OPEN INFORMATION

An open information system is a basis for effective public oversight and timely civic engagement to call for change. The lack of transparency among Iran’s government and powerful figures in both public and private realms presents a critical gap in accountability. With most of the country’s public data remains inaccessible and the authorities’ tight grip on press freedom, corruption and mismanagement often go unscrutinized and unchallenged.

ASL19 conducts research and provides digital solutions that help the Iranian civil society more easily access and make use of data on public interest subjects. We design and deliver products and services that support the entire lifecycle of open information projects – from data extraction, cleanup, and organizing, to the publication, analysis, and visualization of the information.

Our open data platform, Iran Budget, is an accessible and interactive platform that visualizes Iran’s national budget data in an easy-to-understand way to showcase how the government allocates its resources and their priorities that are hidden in plain sight. While the data itself is released by the government publicly, its original format makes it extremely hard to examine. Iran Budget extracts the data and publishes visualization, analysis and reports to ensure such information is usable by the general public.

Another data visualization platform, Dadeh, offers an overview of social, economic, and political indicators on different provinces in Iran, allowing people to easily compare their conditions or use the data for research and media reports. Dadeh aims to raise public awareness on issues across the country and increase public access to official statistics published by reference institutions, such as the Iranian Statistics Center.