The Open Seventeen


Crowdsourcing the Verification of the Sustainable Development Goals with Open Data : In 2015, the United Nations is announcing seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the world. Success at implementing the SDGs by 2030 could put the planet on the right course for the rest of the century. Failure could result in a breakdown of trust in global initiatives and cynical pursuit of self-interest by nations and corporations.

One way to ensure SDGs are achieved is to establish an independent means for verifying that all stakeholders – governments, corporations, NGOs and international organisations – live up to their promises. This requires harnessing the grassroots efforts of concerned citizens on a global scale.

To ignite this effort, ONE– in collaboration with the Citizen Cyberscience Centre and the Crowdcrafting platform for open research – is launching The Open Seventeen, a challenge to develop crowdsourcing projects that tackle SDGs using open data.

How does this challenge work?

You’ll find a big blue button further down this page. Use this to pitch a crowdsourcing project that tackles any of the 17 SDGs, at either a local, regional or global level, and tell us what open data set could be analysed for this purpose.

To inspire you, we’ve provided below some >examples of crowdsourcing projects that have already been tackling different aspects of the SDGs, from deforestation to corruption, and from drought to disease. Projects proposed for the challenge should have clear and realistic goals, and build on existing open data sets.

ONE and its partners will select three proposals and create crowdsourcing projects based on these. The winners and their projects will be profiled by ONE in upcoming international events related to the launch of the SDGs. Your project could inspire the world….

What can you do with open data to help verify SDGs? Have a look at what citizens have already created using the open source technology PyBossa that powers the Crowdcrafting platform and other crowdsourcing projects….(More)”