Creating a modern marketplace for governance data.
We want to help citizens, civil society organisations and governments realise a world full of transparent governance. A world where everyone can take part in important political decisions and is empowered to hold their government to account. The Governance Data Alliance is a unique collaboration of organisations working to achieve that vision. With their data you can start to see how open your government is: how much of a say do you have in policy-making? How easily can you access information on budgets and other processes? If you find one area to be lacking compared to your neighbours, you can use that data to start conversations with governments calling for stronger participation and transparency.
It was a great pleasure to be asked by the Alliance to develop a web application that puts their data in the hands of many people across the world for the first time, so they can use it to create a more transparent country. It was crucial to build the site in a way that led to quick and easy understanding of the data for general users and, at the same time, stirred governments into action to be as transparent and participatory as possible. A combination of intuitive design and pixel perfect implementation delivered a site with the right features for the job, including country dashboards and a compare function.
Whether in Lagos or London, the way most people learn about the world is through their phones. This is especially the case in less developed countries, where mobiles are providing new ways of communicating to hundreds of millions of people. It’s these people we want to benefit most from the data in the dashboard, so it was only logical that we adopted mobile first principles, so the site looks just as good on a phone or tablet as it does on a laptop or conference projector.
The GDA Dashboard contains a huge range of datasets. For a new pair of eyes, rows and rows of numbers can be pretty daunting. But humans are fantastic at finding meaning when presented with the same data in a more visual and appealing way. An intuitive and striking colour scheme on the country and compare pages draws your attention from the first glance so any user, no matter their familiarity with the data, can find insight with ease.
How we help people find meaning in data.
Read our blog.What are people saying about it?
Next project.
Investing in Nutrition.