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Good practice Imported

Open Development Cambodia: Aggregated Open Data Platform for Land & Development Transparency

Cambodia · Phnom Penh · See the Cambodia profile · See the Phnom Penh profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 95% 43/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A Phnom Penh non-profit maps scattered land-concession, mining and hydropower data on one open platform. A GovLab case study links its dataset to a ~1-million-hectare government rollback of inactive land concessions; it still runs today with ~6,900 datasets.

~6,900
Public datasets (current)
~35,000
Users reached (shortly after launch (2017 case study))
~70,000
Monthly pageviews (2017 case study)
~1 million hectares
Land concessions downsized
12 %
2015 Open Knowledge Index score (Cambodia) (2015)
$55,000+
Seed grant (SPIDER programme)
Open Development Cambodia: Aggregated Open Data Platform for Land & Development Transparency

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Open Development Cambodia
Period
2011-ongoing
Keywords
open data, land governance, civic data, transparency

Context

Before Open Development Cambodia (ODC) launched in 2011, civil-society groups tracking economic land concessions, mining and hydropower projects in Cambodia collected data independently and inconsistently, weakening advocacy and public oversight; a 2015 Open Knowledge Index rated Cambodia's open-data availability at just 12%.

Objectives

ODC aimed to compile publicly available government and civil-society documentation on land, environment, economy and industry into a single vetted, geospatial platform, tracking indicators across the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Activities

ODC, a private non-profit 'open data/open knowledge media group', built interactive maps including satellite and topographic layers. The platform today hosts roughly 6,900 public datasets under a CC BY-SA licence and is part of the wider Open Development Mekong network spanning Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Early development was seeded by a SPIDER programme grant of over $55,000.

Results

GovLab's Open Data's Impact case study (2017) found ODC reached about 35,000 users and 70,000 monthly pageviews shortly after launch, and linked the platform's unified concession data to the Cambodian government downsizing roughly 1 million hectares of economic land concessions held by inactive investors while increasing social land concessions to poor communities.

Conclusions

GovLab's own authors caution that 'no independent external evaluation was conducted' — the impact findings rest on interviews and anecdotal evidence rather than a controlled assessment — and that uptake skewed toward international media and NGOs already equipped to use the data, with limited evidence of grassroots or local-government use.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Open Development Cambodia (ODC), a private non-profit 'open data/open knowledge media group'

Conditions for success

  • Data published under a CC BY-SA licence enabling reuse
  • Part of the wider Open Development Mekong network across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, showing real replication
  • Seeded by a SPIDER programme grant of over $55,000

Common failure modes

  • GovLab's own case study states 'no independent external evaluation was conducted'; impact findings rest on interviews and anecdotal evidence
  • Uptake skewed toward international media and NGOs already equipped to use the data, with limited evidence of grassroots or local-government use

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Replication kit

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Data sources

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