Overview

GODAN supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security. It is a rapidly growing group, currently with over 800 partners from national governments, non-governmental, international and private sector organisations that have committed to a joint Statement of Purpose. Any organization that supports open access to agriculture and nutrition data can join GODAN. The initiative focuses on building high-level support among governments, policymakers, international organizations and business. GODAN promotes collaboration to harness the growing volume of data generated by new technologies to solve long-standing problems and to benefit farmers and the health of consumers. At the 2012 G-8 Summit, G-8 leaders committed to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the next phase of a shared commitment to achieving global food security. In April 2013, the commitment to convene an international conference on Open Data for Agriculture was fulfilled when the G8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture took place. The GODAN initiative was a by-product of this conference and was announced at the Open Government Partnership Conference in October 2013. GODAN partners support the shared principles based on GODAN’s Statement of Purpose -Agricultural and nutritional data to be available, accessible, usable and unrestricted -Partners aim to build high level policy and private sector support for open data -Encourage collaboration and cooperation across existing agriculture, nutrition and open data activities and stakeholders to solve long-standing global problems