The Caribbean country is jointly ranked lowest with Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, Kenya and Burkina Faso.

The community based surveys were carried out in 70 countries, with the United Kingdom and the United States, ranking at the top of the 2013 Index. The open data index classes countries based on the accessibility and availability of information in 10 key areas.

The report stated that there are many countries where governments are less open but were not assessed because of the lack of openness, or a sufficiently engaged civil society. This includes 30 countries who are members of the Open Government Partnership.

Rufus Pollock, Founder and CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation said:

“Opening up government data drives democracy, accountability and innovation. It enables citizens to know and exercise their rights, and it brings benefits across society: from transport, to education and health. There has been a welcome increase in support for open data from governments in the last few years, but this index reveals that too much valuable information is still unavailable.”

Pollock added that the UK and US are leaders on open government data but even they have room for improvement: the US for example does not provide a single consolidated and open register of corporations, while the UK Electoral Commission lets down the UK’s good overall performance by not allowing open reuse of UK election data.

The organization defined Open Data as data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike.