I've always liked the idea behind the Guardian's Development site's decision to occasionally release data relevant to the latest headlines. What caught my eye this morning was the release of some basic data on humanitarian aid flows, by donor country, in honor of World Humanitarian Day.
However, the presentation of this data with some sort of context can be dangerously deceptive. For example, one of the tabs in the spreadsheet is labeled "Most generous countries," which lists the top contributors to humanitarian aid (per capita).
Sure, these countries are generous if you consider humanitarian giving the optimal form of generosity. Wouldn't it be more interesting to see how these stats match up to overall giving? If my country doesn't give any humanitarian aid, but invests heavily in agricultural production, climate change mitigation, conflict management, then it's not getting very much credit here - a huge part of the story missing.
This might bolster the argument for more complete data, which I'm very supportive of - but it should also make us wary about how much the presentation of that open data can matter.