DDE-Module 6 - Prioritisation Criteria

THE DUBAI DATA MANUAL
PRORITISATION
PROCESS
Version 1.2 (November 2020)
© 2020, Dubai Data Establishment. All Rights Reserved. This document forms part of the
Dubai Data Manual, and is freely available for reuse under the terms of a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
PRIORITISATION CRITERIA
AND PROCESS
Purpose: To provide guidance and a clear process for prioritising
which datasets to prepare for publication from an existing
list or inventory.
Lead responsibility for Data Administrator, reporting to the Data Leader.
implementing this
standard in each
Government Entity:
When to use this After the Entity has produced its initial Data Inventory, this
module of the Dubai document should be used to determine the order in which
Data Manual: datasets in the Inventory should be catalogued, classified
and Ingested into Dubai Pulse.
We also recommended using this process and guidance at

subsequent data publication sprints/phases to decide where
to focus resources and energy.
Document owner: Dubai Data Establishment
Definitions: Terminology in this standard follows the definitions set out in

the Dubai Data Manual Glossary.
Licensing: This document is published under the terms of a Creative

Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence in order to
facilitate its re-use by other governments and private sector
organisations. In summary this means you are free to share
and adapt the material, including for commercial purposes,
provided that you give appropriate credit to the Dubai Data
Establishment as its owner and do not suggest the Dubai
Data Establishment endorses your use.
Version Version 1.1, dated 30 November 2020.
3
OVERVIEW
Once a Government Entity has prepared an initial draft of its Data Inventory, it must
prioritise which of the inventoried datasets on that Inventory it should prepare first for
publication as open or shared data. Entities should not try to publish all data at once. By
starting with a subset of its data inventory, Entities can:
1. quickly publish high value and low effort data

2. go through the publication process faster and adopt desired changes to the
process.
This document helps Government Entities undertake this necessary prioritisation by

setting out:
• The prioritisation criteria that Entities should use

• The process they should go through in applying these criteria
• How your Entity can demonstrate conformance with this module of the Dubai Data
Manual.
PRIORITISATION CRITERIA
There are two broad sets of criteria:
1. Benefit criteria for evaluating the potential value of opening a particular dataset to
citizens and companies, or sharing it with other Dubai Government Entities.
2. Readiness criteria for evaluating the effort involved in getting the dataset ready
for publication or sharing (through Dubai Pulse).
In combination, these two sets of criteria help identify the datasets which will have the
most impact with the least effort. They have been chosen because they balance each
other. If a dataset is very high value, but a lot of work must go into making it publishable
or reusable, then it’s still fairly high on the priority list, but below data which is both.
Similarly, just because the data will be very easy and quick to publish, does not mean it
should be focused on first unless there’s some potential benefit in its publication and
sharing.
An Excel tool is available to help you score your datasets on each criteria, using easy to
answer questions here: Dubai Data Prioritisation Tool.
1. Benefit criteria
First, the benefit criteria measure the potential value or degree of benefit that could be
created for citizens, the Dubai Government, Entities and external companies /
organisations in opening up or sharing each dataset. This provides a simple way to
evaluate the comparative impact that publishing different data would have on the
strategic goals of Smart Dubai.
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Each dataset should be given a score out of 5 for each of the following four questions:
• User demand for data: how likely is it that citizens, Government Entities, external
companies or organisations would want to use or have access to this data?
1. highly unlikely: no evidence and no plausible reasons this would be
relevant
2. unlikely
3. possible
4. highly likely: we can think of good reasons others may want this data
5 – Definite: we’ve already seen requests for this data
• Economic impact: if we open up this data, how likely is it Private-Sector companies

could use it - perhaps "mashed up" with other data - to create commercially
valuable products and services? (Smart Economy)
1. highly unlikely
2. unlikely
3. possible
4. highly likely
5. Definite: we have clear evidence that Private-sector companies want to
exploit this data commercially
• Better services: how likely is it that publishing this data will lead to innovations and
services that improve the quality of life for people in Dubai? (Smart Living)
1. highly unlikely
2. unlikely
3. possible
4. highly likely
5. Definite: we have clear evidence of the quality of life gains that could be
made
• Better governance: how likely is it that will publishing this data will improve the
efficiency, transparency and accountability of Government Entities? (Smart
Governance)
1. highly unlikely
2. unlikely
3. possible
4. highly likely
5. Definite: we have clear evidence of efficiency; transparency or
accountability gains that could be made
These questions are intended to be answerable by informed officials without the need for
new research or analysis. If you feel you have no information or basis for answering, simply
opt for ‘3 – possible’. Your answers will in due course be published as part of your Entity’s
Data Inventory – so this will provide external stakeholders with an ability to provide you
with further evidence to refine in future the Entity’s understanding of, for example, the
extent of user demand or potential economic value in a particular dataset.
5
Resources to support benefit criteria decisions
• The strategy and vision for Dubai Data and the expected benefits have been shaped
and driven by thirteen Strategic Principles and further specified in the
Implementation principles
• Can your data help drive the Smart Dubai Pillars of an Efficient, Seamless, Safe and
Impactful city?
2. Readiness criteria
Secondly, the readiness criteria assess the state and quality of the data. This is to establish
how much work is needed to prepare it for publication (ensuring it meets minimal
requirements). Data which is of high quality, already documented, up do data and with a
clear owner can be easily published or shared. These criteria help to identify ‘quick wins’
for the Entity.
Please assess each dataset for the following:
• Data quality: choose a, b or c for the following (to the best of your knowledge):
1. How accurate is the data? (Choose medium if you’re not sure)
a. High accuracy (we review and check accuracy)
b. Medium accuracy
c. Low accuracy (there are known errors in the data)
2. How complete is the data? (Choose medium if you’re not sure)
a. High completeness (we have all the data at current granularity)
b. Medium completeness
c. Low completeness (there is known missing data, or this data will not
make sense by itself)
3. How up to date is the data?
a. Latest month / week / year is available
b. Data is not time sensitive OR have all the data apart from latest
month / week / year
c. Data is out of date
4. Does the data use a schema or is standardised?
a. Yes, data is published with same headings / fields (schema) each
time
b. The data does not use a schema AND is not published regularly (i.e. it
is one off data)
c. Data is regularly updated, but does not use a set schema
Each a is awarded 2 points, b’s 1 point and c’s 0 points, giving a total score out of 8 for
data quality. This will be automatically calculated by the tool.
• Ease of preparation: please answer yes or no to the following:
1. Is there a clear specific data owner?
6
2. Does the data have existing metadata - that is, information on what the data
is about, how it was generated etc.?
3. Is the data already published somewhere or available on the web / through
an API?
4. Is the data in an open machine-readable format?
Then record a number depending on number of ‘yes’ answers, so 4 for all four ‘yes’s, 0 for
all ‘no’s.
Key for ‘ease of preparation’ score
0 – No to all questions
1 – Yes to one of the questions
2 – Yes to two of the questions
3 – Yes to three of the questions
4 – Yes to all four questions
Resources to support readiness criteria decisions
• The Glossary covers definitions and examples of all the technical and data-related
terms mentioned here.
• The Data Quality standard goes into much more detail about the level of quality
which will be expected from data that will be Ingested into the Dubai Data Platform.
7
PROCESS
Prioritisation should be carried out at the same time as the inventory with a similar
process:
Each department within the Entity is responsible for prioritising their inventory (steps 1
and 2)
The Data Administrator is responsible for reviewing, combining and prioritising any
datasets that are Entity-wide and not captured within other lists (step 3)
It’s important that identifying duplicates, resolving clear owners and flagging potential
Dubai Registers happens alongside this process.
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1. Assess inventory against prioritisation criteria
Using your Data Inventories list, assess each dataset against both benefit and readiness
criteria using the Dubai Data Prioritisation Tool. This will guide you through all the
questions, and then produce a list of all datasets ranked in priority order (with the overall
score for ‘priority’ being an equally-weighted average of the scores for benefit and
readiness).
Candidate Dubai Registers shall be flagged as such by including a remark when describing
the datasets within the Data Inventories list. Furthermore the Dubai Data Establishment
team will consider those candidates for evaluation to be qualified and prioritized as such.
Registers will get the highest score in the prioritization.
Add the score to your inventory list.
2. Review ordering
Review your prioritised list and re-arrange as needed. For example, if there are many
datasets with the same score and you need to prioritise within that or if a dataset looks
out of place and feels like it should be above or below others, use your judgement and
rearrange, noting down the reasons.
3. Integrate and validate
The Data Administrator should review the prioritised inventories of each department and
combine them together. Then, follow steps 1 and 2 to additionally prioritise other datasets
which do not belong within a specific department.
The combined whole prioritised list now needs to be judged for whether the ordering
makes sense.
You may also want to consider having a spread of types of datasets – some very easy to
publish, some very valuable to test the comparative effort and impact of taking these
through to publication. The Prioritisation Tool can help this, since it provides a graph
plotting the datasets against benefit and readiness, with the highest priority datasets in
the greenest top right corner:
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Once you have reviewed the ordering, go through with one other colleague before passing to the
Data Leader for assessment and sign off.
4. Integrate the prioritisation results into the Entity’s Data Inventory, and
follow the approvals process for the Data Inventory
The Data Administrator should then ensure that the validated prioritisation scores are
included within the Data Inventory, and follow the approvals process described in steps
5a, 5b and 6 of the Data Inventory Module.
When assessing the prioritised Inventory as part of that process, the Data Leader’s role in
reviewing the prioritisation is to verify that the prioritised list makes sense and aligns with
the strategic aims of the Dubai Data Law and overall Smart Dubai program as well as
within the aims of the Entity itself.
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Questions the Data Leader should be able to answer:
1. Was a proper process followed in creating a prioritised list?
2. Were the right people involved in answering the criteria questions?
3. Does the reasoning for any given dataset’s placement in the list make sense?
4. Does the list and ordering as a whole look sensible?
The prioritised Data Inventory will then be sent to the Dubai Data Establishment for review
and approval. The process for sign-off of the inventory as a whole, including the
prioritisation, is described in the module of the Dubai Data Manual on Inventories.
CONFORMANCE
Once you have completed your first draft of a Data Inventory, you are required to produce
a prioritised list of what data to focus publication efforts on. This process should be
completed before Classification or Cataloguing. A prioritised list of the Entity’s data sets
will be conformant with this module of the Dubai Data Manual if:
• The prioritisation of each data set has been undertaken by an official with good
knowledge of the data and its users
• These individual dataset prioritisation scores have been moderated by the Dubai
Data Coordinator to ensure that similar judgements have been taken
• The overall prioritisation has been reviewed and signed off by the Entity’s Data
Leader
• Any comments received from the Dubai Data Establishment have been reviewed
and reflected into the prioritisation results
• A written record of the final prioritisation score for each data set is recorded in the
Data Inventory.
It is recommended that you re-use this process at further points to decide which data to
publish next once the initial data publication sprint is completed.

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THE DUBAI DATA MANUAL

We also recommended using this process and guidance at

Document owner: Dubai Data Establishment

Definitions: Terminology in this standard follows the definitions set out in

Licensing: This document is published under the terms of a Creative

Version Version 1.1, dated 30 November 2020.

1. quickly publish high value and low effort data

This document helps Government Entities undertake this necessary prioritisation by

• The prioritisation criteria that Entities should use

5 – Definite: we’ve already seen requests for this data

• Economic impact: if we open up this data, how likely is it Private-Sector companies

Resources to support benefit criteria decisions

Please assess each dataset for the following:

Key for ‘ease of preparation’ score

Resources to support readiness criteria decisions

1. Assess inventory against prioritisation criteria

Add the score to your inventory list.

3. Integrate and validate

Questions the Data Leader should be able to answer:

1. Was a proper process followed in creating a prioritised list?

2. Were the right people involved in answering the criteria questions?

4. Does the list and ordering as a whole look sensible?

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