Forging a Partnership on Data Governance with the Public Sector
The Center for Continuing Education at Birzeit University (CCE) joined the data revolution efforts in 2016 through an IDRC funded project along with American University of Cairo and AL-Akhawayn University in Morocco. Since then, a number of data projects were implemented with activities ranging from desk research to case studies, awareness and networking sessions and activities, collaboration and partnerships and, above all, capacity building programs in data journalism, data science and data literacy with special focus on data ethics.
In late 2018, The Palestinian Council of Ministers, in collaboration with Leaders Organization (a local NGO) started the Open Government Data Initiative in order to publish government data in an open format. A special ministerial committee was formed and employees from member institutions were trained on open data readiness assessment by international consultants. Two of the main tasks (drafting and Open Data policy and setting up an open data platform) were assigned to a data specialist who worked on all CCE’s data projects. The Leaders project ended prematurely due to political complexities but the Ministry of Telecom and IT (MTIT) who chairs the committee maintained a relationship with the specialist who attended Committee meetings as an external expert. A new cabinet was sworn in April, 2019 and a new MTIT minister took office. Early in 2020, the Covid19 pandemic broke out and halted face to face activities for over a year. Covid19 accelerated the adoption of digital transformation (with side effects like digital divide and privacy violation due to lack of capacity and preparation) and highlighted the role of data in economic and social development.
MTIT arranged for the CCE data specialist to work for them on a part-time basis as a data and AI advisor as of Mid-December 2020. Committee meetings resumed and the Open Data Policy was approved. An updated version of the open data platform (powered by CKAN) was setup and several datasets were prepared and uploaded by the same specialist in cooperation with representatives from committee member institutions.
However, two issues were holding back the progress of opening and publishing data under open licenses. Data owners (or managers whose permission was needed to release such data) were very hesitant to release data in an open format (both legally and technically). They thought PDF reports with aggregated data were good enough. Another challenge was the lack of capacity among committee representatives in classifying, wrangling, opening and publishing data on the platform. 
Knowing CCE’s work on data, policy influencing and capacity building in data topics, the data specialist approached both CCE and MTIT and explored collaboration and partnership to provide a 3-step solution:
- Raise awareness among policy makers (middle and upper management) at member institutions on open data potential and governance
- Build technical capacity at said institutions for data publishers
- Raise awareness and build capacity for potential open data beneficiaries on how to apply open data for informed decision making, social and economic development (including innovators and entrepreneurs).
On November 10th, 2021, a national workshop was organized for high level managers at member institutions. During this workshop, the national open data platform (opendata.ps) was officially launched and the technical training was announced as ‘starting the following week’. Two other sessions on open data potential and responsible use (data governance) were introduced.
As planned, on November 16, over 30 technically literate staff from member institutions started a 30-hour training program on open data preparation and publishing with another cohort planned for January, 2022. 
As expressed by both CCE and MTIT, this partnership is one of the most successful collaboration efforts. During the workshop, three government staff with technical literacy approached CCE and requested to enroll in the applied data science journey program. A special arrangement is being planned to coach them (to create project cards based on datasets at their institutions) into the next iteration of the journey.
