Machine Readability Score

Machine Readability Score from Open Data Watch. Openness element 1 measures whether data are available in a machine readable format such as XLS, XLSX, CSV, and JSON. Machine-readable file formats allow users to easily process data using a computer. When data are made available in formats that are not machine readable, users cannot easily access and modify the data, which severely restricts the scope of the data’s use. In many cases PDF versions of datasets within reports can be useful to users, as the text in conjunction with the tables gives context and explanation to the figures which helps less technical users understand the data. Because of this, ODIN assessments do not penalize countries for making datasets available in PDF or other non-machine readable formats, unless these formats are the only option for exporting data. Scores are not penalized for having identical datasets in both machine readable and non-readable formats. Compression formats do not affect machine readability scores, only non-proprietary scores. Scores are given by data category, not indicator.