Global Data Barometer – Data Visualization Challenge 2025

The Global Data Barometer invites you to get creative, explore our data, and help tell powerful stories about data for the public good. Join our international Data Visualization Challenge and put your skills to work on critical issues affecting the Global South.

Key Dates:

• Registration deadline: July 1, 2025
• Submission deadline: July 16, 2025
• Winners announced: July 29, 2025

 

Steps:

To participate, just follow two simple steps:

1. Register by July 1st
2. Submit your visualization by July 16th

👉 Register Now https://forms.gle/psBjRxH55xfDKBWW7 

About the challenge 

The GDB Dataviz Challenge is open to everyone,  regardless of age, country, or experience level. Whether you are a designer, researcher, developer, student, or storyteller, we invite you to create visualizations using data from the second edition of the Global Data Barometer.

Your data visualization can take any form:

Infographic, dashboard, animation, interactive app, static chart, PDF report, all formats are welcome.

You can work individually or as a team!

 

Categories & Prizes

• 1st Place: USD $500
• 2nd Place: USD $350

Bonus for the winners: 

• Certificates of recognition by international organizations, including OCP and ILDA.
• Featured on the GDB website and social channels.

 

Datasets & Themes

Your work must use at least one dataset from the GDB’s 2nd edition (available on the  GDB website).You may also include other open datasets, as long as all sources are properly cited.

Suggested Themes:

Global Data Barometer Landscape: Visualize the outcomes of one, some or all of the action areas and its indicators. To understand the structure, we encourage you to download the full report, available in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. 

Action areas:

• Public procurement: It evaluates the presence of frameworks and the availability of structured data covering the procurement planning, tender, award, and implementation phases.
• Budget and spending: It evaluates frameworks and platforms that facilitate the publication of detailed, disaggregated, and machine-readable data on key aspects of government finance.
• Company register: Explores the foundations of corporate transparency, an essential component in the fight against corruption, tax evasion, and the abuse of power. Transparent company information allows journalists, civil society, and oversight bodies to trace links between corporate structures and political influence, identify potential conflicts of interest, and expose illicit financial flows. 
• Beneficial ownership of companies : It evaluates the availability and openness of data regarding the people behind opaque corporate fronts.

• Political finance: Examines the legal and regulatory frameworks that require political parties and political campaigns to disclose information about how they raise and spend money

• Interest and asset declarations: It evaluates the strengths of legal or regulatory frameworks that require public officials to declare their interests and assets in order to avoid conflicts of interest and illicit enrichment
• Lobbying:  The Barometer evaluates the implementation of legal and regulatory frameworks that govern lobbying data, typically in the form of lobbying registers, and whether the data from these registers is available to the public.

• RTI performance: The Barometer examines the transparency of a country’s right to information processes as defined by legal and regulatory frameworks that govern the release of RTI performance data.
• Political integrity interoperability: The Barometer examines the interoperability of key political integrity datasets, both at the basic level of detailed documentation and with regard to the consistency of formats, standards, data fields, and identifiers.

• Land tenure: It examines how data provides insight into ownership, leases, usage rights, and customary claims, helping to clarify who has legal or recognized rights over land.
• Land use: It examines how land data is being developed or utilized, whether for agriculture, housing, commerce, conservation, or other purposes.

• Data protection: It evaluates data protection frameworks regarding AI, location data, choice and consent above others.
• Data management: Evaluates the practices that ensures data quality, usability, and security throughout the data lifecycle
• Data sharing: Data sharing involves granting specific stakeholders access to data while implementing defined use limitations and control mechanisms. 
• Data literacy: It evaluates the data skills and literacy levels of public officials. Training civil servants to manage and use data effectively is fundamental to embedding data practices across government operations. 
• Data reuse: Examines how data become a shared asset that is available, usable, and leveraged for decision-making, innovation, and accountability through open data policies and initiatives. 
• Accessibility: Evaluates how well data ecosystems enable all segments of the population to access, use, and benefit from data, thereby promoting equity and addressing systemic disparities.
• Language: Evaluates how inclusive are the language policies in data publication.
• Data foundations for AI: Explores how AI intersects with key components of data governance, such as data protection, data sharing,

The Regional landscape: Visualize the status of data for the public good across regions or specific countries of your choice.

Open theme: Any compelling story that helps understand data for the public good using GDB data.

Rules

• Your data visualization must use at least one dataset from the GBD’s 2nd edition survey.
• You may use additional open datasets, provided they are openly licensed and properly credited.
• Submissions must be publicly accessible—for example, shared via Tableau Public, GitHub, a website, or as a downloadable PDF.
• Submissions should be shared via a link (you will enter this in the submission form). Please ensure that links are active and permissions are set to “public.”
• Anyone from any country or territory can participate.
• Participants must be 18 years of age or older.
• You are free to use any data visualization tools of your choice. 
• Participation in the challenge is free of charge. 
• Submissions must be in English
• Selected entries may be published on the GDB website and social media. Authors retain full credit and ownership of their work.

 

Recommendations:

• We strongly encourage you to read the report (available in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese in the website) so you’ll have a better understanding of how the research was conducted and structured. 
• You are welcome to include a brief readme or explanation with your submission link to guide judges through your visualization and data choices

Questions?

Contact:  macarena@globaldatabarometer.org