Supply and Demand of Open Data in Mexico: A Diagnostic Report on the Government's New Open Data Portal

Following a promising and already well established trend, in February 2014 the Office of the President of Mexico launched its open data portal (datos.gob.mx). This diagnostic – carried out between July and September of 2015 – is designed to brief international donors and stakeholders such as members of the Open Government Partnership Steering Committee, provides the reader with contextual information to understand the state of supply and demand for open data from the portal, and the specific challenges the Mexican government is facing in its quest to implement the policy. The insights offered through data proessing and interviews with key stakeholders indicate the need to promote: i) A sense of ownership of datos.gob.mx by the user community, but particularly by the officials in charge of implementing the policy within each government unit; ii) The development of tools and mechanisms to increase the quality of the data provided through the portal; and iii) Civic hacking of the portal to promote innovation, and a sense of appropriation that would increase the policy's long-term resilience to partisan and leadership change.