Livia Barton's blog

Quand je pense que j’ai passé des semaines à essayer de trouver pour un collègue une version en espagnol des Indicateurs de développement dans le monde que publie la Banque mondiale… C’était il y a un an seulement... Finalement, après de nombreuses tentatives infructueuses, quelqu’un était apparu dans mon bureau avec une version en espagnol du Little Data Book, datée de 2000 à vue de nez.

It's crazy to think it was only a year ago that I spent weeks trying to help a colleague find a Spanish version of the World Bank's World Development Indicators database. After numerous dead-ends, I truly thought I struck gold when somebody stopped by my office with a version of the Little Data Book in Spanish from circa 2000 with a look of exhaustion on their face. I started to ask if they could also find this in French, Arabic, and Chinese – but this person left my office running before I could even finish the question. I thought to myself, there must to be a better way. 

We developed data.worldbank.org with access to over 1,200 indicators in arabic, english, french, and spanish.  And now, you can find 17 of the World Bank's most popular development indicators in 34 languages in Google search around the globe. That's 33 more languages from a year ago, when a collaboration with Google first made World Bank data easily accessible in English search results.

For Google, this is the first time the public data search feature has been available in languages other than English.  Eurostat's data will also be available through this new search feature.

It shouldn’t be understated how difficult it is to make data available in many languages – from currencies to thousand separators to decimals to multi-byte characters -- the list goes on and on.  And if you want to know more, just ask my good friend Jeff McCoy about data in Arabic maps.

But that doesn't mean it's not important, in fact quite the opposite.  For the World Bank, being able to offer more data in more languages on Google search is part of our plan to open up data and information to people everywhere, especially those in developing countries.

To learn more about open data, click over to the World Bank Open Forum, a webcast and online discussion happening today, October 7th, and continuing for 24 hours through tomorrow.

So go on, see for yourself.  Try searching for "gdp" in spanish on google.es [Producto Interior Bruto] or "co2 emissions" in french on google.fr [Émissions de CO2 par habitant].

Then start playing with their graphs and embedding them like this:

We're only 4 days away from the start of the World Bank's first-ever Open Forum, an online event featuring live webcasts and 24-hour chat discussions.  The production team has been working around the clock to get all the details set for what's lining up to be a fantastic 48 hours.

Here is a quick preview of what you can expect to learn and who will hear from October 7-8:

Session 1: Open Development Solutions, October 7th - starting at 12:30 pm EST:

In this opening session hosted by Molly Wood of CNET TV, you will discover how “open data” and “open knowledge” are empowering average citizens. Panelists will discuss the concept of openness, and how it is impacting development approaches and sparking collaboration among new partners – resulting in new and innovative development solutions. You'll hear from open data expert Tim O'Reilly about how the open data movement started and where it's going in the future.  You'll get the details about the World Bank Apps for Development Competition we will also reveal an exciting new annoucement from Google.  The session will include periodic coverage from the World Bank Program of Seminars.

Full list of featured guests for Open Development Solutions >

Session 2: Jumpstarting Jobs, October 7th - starting at 2:30 pm EST:

Hosted by Femi Oke of Public Radio International, this session tackles the global jobs crisis. With 210 million people out of work, and millions more workers living on $2 or less a day, the world is faced with the huge challenge of creating more and better jobs. But how should we do it? The session will include video commentary from Riska Mirzalina, youth entrepreneur from Indonesia and Umit Boyner of theTurkish business and employers association, TUSIAD. Shantayanan Devarajan, Chief Economist of the World Bank's Africa region will join the panel full of experts. The session will also feature periodic coverage from the World Bank Program of Seminars.

Full list of featured guests for Jumpstarting Jobs >

Session 3: Development Now: A Changing Landscape, October 8th - starting at 10:00 am EST:

This session, hosted by Phil Hay of the World Bank, will explore how the recent economic crisis has affected aid and the changing development landscape. As governments shift their attention to domestic economic issues, there is a risk that aid to poor countries will become a lower priority. Citizens across the world are demanding “value for money” and a clear demonstration of impact on the ground.  The session will include periodic coverage from the World Bank/IMF Annual Plenary.

Full list of featured guests for Development Now >

Don't forget to sign up for an event reminder.  You can also submit and vote on questions others have submitted.  We're incorporating the top-ranked questions in the Open Forum's live discussions and throughout the Annual Meetings.

Also, if you're in Washington this week, be sure to take a stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue and glance look over at the Bank's building. You'll just have to do it to see what I'm talking about.  Don't worry to those who aren't here, you can learn about it here.

See you online at worldbank.org/openforum

We recently hosted the Aid Information Challenge in cooperation with Development Gateway. This event brought together over 100 participants to work on visualizing aid information and data. The morning started with inspiring talks by Aleem Walji of the World Bank’s Innovation department and our keynote speaker, Clay Johnson, Director of Sunlight Labs.

Below is a clip from Clay's keynote where he explains that "the next step for this field is not just to open the data, but to put it into context for people...not just so that the World Bank can make better decisions in Uganda and we can save some children, but also so that we can get people in the long run to make better decisions, personal decisions."

It's been a week since we launched the open data initiative and the feedback we've been receiving is truly amazing.  Here's a tag cloud showing what the twitter community has been saying: