The Generalitat de Catalunya drives the opening and reuse of open data through the sessions Cafè amb Dades

Last December, the Generalitat de Catalunya harvests with data.gob.es more than 500 datasets, which are now accessible through our data catalogue. But the work of the Generalitat to promote the opening and reuse of public information goes back several years.

The new open data portal of the Generalitat de Catalunya was launched in 2017. This portal currently presents 591 datasets in its catalogue. The most visited are the following:

1. Contractació de Catalunya (Hiring of Catalonia)
2. Dades d’immissió dels punts de mesurament de la Xarxa de Vigilància i Previsió de la Contaminació Atmosfèrica (data of immission of the measurement points of the Atmospheric Pollution Monitoring and Forecast Network)
3. Contractació de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Contracter Menors (Hiring of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Minor Contracts)
4. Codi de conducta dels alts càrrecs. Agenda pública amb grups d'interès. (Code of conduct for senior officials. Public agenda with interest groups)

This portal is based on Socrata technology, which in addition to functioning as a data repository, offers a series of services that facilitate reuse, such as downloading in multiple formats, creating filters and data visualizations, and accessing data via REST API.

In addition to the data catalogue, the portal also offers other resources, such as articles, guides or examples of visualizations or use cases of open data reuse. In this sense, the Generalitat also tries to promote the dissemination of its data catalogue through events such as "Café amb Dades".

Café amb Dades: informative sessions to boost the use of open data

“Café amb Dades” is a series of informative sessions organized by the Secretary of Transparency and Open Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya to promote knowledge and use of open data among Catalan public administrations staff, society and the world business. In this sense, the act wants to bring to the public and private sector the benefits of open data, both internally and organizationally, as well as socially and economically, through practical and close cases.

It is a space designed to share and exchange experiences and knowledge in a relaxed atmosphere, accompanied by a good coffee. For this, it is based on 4 pillars:

• Pedagogy: The sessions seek to publicize the open data strategy of the Generalitat and its impact on the different areas.
• Dynamism: The event consists in short presentations, with understandable content without the need for technical knowledge, easy to digest, listen and surprising.
• Networking: These are participatory, open sessions to dialogue, know and create community.
• Application: One of the objectives of the “Café amb Dades” is to promote the reuse of data through practical, concrete and real cases, which have occurred both in public administrations and in civil society, highlighting different benefits depending on the subject of the session and the speakers.

These pillars are reflected in a clear structure, in common for the different sessions of “Cafè amb Dades”. The Director General of Transparency and open data always opens the session, explaining the latest news about the service, the main projects and the latest datasets published on the Portal. Next, a speaker outside the administration explains his experience in reusing open data. According to the content of this experience, the organizers look for experiences within the Generalitat with some link to the theme of the main presentation.

As an example, members of the Visualization Group of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), as well as technicians from Catalunya Radio and the Center for Telecommunications and Information Technologies (CTTI) of the Generalitat participated in the last “Cafè amb Dades”, in a ICT oriented sessions. In another previous session, there was a data journalist who investigated the distribution of dining scholarships from the open data, so it was decided to focus the entire act on social services.

In short, it is an attractive formula to disseminate the benefits of open data. Together with the rest of the strategy for promoting the culture of openness and reuse of public information of the Generalitat de Catalunya, it helps promote the creation of new services and products based on this raw material of great value for society as a whole.