[Comments-odi-datasets-metadata-11jun18] My contribution to the question of Open Data Initiative Datasets and Metadata

[Mark W. Datysgeld]

I am Mark W. Datysgeld, an International Relations researcher and consultant from Brazil, specialized in public and private policymaking, and affiliated with the Business Constituency (BC). I have followed the ODI’s mailing list more or less from its inception, having also joined a panel during meeting 61 concerning this theme. I am glad to finally see this important project gaining the traction it deserves, and hope we can start steering it in a productive direction soon.

I write this comment under my personal capacity.

Having performed empirical research about ICANN and its workings, these are the datasets I see as priority and the reasoning behind my choices:

A)	meeting-registrations: Studying participation in ICANN should rely much more on looking at the raw data and projecting long-term correlations than on the glimpses provided by the reports; I champion this as a priority because it is data that I am actually using for research, so I can attest from first-hand experience that it is useful but at the same time what we have right now is not good enough for serious inquiry.

B)	meeting-session: In some ways related to the previous point, the continued evolution of ICANN depends on the community being able to understand what we are spending our time on and being able to paint at a broader picture of the activities being carried out.

C)	fellowship: For proper evaluation of this program, a comprehensive dataset containing the applicant information is necessary, so that is can be crossed with the pool of selected fellows to look for inconsistences. The dataset can be liberally redacted, but what I see as a must is: stakeholder, country, age, and number of application attempts.

D)	accountability family of indicators: While it is nice that these are available in an interactive dashboard, it is still much more desirable for research purposes that they be made available as raw data. it is hard to say which are more deserving of being prioritized, but I tend to think that subgroups 1, 4 and 5 are more aligned with the type of evaluation being done of ICANN at the moment.

E)	gnso-list-statistics: As a member of the GNSO, I find it imperative to be able to better understand how the broader policy process works, and what patterns can surface from the analysis of this kind of data.

F)	gac-members and gac-workinggroups: Having done extensive research on the GAC before, it is actually quite hard to get a historic notion of their workings, even though the data is available in a very scattered manner. This should be easier to study and I don’t think it must be such a complicated dataset to work with from the ICANN side.

Also, below is a list of data that would be nice to have, but which I don’t think has as much priority:
A)	meeting-technical
B)	financials
C)	applications [ngTLD]
D)	board-documents
E)	ithi

I would like to thank all of those involved in moving this initiative forward in a way that attempts to listen to what the community actually wants in terms data instead of supposing what is needed or just going through the most convenient datasets. I will continue to support the development of the ODI in whatever capacity I can.

Mark W. Datysgeld [www.markwd.website]
2018, July 3