The first-ever data protection law in Oman was published in the Official Gazette this very morning. The Omani law appears to be a standard data protection law that distinguishes between data controllers and data processors, grants data subjects a set of rights including the right to access data and delete it, requires certain entities to appoint a data protection officer, and imposes very severe financial penalties.
We just updated our annual royal decree open data dataset to include royal decrees that His Majesty issued in the year 2021, and we thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to examine the legal developments in the country through the numbers. This post looks at how the number of royal decrees issued last year compares to previous years, and provides a breakdown of the categories of royal decrees issued in 2021.
This dataset covers the number of Omani domain names registered under the .om country code top-level domain name and .عمان Arabic language international domain name.
The number of registered domain names under the .om country code top-level domain name. This is the aggregate number of actively registered domain names, and not the number of newly registered domain names in the specific year only.
.عمان
The number of registered domain names under the .عمان Arabic language domain name. This is the aggregate number of actively registered domain names, and not the number of newly registered domain names in the specific year only.
Data
wpDataTable with provided ID not found!
Visualisation
wpDataChart with provided ID not found!
Notes
Only Omani nationals and companies registered in Oman are permitted to register these domain names. You can learn more about Omani domain names from the website of the .om Domain Names Administration.
This dataset covers the data on the number of telephone and broadband subscriptions and their penetration rates (both fixed and mobile) in the Sultanate of Oman.
The number of fixed telephone subscriptions in Oman.
Fixed Telephone Penetration
The penetration rate of fixed telephone subscriptions per household in Oman as a percentage. The TRA relies on data from the NCSI for determining the number of households in Oman.
Fixed Broadband Subs
The number of fixed broadband subscriptions in Oman.
Fixed Broadband Penetration
The penetration rate of fixed broadband subscriptions per household in Oman as a percentage. The TRA relies on data from the NCSI for determining the number of households in Oman.
Mobile Telephone Subs
The number of mobile telephone subscriptions in Oman.
Mobile Telephone Penetration
The penetration rate of mobile telephone subscriptions per inhabitant in Oman as a percentage.
Mobile Broadband Subs
The number of mobile broadband subscriptions in Oman. This includes handset-based and computer-based subscriptions.
Mobile Broadband Penetration
The penetration rate of mobile broadband subscriptions per inhabitant in Oman as a percentage.
For further details on the technical meaning of these fields, please refer to this ITU Handbook.
Data
wpDataTable with provided ID not found!
Vizualisation
Telecom Subscriptions
wpDataChart with provided ID not found!
Telecom Penetration Rates
wpDataChart with provided ID not found!
Notes
This data was collected from the open data files of the TRA as well as information individually collected from the reports section of the TRA’s website.
Why public utility companies and government-owned companies must publish open data.
The government of Oman has put a significant amount of effort into promoting the release of open data by government entities. This effort should not be focused only on the government itself but must expand to reach public utility companies and government-owned companies, especially as the number of these companies, and the amount of data they control, continues to grow.
The government of Oman operates through a culture of secrecy, where everything is assumed to be confidential unless proven otherwise. This culture restricts the ability of the government to be truly open, and substantially limits the flow of information between and within government entities. This secrecy is a result of a number of factors, such as the lack of proper governance structures for decision-making within most government entities, the unjustified fear around any security-related issue, and the frequently misunderstood Law on the Classification of State Records and Governance of Protected Places (the “Classification Law”).
For data to be truly considered open, the data must be complete in regard to the content of the data itself and in regard to the metadata describing the information that an open data publisher is releasing. Creating a comprehensive open data catalogue is an effective way for ensuring that published open data is accompanied by the minimum required amount of metadata.
Even though many government entities in Oman have published open data in the past, the majority of these government entities do not include a sufficient description of the data they publish, and instead upload a collection of Excel files that do not include any details other than the file name.
This webpage shows an example of a government entity publishing a collection of files without any metadata or other useful information to provide context for the open data it publishes.
It is highly recommended that an entity creates an open data catalogue to ensure that the data is properly identified and easily accessible. Such a catalogue should reasonably be made published on the internet and should be the primary method for enabling users to locate and download the data.
In particular, this open data catalogue should include separate entities for each dataset covering the following elements:
Title
The catalogue should include a short title describing the dataset in question.
Description
The catalogue should include a brief explanation of the contents of the dataset, a description of why this data is significant, and the manner in which it was collected.
Period Covered
If applicable, the catalogue should provide details of the time period covered by the data. For example, if the data relates to COVID-19 deaths, the data should indicate that the data covers the period from March 2020 to January 2021 (as an illustration).
Update Frequency
If the data is expected to be updated, the data catalogue should indicate to the user how often this data would be updated. For example, daily, monthly, yearly, or any other frequency. If the data is supplied in real-time, the catalogue should also indicate this. Certain datasets, such as maps or other reference datasets, might not be updated on a regular basis or at all, and this information should also be indicated to the user.
File Format
In addition to the importance of publishing open data in a machine-readable format, it is equally important to indicate to the end-user what format exactly is available for download. Examples include CSV, XML, and JSON.
Name and Contact Details of Person or Department
For big organisations, it is important for the end-user to have the contact details of the person or department responsible for the dataset in question. This is useful from a data validity point of view, but can also assist end-user that seek clarifications and those who would like to report errors found in the data.
Metadata
In addition to the general description details of the dataset, the catalogue should include a description of each field in the dataset explaining the content of that field and the format of the data provided in that field. For example, if the dataset has a name field, the catalogue must indicate if this will be provided in the Arabic or English language, and if the dataset has a date field, the catalogue must indicate the date format in which this will be provided (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD).
Example
The points explained on page can be used to transform the example shown above to become a more useful listing as follows:
Dataset Description
Title
Number of hospitals and beds in the Governorate of Dakhiliya
Description
This dataset provides the details of the hospitals in the Governorate of Dakhilya with the details of the number of beds in each hospital.
Period Covered
This dataset captures the state of hospitals in this region in December 2020.
Update Frequency
Yearly at the end of every year.
File Format
XLSX
Contact
Directorate General of Health in the Governorate of Dakhiliya. Name: XXXX Email: [email protected]
Metadata
Field
Description
Wilayat
The name of the Wiyalat in English.
Hospital Name – AR
The name of the hospital in Arabic.
Hospital Name – EN
The name of the hospital in English.
Beds
The number of beds in the hospital.
Each published dataset requires an individual description that provides the general information on the dataset, as well as an individual metadata table that explains what each field in the dataset refers to.
GCC countries have invested significant resources in developing national data portals, but most of these portals have yet to publish a single dataset relating to the biggest global pandemic of our lifetimes, COVID-19. Instead of utilising their familiar and tested platforms for releasing data, GCC countries launched independent dashboards for making COVID-19 data available to the public. The issue with this approach is that these new dashboards fail to comply with the most basic principles of open data. This has limited the ability of members of public to use this data in ways that would otherwise have contributed to managing the crisis.
The Omani government has reacted swiftly to the COVID-19 pandemic and has shared with the public substantial amounts of data in regard to the cases, recoveries, deaths, and vaccinations. However, regrettably, the COVID data published by the Omani government does not comply with the majority of principles of open data, and this limits the benefits and utility of this data.
