Food Aid Data - What's on the Menu?

This afternoon I read a blog entry (http://sarahburnett.blogspot.com/2010/07/wanted-data-quality-standard-for-open.html) from a data quality expert in England that commented on the need for standards for accuracy and reliability in goverment-provided data. This blog reminded my of a presentation that I gave at the food aid conference in Kansas City in 2007 entitled "Apply (Free) Government Data to Your Advantage".

The jist of the presentation can be summed up in four points:

- Where is the data?
- What does it tell us?
- How can we use it?
- New challenges

This presentation came at the time of the implementation of the FBES (i.e. online ocean carrier bid system) and the "new challenges" related to some fundamental data reporting changes as USDA moved from a two-round to a one-round bid system.

Very little has changed with the USDA/USAID data in the past three years: some forwarders are publishing freight awards in Excel; the Trade Secrets clauses has made USDA and USAID very prickly about releasing any additional FOIA data than what they proactively publish.

However, I am again holding my breath to see what changes, if any, well accompany the pending WBSCM. We'll see.