We are Åpenhet: Yasser Lahbibi
At Åpenhet, we're all about turning data into tools for real-world impact, and our team is the heart of that mission. Meet Yasser Lahbibi, our co-founder and Chief Technical Officer. Yasser's journey from political science to data innovation is a testament to the blend of expertise and passion that fuels our work.
7/16/2024A Background Rooted in Political Science and a Passion for Technology
Yasser Lahbibi started his journey in the field of political science. With education from Science Po in Paris and Freie Universität in Berlin, he specialised in international relations and policymaking. During an internship at the OECD, Yasser discovered the immense potential—and the challenges—of data in the public sector.
While working on public sector human resources, Yasser faced the all-too-common task of managing extensive datasets across countless Excel sheets, manually generating reports for each country. Thinking back to his early programming days, he wondered if he could create a simple tool to streamline the process. He ended up creating a tool that automated data analysis and report generation, turning months of work into a week's task. His efficiency caught the eye of his superiors, leading to an introduction to Kleng, a Norwegian delegate known for his interest in technical innovation, data visualisation and data dissemination.
“It hadn't really occurred to me until this point that it was actually possible to do both of the things that I like the most: policymaking and programming.”
Building our ethos and scaling our impact
Yasser and Kleng eventually co-founded Åpenhet. Early on they had strong ideas on how data-for-impact was missing its full potential
“We clearly knew that there is a massive amount of data that is just sitting there, and no one is looking at it. Data that’s being reproduced 10 times over by different organisations on the same topic, and not necessarily shared. And so, we thought, it's not that the data doesn’t exist, the problem is that it's either inaccessible or unusable by third party users. And so, slowly but surely, this is kind of the direction we took.”
Given both their backgrounds, it was only natural that Åpenhet began working with the OECD, initially producing digital tools for the SIGMA team, and today, Åpenhet is a testament to Yasser and Kleng's vision. We've developed tools that help various organisations share crucial data, from public integrity to environmental conservation. Yasser takes pride in projects like the Walk Free Modern Slavery Portal and tools built for the OECD, Save The Children, or the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. But acknowledges the limitations of such bespoke services when thinking about our bigger vision.
When you look at civil society at large, there are thousands and thousands of organisations - a lot of them smaller organisations - that are working on some very specific yet very important topics. But they will never have the capacity, be it financial or human, to work with us the way we have with some bigger organisations, simply because they cannot afford it.
Looking to the future of data-driven impact solutions, Yasser envisions more organisations being able to harness the power of data independently. By developing user-friendly self-build tools, we can lower the barrier to entry for smaller organisations, enabling them to use advanced data visualisation and management systems without significant financial or technical investments.
If we're able to empower organisations to build their own tool the way they want, the way they think would be the most impactful, I think we can make it a lot more accessible. And that’s important because our vision has always been to share as much data as we can. We truly believe that, especially in the realm of policymaking, the more accurate information you have, the more rational and informed decisions you can make.
And that is exactly what we have been working on here at Åpenhet, a tool that democratises data-driven impact solutions. Follow us on Linkedin for to be the first to hear about it.
