To full-fledged development of business, the accessibility of open data is essential. This will henceforth bring use both to government and to citizens. This was told on May 21, 2015 in the capital city’s Independence Palace at the Conference: “Innovation-based Solutions in Funding Sustainable Development: Role of Social Media” which was held as part of Astana Economic Forum: “Infrastructure: Economic Development Driver”. On this issue, Kazakhstani and international experts spoke at the sessions.

Just a few simple examples: based on counting the number of buses in a city, the population number and long-distance destinations in which taxis are in demand, an app for passenger carriage may be created. And through analyzing the consumer basket, a mobile directory can be created for those who would like to start up a business. And there might be hundreds of such mobile apps.  

The future belongs to Open Data. This was the conclusion reached by the meeting attendees. They share the common opinion that open data is an integral part of Open Government concept whose principles imply government’s accessibility to citizens, transparency of public administration, and corruption control.

Prior to implementing open data in Kazakhstan, National Information Technologies JSC had performed big work on analysis of government’s preparedness for open data pursuant to the World Bank methodology.

“Open data helps really, both to businesses and to citizens. Currently, we are identifying citizens’ and businesses’ demand for data requested from government agencies. The information received from agencies will be placed on the open data portal, after which businessmen will be able to use it”, CEO of National Information Technologies JSCRuslan Yensebayev commented. Much is to be done to make the dialogue between government and businesses more active.

Private sector may view data, analyze it, make some conclusions for their work. Based on open data, useful products have already been created in Kazakhstan: mobile apps for search for licenses, for health and education entities.  

One of the examples of worldwide rapidly-growing markets of open data is Zillow, company that provides data on real estate market online. Their activities are based on the database containing information on more than 110 million houses in US, including those put up for sale, houses for rent and houses that are not sold in the market at the moment. The company’s capitalization has already reached over USD 3 billion.

On the whole, international experts evaluate the open data effect worldwide as USD 3–5 trillion.