Ten Years of Philippine Local Government Data as Gift to Wikidata’s 12-Year Anniversary 

Shared Knowledge Asia Pacific (SKAP), a group of Wikimedians from the Philippines had a Wikidata Datathon on Wikidata’s 12^th anniversary. They added Philippine financial data, obtained from Annual Audit Reports from the Commission on Audit, composed of local government assets, liabilities, revenues and expenditures over the past ten years from 2012 up to 2022. 

SKAP’s introductory project to Wikidata contributed more than 272,000 edits, with 337,000 references and more than 6 million words added to Wikidata this year. 

Volunteer editor and data research team lead WishywizPH, started data gathering from government sources, websites and official documents early this year. He said the task is quite challenging for him and other editors as some numbers are elusive and not all information can be found in a single source. But hard work pays off after not giving up. Other editors were spending quite some time on data gathering and learning how these data can be useful if added to Wikidata. 

When the data gathering was about complete, Butch Bustria educated the team about the importance of Wikidata, and the process of transferring these encoded data from source to Wikidata. He encouraged the group to engage with the global community such as the Wikidata WikiProject Govdirectory. The walkthrough was re-echoed to the rest of the editors who were editing during weekends or after work. 

On the 12^th anniversary month of Wikidata, SKAP was quietly gifting the project with hundreds of thousands of Philippine government data that is publicly available. When some issues regarding uploading was encountered, the wisdom of the global Wikidata community was sought and they were glad to lend a hand. 

Helping each other was the essence of the movement. The global community and experienced Wikidata editors willingly taught Wikidata newbies like us so they can succeed in this project. Even Alan Ang, Senior Partner of Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) scheduled Wikidata training for SKAP and other Filipino editors who want to delve deeper into Wikidata. 

The successful run of the project taught the group three things: 

1. Data and numbers are not boring contrary to popular belief. There is magic in numbers and figures, you just need to be patient with them. 
2. Patience is a virtue. There are days when the challenges push volunteers to the limits but when they do not give up, and just keep moving forward, even with tiny steps, they can actually see the silver lining.  Patience teaches resilience and grit. It helps people grounded, it tells ‘do not pack your bags and go’, try something else. Leave for a while and come back again when people are not tired. Patience tells not to force things when it cannot find the right data or information people are not looking for. Calm down and try other ways because it might just work. 
3. Team effort. These amount of data, 10 years of Philippine local government’s financial data uploaded to Wikidata, could not have seen the light of day without the help and inspiration of other Wikimedians across the globe, lending hand, showing support, teaching the team. The group are grateful for that spirit. 

Lastly, the volunteers discovered a new love for data. Data gathering, harvesting and processing is like going through the pains of pregnancy, labor and birthpain. Once a person see the child being born to the world, in this case gathered data being publicly available on Wikidata, all the challenges, all the sacrifice, all the pain will vanish and joy and satisfaction from the team’s efforts will fill everyone’s heart. The result is rewarding.  SKAP also encourages new editors, even those who have not yet tried Wikidata to not be afraid of dealing with data and numbers. The global community of Wikidata is always there to help. If you have Wikidata projects, all you have to do is reach out and ask for help and guidance.

What’s next for SKAP? More Wikidata projects for next year and more collaborative and strategic Wikidata alliances with other global communities.