Global Open Data Policy & Systems Analysis Research Mate Internship

About Internship

Assistant Professor from Symbiosis International University, Pune, India, is accepting candidates interested in the field of Computer Science Engineering, in the research area of Public Policy.

Open data—government-held information like census records, agricultural yields, and public health statistics—is public infrastructure intended to drive economic and social returns. However, across many nations, open data portals function merely as institutional displays rather than functional resources; data is often uploaded in non-machine-readable formats, riddled with inconsistencies, and left un-updated. This comparative research project evaluates the operational quality—not just the mere existence—of open government datasets in the agricultural domain across five federal democracies. The researcher will perform a systematic data audit to measure whether public datasets meet the minimum quality standards required for meaningful downstream use by policymakers, farmers, and civil society. Roles & Responsibilities: 1. Develop and standardize data quality assessment metrics (measuring machine-readability, update frequency, schema consistency, and accessibility) across five disparate national data portals. 2. Inspect, query, and audit agricultural datasets to identify quality barriers such as inconsistent naming conventions, broken update pipelines, and structural registration walls. 3. Evaluate the technical architecture of government portals to assess compliance with global open data standards (e.g., FAIR principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). 4. Aggregate audit findings into a comparative cross-country matrix, identifying systemic institutional failures and highlighting best practices in digital governance.