OpenUp, formerly known as Code for South Africa, is a non-profit civic technology lab which aims to use data and technology to promote informed decision-making that drives social change.
Mission and Purpose
OpenUp is a civic coding organisation that believes in the usefulness of data and data sharing. The organisation’s goal is "to promote the release of data under an open data licence to make it available to everyone who wants it...to use liberated data to improve lives and empower people to make informed choices." [1]
Origins and Development
Organizational Structure, Membership, and Funding
Specializations, Methods and Tools
The organisation works with civil society, journalists, government and straight up hackers, running workshops, hosting meetings in an effort to generate excitement about sharing data and contributing to making South Africa a better place. The organisation works a technological consult for civil society organisation by supplying technological services that assist the organisations in fulfilling their duties. [1]
Major Projects and Events
Code for South Africa ran various projects that establish platforms for data sharing. The projects provide data for a range of users: ordinary citizens, journalists, and civil society organisations. These included MapIt, WaziMap and Open Bay-Laws amongst many others.
- MapIt is a service that maps geographical points to administrative areas. It’s useful for anyone who has the co-ordinates of a particular point, and needs to find out what regions it lies within as well as for looking up the shapes of all those boundaries. [2]
- Wazimap, from the Xhosa word ulwazi for knowledge, is a joint project by Media Monitoring Africa and Code for South Africa that provides easy access to South African census and elections data. [3]
- Open By-laws South Africa is a project to help South Africans be more informed about the legislation that governs them. [4]
Analysis and Lessons Learned
Publications
See Also
Black Sash Making All Voices Count Community-Based Monitoring Project
References
[1] Code for South Africa. (n.d.). About Code for South Africa. Retrieved 2017, from http://code4sa.org/about.html
[2] MapIt. http://mapit.code4sa.org/
[3] Wazimap. http://wazimap.co.za/
[4] Open By-Laws South Africa. http://openbylaws.org.za/about.html
