The Organization of American States (OAS), aware of the need to make governments increasingly more efficient, transparent and participatory in order to strengthen democracy, has made efforts through the Department for Effective Public Management (DGPE) in the areas of public management innovation, transparency, and digital government.

Open data is an area of public administration in which the OAS Member States have generated commitments and resolutions in the framework of the OAS General Assemblies and the Summits of the Americas. Through these commitments, Member States urge the implementation of policies on open government, open data and digital government.

The Department for Effective Public Management (DGPE) of the OAS supports the governments in the region in the creation of open data policies.; and is the office of the OAS General Secretariat responsible for the Inter-American Open Data Program to Prevent and Combat Corruption (PIDA) #MoreDataLessCorruption.

Open data is a recent area of public management; therefore, governments are still in an intense process of assimilation, development and implementation of national plans on this matter globally.

The governments of the Americas recognize the importance of Open Data and as a result, have been undertaking initiatives aimed at defining and implementing national open data policies or strategies. These processes, which are complex due to their cross-cutting nature, have been shaped by the implementation of forums of collaboration between different actors to co-design these national policies. This cooperation, where government, civil society and the private sector come together to co-create public goods, strengthens democracy and contributes to a more efficient, transparent and participatory government.

To this end, with the support of the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the DGPE supports together with CEPAL and the Avina Foundation, the Latin American Open Data Initiative (ILDA); and supports the regional open data ecosystem and knowledge exchange through the Abrelatam and Condatos conferences.

This initiative arises from the need to generate knowledge and technical and political dialogue to fill the significant information gaps in this new area of public management in the Americas. The initiative comprises a series of research efforts; the creation of spaces for dialogue between the authorities responsible for these areas at the national level through the Inter-American Network on Digital Government (RedGealc); training; and support to governments in the construction of their national open data strategies through the implementation of national open data dialogue roundtables.