evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

Rwanda's National Open Data Portal — Turning the 2017 Data Revolution Policy Into a Shared Government Platform

Rwanda · Kigali · See the Rwanda profile · See the Kigali profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 74% 57/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Rwanda's 2017 Data Revolution Policy pushed ministries out of data silos and into one national portal, built by MINICT, NISR and RISA. By 2020 Rwanda ranked among the world's top scorers in the Open Data Inventory, though citizen demand still lags behind the data supply.

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Ministry of ICT and Innovation (MINICT), National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR), Rwanda Information Society Authority (RISA)
Period
2013–ongoing (2017 Data Revolution Policy)
Keywords
digital government, open data, official statistics, public sector reform

Context

Rwanda passed an Access to Information law in 2013 and, in 2017, adopted a National Data Revolution Policy requiring ministries to feed one centralised, publicly accessible portal, built by MINICT, NISR and RISA.

Results

Rwanda placed among the highest-scoring countries in the 2020 Open Data Inventory (ODIN), behind top performer Mexico and alongside Mongolia and Moldova, per a World Bank Data Blog analysis.

Conclusions

An independent review by DevelopLocal found gaps behind the ranking: publishing has stayed supply-side without matching citizen demand, governance leadership is uneven department by department, and practice does not always match what the 2017 policy requires.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Ministry of ICT and Innovation (MINICT), NISR and RISA joint technical team

Conditions for success

  • centralised mandate replacing departmental data silos
  • local technologist competitions to build data-collection tooling

Common failure modes

  • publishing remains supply-side without matching citizen demand
  • uneven governance leadership across departments

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

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

Similar practices you may find useful