Other sources of data

Much of the time, however, you may not be able to find the specific data you need neatly packaged in an open data portal. The South African Department of Basic Education, for example, publishes a lot of reports containing tables of school and learner performance, but only in PDF format.

Many monthly reports, such as this financial inclusion report in Kenya, may also require hunting on central bank or statistics office websites.

Academic reports are also a good source of well sourced data - if you find an article about the subject you are interested in that doesn't include a dataset you think exists, often the authors will may be happy to help.

Commercial sources, such as industry analysts or organisations that maintain databases of information for a specific trade (for example a standardised list of used car prices for vehicle dealerships) may be able to help too. While these would normally charge for access, they may offer some assistance to journalists free of charge - it doesn't hurt to ask.