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Press Release

MCC to Unveil Open Evaluation Data Catalog

For Immediate Release

April 29, 2013

Washington—The Millennium Challenge Corporation will unveil the agency’s open evaluation data catalog during the G-8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture on April 29-30.

MCC’s open evaluation data catalog—which can be found at data.mcc.gov— contains metadata and will eventually contain microdata from its rigorous independent evaluations (after the data is made anonymous to protect individual privacy).

The G-8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture will host leaders from around the world and will demonstrate the role of open data in increasing agricultural production, improving private sector growth and advancing global food security. It intends to promote policies and invest in projects that make public relevant data, make that data readily accessible to users worldwide and ultimately support sustainable increases in food security.

On April 29, MCC will post the first installment of metadata from food security programs in Armenia, El Salvador, Ghana, and the Philippines. This will include all relevant reports and descriptive statistics for surveys including an estimated 5,000 households in Armenia, 9,300 households in Ghana, 1,700 individuals in El Salvador, and 2,400 households in the Philippines.

MCC’s open data catalog is part of its Open Government Plan, which is based on a set of core principles for effective development assistance: good governance, country ownership, focus on results, and transparency. In addition to the household survey data, MCC provides open access in machine-readable format to country selection data, MCC quarterly financial data, key performance indicators, and economic rates of return analyses.

Since its founding in 2004, MCC has invested more than $4.3 billion to address food insecurity and strengthen agricultural and rural economies with the aim of reducing poverty through stimulating economic growth.

While the datasets in MCC’s catalog were collected to rigorously evaluate the impact of its investments, much of the information should also be useful to private sector, civil society, governments, and others who aim to support economic growth in developing countries, which are largely data-poor environments.

Jolyne Sanjak, MCC’s Deputy Vice President for Technical Services in Compact Operations, will join the U.S. delegation to the conference, which is being led by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Alicia Phillips Mandaville, MCC’s Managing Director for Development Policy, will participate in a panel discussion about open data on April 29.

Sanjak and Mandaville will be available for interviews at the conference. Media interested can register here or follow the conference on Twitter using the hashtag #OpenAgData. 

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