The main objective of setting up Open Data Portals is to create economic value out of the releases of Government datasets.  Open Data is considered at the bedrock of innovation which will be the driving force of the Mauritian economy in the next few years. Opening up of datasets will go a long way towards stimulating the economy to the benefit of all economic operators, including Small and Medium Enterprises.

In 2017, Mauritius adopted the “National Open Data Policy” to provide access to a wide range of public sector data via online portal(s), with the aims to promote transparency, accountability, and innovation by making government data available to citizens, businesses, researchers.

By opening up data through the Open Data portal, Government aims to promote:

• Transparency – citizens being able to freely access information about what their Government is doing;
• Public Service Improvement – giving citizens the raw material to engage and contribute to making public services better as well as improve the quality of decision-making
• Innovation – public data, and their re-use, are key resources for social innovation and economic growth where businesses and individuals can develop new tools and value-added services in order to work with, analyse, and make sense of the data.
• Efficiency – Governments can come up with smarter and more efficient public services and applications by allowing information to be more easily reused within Government and enabling citizens to help improve data quality.