, and Joana Veron of Coding Rights says yes to the latter , and No to the first. Both largely emphasised that journalist should consider that they do not have rights that can protect them, while Vadym Hudyma reiterated the importance of engaging governments at the legislative level, in such a way that they are not allowed to pass bills that encourage their own privacy.

Absolutely, the quest for data journalism is increasing, and great works other than leaks are ongoing, as we saw in the works of Antonio Cucho who worked on tracking electoral data Ojo Publico in Peru; Daniel Villatoro mapping Data in Central America through Plaza Public;Luisa Brito engaging on Data Journalism on TV Globo in Brazil; Daniel Bramatti, using death data to find Maria Magdalena Tiul Ac who has been missing for over 1 year, 1 month and 5 days in Guatemala, and Daniela Flower’s work on Mapping LGBT fobia in Brazil on Huffpost Brazil

How CODE Grew to Become a Voice for Local Communities

codepress April 20, 2016 2

This post was written by Tyo Faeren Jennifer, a Mass Communication Student of the Benue State University, during her Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) with CODE  

Connected Development [CODE] a non-governmental organization [NGO], headquartered in Abuja and formed in 2010, has empowered 9 local communities in Africa through its Transparency and Accountability initiative. And has mobilized 30 million Nigerians and 1 million citizens in 7 other West African countries to take action around Environmental Sustainability in Nigeria.

Through its Follow The Money project that advocates, visualize and track funds meant for local communities, it has helped in providing water to the 15, 000 inhabitants in Kadandani, Kano; Bachaka, Kebbi; and Jeke in Jigawa by tracking and advocating for the 10 billion Naira meant for the Great Green Wall project [GGW].

Follow The Money came to limelight by providing access to healthcare for 1,500 lead poisoned children, and providing hostel for 440 pupils, and providing an overhead tank for 200 pupils in government school in Zamfara State, communities.

At one of its traditional stakeholders meeting on making sure water is provided in three villages – Kadandani, Jeke and Bachaka, the representative from the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Mr. S.M.Babarinde said, “Follow The Money is the most objective transparency and accountability initiative I have followed over 2 years now on radio, TV and their online platforms.”

The World Wide Fund [WWF] ‘s Earth Hour , now coordinated by Connected Development [CODE] and the Young Volunteers for Environment, since 2010 has united the people of Nigeria and other Seven countries in West Africa by mobilizing millions of individuals, organizations and government to take action for the environment.  

It’s OpenDataParty [ODP] makes and spread open data. The ODP is where participants from every part of the country come together to learn and share data skills. It’s ODP has taught 430 Nigerians with hands on workshops, which included-Data Analysis using Google Spreadsheet and Microsoft Excel; Data Scraping using Tabula and Import.io; Visualizing data using Maps with CartoDB and Open Street Maps; Visualizing data using Info.gram

“I have learnt where to get budget for environment especially ones related to my state, and how I can analyze it using Excel, I never knew this before coming” said Erdoo Anango of Kwasedoo Foundation International from Benue state.

It’s Sustainaware  project,  an initiative that aims to improve Youth Knowledge, Interest and Leadership on Environmental Health, Green Economy and Social-Environmental Entrepreneurship), initiated by CODE’s European partners in 2014 was  and supported by the European Union connects eight partner countries (Nigeria, U.S.A, India, Slovenia, Argentina, Hungary, Croatia, and Liechtenstein), and now added Zambia and Somalia, as implementing countries of Sustainaware in 2016

CODE seeks global partners committed to a sustainable future and to empowering marginalized communities to make a difference by creating the missing feedback loop between the government and the people by amplifying the voice of these lurked away. Of course, these feat would not have been achieved if not for support from Indigo Trust, Omidyar Network, Heinrich Boell Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation, Code For Africa, European Union and the thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook.

How Data Journalism Might Halt Feeding Peanuts to Journalists

Oludotun Babayemi February 20, 2016 0

On the week of 8 – 12th and 15 – 19th in February 2016 in Abuja, I facilitated training on tracking government spending with 16 producers of popular current affairs programmes and 16 news editors from the broadcast media in a BBC Media Action supported capacity building for journalists. Nothing can be more exciting than igniting journalists passion to innovate their newsrooms, and also participating at this training were facilitators from BudgIT (One of the leading organizations using technology to hold government accountable) and Premium Times (An online media organization disrupting the media terrain in Nigeria).

 

No doubt, journalism is one of the profession that has young and vibrate women, and as confirmed the participants had a balance of gender, unlike other training have facilitated, that gender is always skewed towards the male. 60% of the participants had contact with the computer in the middle of the last decade, at the advent of Facebook, and just at the exit of excite.com and inbox.com, Certainly, our participants this time should be conversant with the new technologies. Were they? I will say yes, at least they are familiar with their newsroom consoles, Twitter and Facebook.

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Cross section of participants at one of the training batch

 

Other than their console, they were exposed to data journalism tools that can be leveraged on in scraping government budget data, from the conversion of PDFs to Excel using www.online2pdf.com ,Tabula and WebScraper. But one thing that remains clear is that many times, we see the budget data, but actually do not know when the money on the budget will be spent. So, what does a journalist do in such case? I asked, and most knew they are always the first to know, as a press release is always issued to media houses, when these funds are approved or released. So journalist can scrape the press release and find useful information for tracking government expenditure, and thus making a story out of it. Another useful tool is Google Alerts which sends instant email of keywords that has earlier been subscribed to by the journalist.

 

We all agreed, that there is always a time difference between approval and release of funds, as such the time lag keeps the journalist inquiring, and keeping the story alive. So many at the training asked, what funds do we have to keep such stories alive, in a program or in the news? In the last six months, I have trained 62 journalists from the print media, and broadcast, the same question keep re-occurring, and this time, I was almost told to change the training topic to how to write funding proposals for data journalism. Perhaps, this can stop the popular “Kwa” mentalism!

 

Oludotun Babayemi, a School of Data Fellow takes journalist through overcoming challenges in the industry

Oludotun Babayemi, a School of Data Fellow takes journalist through overcoming challenges in the industry

As more of the traditional broadcasters are now moving into data journalism, many are still incapacitated due to media ownership, availability of knowledge resources, skill gaps and a peer review center where knowledge can be exchanged on the go. Each of these training always draw us up to the solution, perhaps, as Connected Development [CODE] is working on its citizen lab for activists and journalists, it will be better placed to tackle some of this challenges.

 

As someone who has a background in Information Management, I always appreciate the media, and those that stand by the consoles to inform Africa, and through this we believe the console can turn around, educate, inform and impact our society. With more data been churned out everyday, and more funding in the direction of data journalism, I look forward to taking another set of interaction on data journalism with 24 news editors from Abuja, Lagos, Enugu, Adamawa, Kaduna and Plateau, in April, let’s keep the consoles jingling!  

The #OpenDataParty : Enhancing Data Literacy in Nigeria

codepress December 16, 2015 0

“I felt excited like a child learning new stuffs I never knew before. It was hands on learning. Great experience. I’ll attend open data events over in the future.” – Oluwaseyi Akinrotimi, Scientific Officer, Ondo State Ministry of Health

“This was quite a revealing session as  I have had some table data which is in PDF format that I can now extract as Excel spreadsheets, I was used to typing the data out into Excel, this data scraping session is really helpful for me” – Mamman Umar

“I never knew all these characters could be used in depicting data in 10 minutes, that is what I just learnt, and that has made my day” exclaimed Desmond Chieshe of ISPHS Abuja

“This event was very interactive and educative in terms of knowledge acquisition on tools for data journalism. I have started using some of the tools taught.” – Jamiu Akangbe, African Resourceful Leaders Foundation, Team Leader

 

[View the 646 Photos and 15 Videos from this event here]

Connected Development [CODE]’s last event of every year is always a bar camp tagged “the Open Data Party (ODP) where participants from every part of the country come together to learn and share data skills. This year, the ODP was taken to the ancient Benin City, led by our School of Data Fellow and the team lead at Sabi Hub – Nkechi Okwuone, and Friday, December 11 and Saturday, December 12 in 2015 welcomed 117 social workers, civil servants, journalists, academics and other data enthusiast to the Law Lecture Theater Annexe of the Post Graduate School of the Benson Idahosa University in Edo State, with support from the Heinrich Boll FoundationIndigo Trust, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Code for Africa. As at the time of writing this 61.1% of the participants rated the different aspect of the event as excellent, while 33% responded that it was good; 38.9% rated our facilitators as good, 38.9% rated them as excellent.

Connected Development Open Data Party in Benin City

70% of registered participants for this year were male while 30% were female (a 70% increase from last year female participants). 48% were civil society representative; 29.4% were entrepreneurs; 20% were student; 12.5% were media professional (a 40% decrease to last year); 28% were designers and data wranglers (an 40% decrease); 16.3% were academics; 6.9% were government official (a 40% decrease); 82.5% of Participants say they want to learn more about Understanding Data Pipelines, Using Data Analysis, Data Reporting and Visualization. Only 45% of the participants were good at presenting data, 66% of the participants were not good at collecting data and 41.3% of the participants were good at Data Analysis.

“So far, outside the United States and a few other major Western democracies, we have really seen open data being something happening at the national level. When we try to solve problems for citizens, problems are local. People need data to know about what is happening to them locally and often that is managed by sub-national governments” – These were the words of Katelyn Rogers of the Open Knowledge Foundation while giving opening remarks at the event. One important session introduced at this years ODP was the ideation session which allows participants to proffer solutions to a pressing waste management challenge in Benin City, a session that was introduced through the Code for Africa partnership.

Connected Development Open Data Party in Benin City

Adam Talsman of Reboot training participants on how to use FormHub for surveys

The introduction to Data Pipelines that always opened sessions at the Open Data Party was immediately followed by three ignite talks to ignite participants on how organizations are using the data pipelines in working around data. The Open Data Companion (ODC) was presented by Osahon Okungbowa showing how they have compiled all open data portals around the world into one platform. Abdul Ganiyu Rufai from the Center for Information, Technology and Development (CITAD) explained how they aggregated hate speech for the just concluded general elections in Nigeria, while Blaise Aboh from Orodata shared how they are visualizing available government data, and creating simple information products that citizens can understand, in order to hold the government accountable.

Connected Development Open Data Party in Benin City

Blaise Aboh training participants on how to create infographics from data sets

As a follow up to the maiden Open Data Party in Abuja, and owing to feedback’s from last year event , this year’s event had nine hours of hands – on – training (skill share) embedded in the two days event. The hands – on workshops included Data Analysis using Google Spreadsheet and Microsoft Excel; Data Scraping using Tabula and import.io; Ground Truthing using Mobile apps such as FormHub and Textit; Visualizing data using maps with CartoDB and Open Street Maps; Visualizing data using infographics with specifics on infogr.am; and writing effective Freedom of information (FOI) letter. “The Data Analysis session is one of the most educative sessions I have attended amongst the sessions. “I have learnt where to get budget for environment especially ones related to my state, and how I can analyze it using Excel, I never knew this before coming” said Erdoo Anango of Kwasedoo Foundation International from Benue state.

Connected Development Open Data Party in Benin City

Oluwamayowa Oshindero training participants on Google Drive collaboration tools

Because the Open Data Party was meant for participants, and we really want them to participate, and make decisions on what they would like to teach, three hours was dedicated to an un – conference session on the second day which included a Follow The Money session where participants were exposed to how they can track funds meant for their local communities, and an opportunity for them as well to engage Follow The Money Nigeria as a state monitor. “We are aware of the Great Green Wall project, however it remains unclear how the funds budgeted for this have been spent, and we think we should be part of this team to track the funds in Yobe” explained Mohammed Garba Musa. Another intersesting session was the Funding your projects/Ideas and using Google Drive for Collaboration and Web Analytics.

Connected Development Open Data Party in Benin City

From left: Hamzat Lawal of CODE, Nanso Jideofor of Reboot, Temi Adeoye of Code For Nigeria, Katelyn rogers of open knowledge, and Destiny Frederick of EcoFuture during a Panel Discussions on Open Data, Waste Management and Internet Governance

The Open Data Party was concluded by ideation session which had 14 participants presenting their ideas on how they can help to reduce waste in Benin City. The ideation participants presented ideas ranging from advocacy strategies, development of applications to help create situation awareness,development of applications that waste managers can also use in tracking waste in municipalities.Abdul Ganiyu Rufai who presented an idea of creating a platform for the Waste Management Board in Kano that can help them track where new dump-site are located, and also create awareness by sending SMS to Kano citizens was paired with Emmanuel Odianosen who presented the prototype of an app called Clyn that can be used in sending messages to Waste Managers, letting them know of waste available to pick up. They both won the ideation sessions, and will be supported by Connected Development [CODE] and Sabi Hub to develop their idea to reduce waste and improve waste management in Kano and Edo state.