How many women violently die because of their gender in our societies? Where? In which ways? How do we inform ourselves about this and how could activate key parts of our society to face the problem? Could data and information generation help us create strategies, solutions and raise awareness about this problem? These are difficult questions that, since last year, we have been thinking together with several colleagues at ILDA.

In a previous post we told you about our plans to work on a standard of femicide data in the region. This task is connected with our general work on data standards and their potential to promote social change.

In particular, during two meetings in 2017 – the first in Mexico, in April, and then the workshop in Costa Rica, in August – we worked on the need and possibility of developing a regional standard for femicide data. The main conclusions of that last meeting are included in the report (in Spanish) that we wrote together with Gabriela Rodriguez and Fabrizio Scrollini.

In that report we include some of the minimum considerations that this exercise of the development of a standard should present, as well as the standard itself. They were:

– It should be based on those needs, identified by the participants of the workshop and an extended community of experts;

– It should have an iteration mechanism that allows feedback and its improvement, after its implementation, in an agile manner;

– It should be designed in a way that technologically allows its adoption by any platform or technology;

– Should be openly licensed for the purpose of promoting its dissemination; and

– It should take into account existing legal frameworks and practices, in order to be inspired by them, to promote their iteration.

With all those ideas in mind and other generous contributions from experts in the field, we have started 2018 with a lot of energy and good news about the process. After the report, with the support of IDRC and Fundación Avina, we were eager to identify where and how to carry out the first pilot, in order to systematize the existing data, as well as promote a necessary informed debate about this unfortunate social phenomenon. In this context, Sandra Elena, coordinator of the Open Justice Program within the Argentinean Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, expressed the interest to be part of this project.

In January 2018, Gabriela Rodríguez began to develop the first draft of what, after feedback, will be the first version of the standard. Because one of the main characteristics of this whole process was the participatory construction of ideas, this first draft has been put to the consideration of the participants of the workshop held in Costa Rica, together with other professionals in the field. During March we will open this process to an extended practice community (let us know if you are interested at: silvana@idatosabiertos.org)

After the feedback process and a diagnosis of the data sent by the Argentine provinces to the Ministry of Justice, this first version of the standard will be shared with the provincial authorities in charge of gathering this data. With the idea of ​​raising awareness about the relevance of the subject and the importance of having standardized data, in each of the countries of the region, a workshop will be held in the City of Buenos Aires in April where the provinces that will act as the first pilots of its implementation will be selected. As part of the collective discussion of ideas, and with of the generous invitation of Artigo 19, we will be interacting, in São Paulo, with public officials and activists next March.

There is still a long way to go and many questions to answer. Within this path of collaboratively building ideas and tools, we also believe that open government processes-  generally framed within Open Government Partnership (OGP) activities- have a great potential to structure dialogues to advance on this topic. However, how are these dialogues structured? Who and how should be involved at the national and local levels? And beyond producing data and accessing certain information, how do processes could genuinely help empower those actors through a process of co-creation and standardization? In Latin America there are processes that allow us to explore these types of questions and thus strengthen the open government concept.

We are very enthusiastic about this first phase of the implementation of this project and we will be providing more updates in the coming months. Meanwhile, you know where to find us!

Photo credit: Fosforo