The World Bank has launched a study to better understand what users want from data, and they are asking for your input.

There has been a lot of discussion about what should be published as part of the drive for open financial data, but more can be done to identify what people want and need. Finding more out about the demand would help to increase understanding, inform the continued practical growth of open data efforts and activities, and hopefully result in more relevant, accessible, and widely-used data.

The initial survey will be conducted online (it’s accessible through bit.ly/OpenDataDemand) and targets the global community of users and publishers of open financial data.

Although the survey is focused on financial data, they are keen to hear from users of all other types of open data too. The survey has been designed to collect real use cases, potentially to scale or adapt to other areas.

All the data collected from this survey will be contributed back to the open data community through an interactive dataset that will be refreshed every two weeks. This data will also be used to design offline feedback pilots.