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Good practice Imported

City of Cape Town Open Data Portal

South Africa · Cape Town · See the South Africa profile · See the Cape Town profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 93% 43/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Cape Town's Open Data Portal, live since January 2015 and paired with free public-library access, publishes municipal datasets for reuse — but the only academic impact study found benefits concentrated among specialised users rather than the wider public.

~250,000
Daily rail commuters served by data-driven transit apps
City of Cape Town Open Data Portal

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
City of Cape Town
Period
2015–present
Keywords
open data, urban governance, transparency, digital infrastructure

Context

The City of Cape Town approved an Open Data Policy in October 2014 and launched its Open Data Portal three months later, in January 2015, publishing municipal datasets -- from transport to budgets -- under a quarterly review process overseen by a nine-member cross-departmental steering committee.

Activities

To widen access beyond specialists, the City distributes the data free of charge through the SmartCape public-library network, and third-party tools such as the GoMetro transit app have drawn on city data to serve an estimated 250,000 daily rail commuters.

Results

An academic evaluation by Hlabano and Van Belle (ICT4D 2019, published by Springer) applied a Social-Return-on-Investment framework to trace the portal's real-world effects and found that, while there were indications of value creation, the demonstrated impact was largely confined to groups with specialised technical or professional interest in the data.

Conclusions

The evaluation is a caution against assuming broad-based public benefit from open-data publication alone.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Data publishing platform; cost not disclosed.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Policy approved October 2014; portal launched January 2015, ongoing to present.
Staffing & skills
nine-member cross-departmental steering committee, SmartCape public-library network staff

Conditions for success

  • free distribution beyond specialists via the public-library network
  • third-party developer tools building on published data (GoMetro transit app)

Common failure modes

  • academic SROI evaluation found demonstrated impact largely confined to technically/professionally specialised users, not the broader public

Where it fits

Governance type
municipal government
Scale
city
Income level
upper-middle income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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