On May 18-19, Bishkek hosted the first Central Asian data conference – DataCon Central Asia 2019.

The event brought together more than 200 people from four Central Asian countries: representatives of government and business, universities and NGOs, media and civil society.

Shamil Ibragimov, Executive Director of the Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan:

“DataCon Central Asia is the first event in the Central Asia related to such subject. And its importance is in that in the last few years much work has been done on data openness and data analytics, but all this discourse lacked a practical understanding of what data is and what actually can be done with it”.

For the first time at the DataCon platform representatives of the regions discussed common challenges for creating an open data ecosystem, efficient data management in business and cooperation among different stakeholders for common development.

Akrom Sultanov, Head of the department of monitoring and coordination of the open data portal in the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Statistics:

“The most important thing we heard during the conference is that the Central Asian countries face common, similar problems in open data development”.  

During the conference, the topics of openness, quality and availability of the government data, use of data in business, and urban data infrastructure were discussed.  On the second day, the participants were to attend workshops on analysis, visualization and packing of data, including in Kyrgyz.

Shahlo Abdunabizoda, Jahon Public Association, Tajikistan:

“I think that the existing data will always be scarce. In other words, one can say that the more data, the greater need for their disintegration and clarification. And now we need some indicators, for instance, if we make a survey on the education of women and girls, we’d like to have it by points, age, institutions and specialties that they choose”.

Following the conference, the participants adopted a Declaration stating that a data culture should be developed and DataCon Central Asia should become a regular event.

The Declaration of the conference is published on the event website: http://datacon.opendata.kg/
All photos are available at:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yQ_6Hv7zU7vnzt781UVvH77x0W2JI8uM

Recording of webcast are posted on the Facebook page of School of Data:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/schoolofdataKG/videos/

The event was organized by the School of Data Public Foundation and Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan.

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The mission of School of Data Foundation is to engage with educational and research projects based on data, actively contribute to the creation of a community of people who are passionate about data, and improve quality of analysis for information and policies as well.

Organizers and partners of the event: the Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan, School of Data Kyrgyzstan PF, IDEM with the support of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, the State Committee of Information Technologies and Communication of the KR, Neobis, the Open Society Foundation, the Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan, Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation –Tajikistan, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Internews in Kyrgyzstan.

Contact person: Cholpon Uzakbaeva, +996500605406, schoolofdatakg@gmail.com