 
Contacts: David Theis, (202) 458-8626, dtheis@worldbank.org For Broadcast Requests: Natalia Cieslik (202) 458-9369, ncieslik@worldbank.org 5 October 2010 "We are working to make data analysis and modeling tools more user-friendly, so that researchers, civil society, and local communities can come up with their own findings – and double-check ours. We need to throw open the doors, recognizing that others can find and create their own solutions.” – World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick, Georgetown University, September 29, 2010
Background The World Bank Group is actively working to make its operations and its research more open, transparent and accountable. This includes a range of reforms that enable free access to data that had either previously not been available or available only to paying subscribers. In a speech on September 29, 2010 at Georgetown University, World Bank President, Robert B. Zoellick described the new Open Data, Open Knowledge, and Open Solutions initiative, as a fundamentally new way of searching for development solutions, in a networked development architecture, where none dominates and all can play a part. Through this initiative, the Bank is supplementing its “elite retail” model of economic research, which had economists focusing on specific issues and then writing papers, with a “wholesale” and networked model, that gives outsiders the data, research and software to reach their own findings. How We’re Helping · In April 2010, the World Bank began offering open and free access to over 2,000 financial, business, health, economic and human development data for more than 200 countries, with some of the data going back 50 years. · This week, the Bank is doubling the number of statistics available to 4,000, and the number of indicators that will available in multiple languages will triple to 1,200. · The Bank is complementing this data, by providing a variety of tools and software applications to empower more collaborative and effective solutions to global challenges and help development practitioners interpret and analyze the data themselves. These include: o ADePT, an innovative software program designed to simplify and speed up the production of tables and graphs in economic data. o PovCalNet, allowing users to replicate the Bank’s global poverty counts and make their own estimates based on different assumptions. o iSimulate, a web-based forecasting model of more than 100 countries that won’t only give users access to Bank forecasts but allows them to design their own forecasts and simulations, and share them with others. o WITS, for accessing trade data which will, for example, let a producer anywhere in the world with a laptop, internet connection and an agricultural or manufactured product to sell, identify trade barriers that he or she will face in export markets around the world. · Two new software tools that will help promote better visualization of aid and development results are: Mapping for Results, an interactive pilot platform, launching later this month, that overlays poverty and Millennium Development Goal (MDG) data such as infant mortality rates, with the geographic location of over 1,000 World Bank financed products; and AidFlows, a joint OECD-World Bank data visualization tool that includes data on donor country amounts and for the first time, makes that data sortable by donor and country recipients. · The Bank is launching an Apps for Development competition, challenging developers around the world to transform datasets and create software applications that address one of the eight MDGs. · Collaborations with commercial information providers Google and Microsoft will also broaden access to the Bank’s development data. As part of the push for greater accountability and openness, on July 1, 2010, the World Bank launched a new Access to Information policy. Based on freedom of information laws adopted by India and the United States, the policy sets a new standard of disclosure for international organizations. This enhanced transparency and accountability will allow for greater monitoring of Bank supported projects, enabling better development results; making information more accessible to the general public; and providing an opportunity to better track the use of public funds Visit us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/worldbank Be updated via Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/worldbank For our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/worldbank
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