Interview with Wendy Carrara

Interview with Wendy Carrara, project manager of the European Data Portal of the European Commission.

What role does the European Commission, especially DG CONNECT, play in the promotion of openness and re-use of public sector information?

The European Commission has been supporting accessibility and re-use of public sector information for quite some time now. Public sector information is data collected by governments. Most of which can be released openly without infringing any privacy concerns. The revised public sector information directive that had to be transposed into National legislation by July 2015 further underlines the ambition to systematically publish data for free or a marginal cost. Now looking at DG CONNECT, it is at the forefront in contributing to the Digital Single Market. The Digital aspect is something that we tend to take for granted as we have gotten used to browsing the Internet for pretty much everything and anything. It’s a natural step for the European Single market to make the best out of the digital world to drive its economy and society. The Digital Agenda for Europe, as well as previous initiatives and now all the activities launched in the context of the Digital Single Market are clear illustrations of this ambition.

As part of the Action Plan of the European Commission in favor of data economy, the European Data Portal (EDP) launched its final version last February. We would like you to explain us the mid-term roadmap of EDP, which are the next steps of this European initiative?

The EDP is currently collecting information about the data – so called metadata – made available by national portals across Europe. Currently we are harvesting data from over 70 different catalogues all over Europe covering 34 European countries, for a total of close to 600,000 data sets. Our next steps consist of enhancing the portal by making the data easier to find and follow. We have recently added a registration feature enabling users to save their SPARQL queries as well as follow specific data sets and catalogues. Users can therefore access specific data sets more easily. RSS feeds also enable users to receive notifications if the data sets are updated. Small enhancements are also being made to make the user interface increasingly user friendly, such as adding pictograms and flags to give more information about the data at first glance. Another series of updates consist of adding a calendar listing events organized in different countries that address open data directly or indirectly. We will also have a dashboard showing how countries are doing in the field of open data, the maturity of their open data policy, as well as how developed their portals are. Both the dashboard and the calendar will be released for the International Open Data Conference taking place in Madid in October.

Currently we are harvesting data from over 70 different catalogues all over Europe covering 34 European countries, for a total of close to 600,000 data sets.

In addition, there are many ongoing updates such as the addition of use cases to the library section. The Portal is also multilingual. Currently it is available in 12 languages and we will be having all 24 languages by the end of this year. It’s not just the user interface that is translated. We use one of the European Commission tools to translate metadata from all data sets into all official EU languages. This way, data can be found from any country and whatever the language. In our featured data section on the Portal, we regularly publish insight and compare data from one country to another, that’s a practical illustration of how it easy it can become to use open data.

We use one of the European Commission tools to translate metadata from all data sets into all official EU languages.

To ensure more data is published by countries and easy to discover, we will continue promoting the DCAT-Application Profile which is a very practical standard to ensure all data sets have high quality metadata. It’s a bit like the ID card of the dataset.

As Project Manager for the implementation and launch of the European Data Portal, which were the biggest challenges managing this project?

That’s a very interesting question! One of the biggest challenges lies in presenting everything we want to share in a meaningful manner. The data, the training, the studies, and all the resources we have to share. Open data isn’t just something for the techies, it is something that everyone can benefit from if they have a good understanding of what open data can do for them. Policy makers, managers, data publishers and of course the technical people, citizens, businesses, civil society, etc, all have a part to play. The idea was to convey the relevant messages to each of these persona and make sure they could visit the portal and find what they were most interested in. With that in mind, the next challenge is of course how to structure the data. Finding a meaningful way to take into consideration the diversity of working with 28 plus countries can be a challenge. Our technical architecture is therefore quite complex! Add to that the multilingual aspect where we had to make sure that names and labels were equivalent from one language to the next. Here several European thesauri exist, such as Eurovoc, mapping equivalences in all official EU languages. This was very helpful. Alongside, we have contributed to the DCAT-AP developments mentioned above. We are also working closely with the countries on checking mappings we have made from the data their portal have to the data categories of the DCAT-AP. All this takes time but the countries are very cooperative.

Open data isn’t just something for the techies, it is something that everyone can benefit from if they have a good understanding of what open data can do for them.

How does the EDP help to open data movement in Europe?

The European Data Portal is all about making data accessible across Europe. Imagine the diversity of data sets being published across Europe, add to that the different languages they are published in. The EDP brings information about all this data together and provides it in a multilingual fashion. Anyone using any European language can search through the data made available. Imagine you’re looking for a list of cycling paths in the Netherlands but you want to be able to search for this data in Spanish.

We are also making a lot of learning resources accessible online. Anyone can follow the eLearning modules or run their own open data session using the material from the Training Companion. References are added on a regular basis to ensure these training features of the portal are up to date and relevant.

All in all, I would say that it’s not just data that we’re making accessible, it’s open data in general, by making it easier to understand and see what benefits it can deliver.

In your opinion... What measures would be needed to continue promoting the reuse of data within the EU?

There are a number of EU initiatives around promoting the Digital Single Market. The Free Flow of Data Initiative will be launched this autumn. It will include open data of course, as it is part of the broader data agenda.

Promoting the reuse of data is something that will continue of course. In November, the European Data Portal will release a study built on a survey of how businesses are making use of open data. This will help further communicate the benefits of open data to a broader audience.

Apart from the pan-european website, in which other initiatives is the European Commission working to encourage openness and re-use of data by the member states?

The European Commission is involved in supporting a large range of activities in the field of open data. To name a few projects, for the past 18 months, the Open Data Incubator for Europe has been distributing grants to small business making use of open data. Other projects funded under the Horizon 2020 funding programme or other programmes address how to make use of data. The Policy Compass is a very interesting example of how to aggregate and analyse data.

In addition, there have been two calls for funding that have been open since the beginning of the year to support cross-border harmonisation processes. The calls address the aggregation/harmonisation of datasets covering cross-border areas in priority domains. Of course the Free Flow of Data initiative will strengthen the policy ambition underpinning current and future actions.

Beyond the economic potential of the re-use of public sector information, how can open data help address the social challenges in the EU and what open data initiatives do you know whose goal is to improve the quality of life in European cities?

There are a number of other projects looking into the benefits of open data, supporting startups or combining open and big data together. When we were writing the report on open data and cities, it was amazing to see how many local initiatives have been taken at city-level to drive open data in the context of smart city-related activities. Our study showed that one of the most popular datasets are linked to mobility. Cities are close to the people and to the data. They can work on environmental issues as well as urban planning together for instance. It’s all about making better use of the evidence they have to govern their actions. It’s also about sharing the data with the community in order to improve existing activities and develop innovative services.

Most popular datasets are linked to mobility. Cities are close to the people and to the data.