The timely publication of election data is an essential component of transparency. Citizens need information on how to register, which parties or candidates are running and where to vote so they can participate in the process and make informed decisions. Data that is complete and made available as a whole is open data. Releasing a complete dataset is a clear act of transparency. Any data that is omitted is not accessible and cannot be used. For example, an organisation may wish to analyse the voter registration rate for an Electoral Ward level. They may focus most of their analysis on the data for that Ward but, if they have the entire dataset, they can quickly calculate the registration rate for the entire country and use that to put the Ward rate in proper context. The Electoral Office NI makes some information available as PDF documents, that format is not machine readable.
The Electoral Office NI makes some information available as PDF documents, that format is not machine readable. Polling station data i.e. Streets, box number and postcodes are not in open data format. The Electoral Office NI has previously published data on the Open Data NI portal there is not new data since 2016.
This content is created by the open source Your Priorities citizen engagement platform designed by the non profit Citizens Foundation