OKFestival

Data journalism has tremendous potential to drive transparency and uncover corruption in developing countries and many donors are funding data journalism as a means to good governance and transparency. But what does it take to grow a sustainable data community? Can we evaluate the most common strategies: conferences, boot camps, fellowships, hackathons and reporting grants and evaluate which have produced concrete data journalism that have had a social and policy impact? Did they lead to growth of the data communities needed to provide technical support to journalists? How do we measure things like engagement, policy impact and shifts in media culture in a traditional media environment where online analytics are of little use? What are the minimum data, technology, and media requirements for data journalism initiatives to be viable? Are we honest with donors about how much can be accomplished under different conditions?

How the session will be structured
Debate and discussion: I would like each participant to share one success and one failure in projects to foster data journalism in a developing country and how they measure success and failure. Then we will develop a list of essential elements for different types of interventions and come up with a list of best practices.

Session hashtag: #OKFestDDDJ