The EF-170 or Ferrogrão is a “greenfield” railway project connecting the 933km that separate the towns of Sinop (Mato Grosso state) and Itaituba (Pará state).

Digital tools to present projects are, as expected, more in vogue than ever and gaining the attention of many funders. But some organizations recognize limitations on the usefulness of such tools when they are not adopted by the intended users and maintenance costs are too high with every update of data.  This was all explored in the Open Budget Data Exchange Workshop organized for Civil Society Organizations by the International Budget Partnership and Center Eidos of Ukraine, in which GIFT coordination team participated providing guidance and examples.

During this three-day workshop we got to know and analyze the potential and challenges of projects related to open data implemented by Center Eidos in Ukraine, INESC in Brazil, ACIJ in Argentina, Inisiatif in Indonesia and BudgIT in Nigeria. This gave way to explore the user-centered approach of designing a product that is fed through open data and the importance of advocating for publishers to provide tools that allow updating interactive platforms in an automatic way.

When we are talking about publishing open data, we always try to emphasize the importance of “publishing with purpose”. This means thinking of a higher objective than the publication per se and thinking of the intended user.  In this workshop we approached the other side of the equation, “using open data with purpose”