Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) about Open Government

Delft University of Technology launches Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) about Open Government

While governments all over the world aim to become more open and transparent, opening the government is a complex and challenging problem. How can governments become more open and transparent, while simultaneously dealing with various challenges, such as data sensitivity? How can open government data be made available to improve public policy making? Which technologies are available to make governments more open and to use open government data?

We at Delft University of Technology will be teaching a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) about Open Government soon. The MOOC starts on April 17, 2016, and will run for 5 weeks. Enrolment for our MOOC is possible now via https://www.edx.org/course/open-government-delftx-og101x. An informative video about the MOOC is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93BzVj_-7vo&feature=youtu.be.

This Open Government MOOC is aimed at university students, professionals, government officials, policy advisors and researchers,  but is open to anyone interested in Open Government. It will help participants grasp the key principles of open government, and answers questions like: 'What are the best practices for opening governments? And how to give citizens access to governmental data to answer their questions?' Most importantly, participants will apply the topics of the course to concrete cases.

What participants will learn:

·       Basic concepts related to Open Government and Open Government Data

·       How to analyze and discuss benefits, barriers and potential negative effects of a particular open government case

·       How to analyze public values and best practices related to open government

·       How to apply the open government principles in various situations

·       To understand potential negative and positive effects Open Government might bring

This MOOC includes lectures by:

·       Prof. Marijn Janssen - Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, Head of ICT section and professor in ICT and governance

·       Dr. Anneke Zuiderwijk - Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, Researcher in Open Data

·       Dr. Bastiaan van Loenen - Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, Associate Professor in geo-information and land development

·       Dr. Tomasz Janowski, United Nations University, Portugal, head of United Nations University, Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance

·       Prof. Keith Jeffery, Cardiff University, United Kingdom, professor in Computer Science & Informatics

·       Dr. Amr Ali Eldin, Leiden University, The Netherlands, senior lecturer in Computer Science and Information Technology

·       Dr. Iryna Susha, Örebro University, Sweden and guest at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, postdoctoral researcher on data collaboratives