Open Development Cambodia is soon to become an official Cambodian NGO. On July 10, ODC’s governing board was installed and by-laws promulgated in a brief ceremony at the EWMI office, shared by ODC. The board, comprised of seven members with a vast range of knowledge and experiences in Cambodia’s development, particularly in IT field, were announced to more than 20 supporters on hand to witness the event.  The ceremony was followed by a reception. Thy Try, one of the original members of ODC’s advisory group, was announced as the interim board chair. He will serve in that role for three months before exiting it to become ODC’s director in October 2013. This was a critical milestone in the localization of ODC, which expects to make application to the Ministry of Interior to register as a local NGO before the end of next week.  

Open Development Cambodia, has had a very successful year so far. On a monthly basis ODC posts hundreds of news items, receives thousands of visitors and has nearly 3,000 “Likes” on Facebook. The ODC was featured on the tech website, Geeks in Cambodia, and Loy 9, a BBC Media Action TV show, shared ODC’s press release on its Face Book page. 

On June 28th, 2013, ODC launched the much anticipated Election Page for the Cambodian election held at the end of July 2013, which features maps, briefings, documents, news, videos and past ballots. The page is in Khmer. The team is now working on a simpler parallel page containing basic information about Cambodian elections in English. The ODC staff has completed building a Phnom Penh Polling Station map and is uploading it into the site. After a few days of testing, a press release about the launch of the new page was sent out to various media outlets, aid agencies, universities, professional networks, and NGOs on July 4.