Interview with Josema Alonso, Open Data Program Director at the World Wide Web Foundation

Interview with Josema Alonso, Open Data Program Director at the World Wide Web Foundation.

1. According to your experience with the open data program at the WWW Foundation, what are the greatest impacts of open data publication?

One of the greatest impacts of open data publication is the transparency and accountability of Public Administrations. Moreover, open data enable the creation of added value services by companies, which subsequently commercialize them. 

Another important aspect that should be highlighted is the improvement of public services. The eGoverment has long arrived, enabling a number of changes and facilities in the relation between the citizens and the Administration. In this way, the open data help optimize those services, which to a great extent are new services provided by the Administration. For example, in the last years there are so easy apps that a citizen can report to a local administration on a bump in a road to make the Administration repair it in an effective way.  

2. How were the beginnings of open data in Europe and what is the future of this sector?

In Europe the open data came introduced by the re-use of public sector information, though both concepts are not exactly the same, but we started to see the use by the industry and there was an important industrial base in the private sector. The transformation of the re-use of the PSI into open data has made the community that uses those data increase significantly.

In addition, there was a wave of campaigns, usually developed by the social society to promote government accountability, aimed at publishing data regardless of the format, where or how they were, with the only goal of “knowing”: learning about the information collected by the Administrations and subsequently checking if it was useful or not.

For a time, in my opinion, it worked. It had an effect on the public administration worldwide and data began to be published. The problem, about which I have been talking since a couple of years, is that we are focusing on the tool instead of the impact of this tool in society.

In the last two or three years, from the WWW Foundation we have insisted on the open data utility: we shall see problems in the world that can be solved through open data. Nowadays, this evolution is starting to have effect. I think that in the next years we will see a greater recognition by the citizens. Perhaps, they will ignore that open data are being used but they will see services and applications that re-use that information which, at the end, benefits them.

3. Which is the role played by the World Wide Web Foundation? What is the place of open data in those functions?

The Foundation was established by the Web creator, Tim Berners-Lee, with the goal of keeping the Web free and free-of-charge, maintaining the freedom of expression and any type of association, while care is taken to keep it decentralized, no monopolized or governed by any administration or government in the world.  

The WWW Foundation works in three areas: access, digital rights and participation. In the first of them, we try that the web access is the most affordable as possible to make its cost no be over the 5% of the average monthly salary in the developing countries. Though we are a long way from achieving this goal.

As regards the Digital Rights, we work especially with the freedom of expression and individual privacy. Always taking into account the security that governments must have and carry out in any web activity. And, finally, in the Participation program, led by me, we work to give voice to citizens through open data.

We have been working together in these three areas in the last years, since the Foundation was created. Now we are seeing an increasing evolution in the intersection of the three pillar in which we work, for example, there is increasingly a talk of open data and privacy. In this way, we are seeing that this type of areas where our pillars join is where we will have to work more in the following years.

4.  How has the Open Data Charter helped open data in the world?

The idea behind the Open Data Charter is pretty simple: harvesting the knowledge and best practices of those countries which are more advanced in open data and helping other nation develop properly their open data policies. In this way, administrations around the world were invited to make those best practices be applied globally.

Nowadays, we are creating implementation guidelines, both general and sectoral ones, to make the agencies implement more easily the Open Data Charter principles. At the moment, we are in the phase of the Charter adoption. Currently, thirty local and regional Administration throughout the world have signed the Charter, including the Spanish Government or the Madrid City Council. We expect that in the future the number of Charter members increases considerably.

There are already important success cases of both external and internal economic benefits for the administrations. There are many cases on the European Data Portal, for example, of efficiency in the administration that allow saving public money or of accountability of parliamentary activity.

5. How can open data help eradicate poverty and corruption in the world, two of the Sustainable Development Goals established by the UN?

Open data will not eradicate poverty, but they can contribute to its eradication in some way. How? The WWW Foundation has investigation cases in Africa where, for example, open data can help improve the water quality, detect the pollution or identify where breakdowns are to solve them as soon as possible.

In addition, this is the year of the fight against corruption and the countries commitment has been growing steadily.  Finally, it has been understood that this is a black hole in the global economies, affecting the citizens.