The FEMP develops an Open Data Guide for municipalities and local entities

On Friday July 7, the Federation of Municipalities and Provinces of Spain (FEMP) presented the "Strategic Guide to Open Data - Minimum Data Sets to be published" which condenses actions, guidelines and recommendations for municipalities and local authorities to publish their data in a useful and effective fashion for its use and reuse by citizens, organizations, companies or other administrations.

The document was prepared by the Open Data Group of the Network of Local Entities for Transparency and Citizen Participation of the Federation, made up of technical managers from various municipalities and other entities, and offers a work itinerary for the opening of data and its reuse by local administrations.

Specifically, this Guide details the model map of an open data portal (basic components, conditions of use or terms of reuse), the legal framework for the reuse of public sector information, data recommendations), as well as the technological plan (tools, platforms and formats), along with measurement systems (indicators for measuring open data initiatives, indexes, popularity and utility of data, etc.).

It also incorporates a Training and Dissemination Plan that includes training for technical personnel who work with data, training for citizens, and also establishes basic skills and training for citizens.

The work team that developed this document decided to define concepts and to differentiate between transparency and open data, between channel and tool and between data and information. In the section intended to show the typical map of an open data portal, it details the basic components that a portal must have and a series of recommendations are added. It also establishes the set of minimum data to be published by each municipality. Specifically, it details a series of essential components that a portal must have (catalogue, search engine, filtering, conditions of use, API services, etc.), as well as a series of recommended components (SPARQL service). This classification of mandatory / basic and recommended was made according to the results of a survey conducted by a group of re-users and managers of open data portals in Spain.

The Guide - available on paper and in digital version - defines a technology plan to be able to integrate the technology within a strategy of opening data, and it ranges from the tools needed for data cleaning, extraction and transformation and visualizers, to platforms, reusable formats, standards, data interoperability and security.

Although this Open Data Guide is specifically aimed at municipalities, it can also become a useful consultation and user manual for other public administrations, institutions, agencies, companies, citizens, entrepreneurs, university students and all other stakeholders who need information about data and its reuse.

In sum it is a document which aims to familiarize citizens and society with the world of Open Data and offers a set of tools to develop open data projects in an easy, simple way.