Open Data Euskadi: a consolidated and sustainable open data portal

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Fecha de la noticia: 05-11-2018

An increasing number of governments support the development of initiatives to favor public information opening, due to its multiple benefits. One example is Open Data Euskadi, the open data initiative of Basque Government.

Open Data Euskadi works jointly with the three provincial councils and the town halls of the three capitals of the Autonomous Community with the aim of promoting the openness and reuse of public sector information. Since its launch in April 2010, this initiative has driven the opening of more than 3000 data sets with reusable formats and open use licenses.

Its activity is principally based on 3 lines of action:

Federation of catalogs. Basque regional and local administrations can automatically publish their datasets in Open Data Euskadi Catalog. Its objective is to offer a single access point for all the public open datasets in the region. These data facilitate citizens to have a better knowledge of their political and social environment, improving transparency, but also favor the creation of new applications and services through their reuse. Within all data included in Open Data Euskadi catalog, meteorological, traffic and environmental data are the most reused, while data related to administration activities and organization (list of jobs, remuneration of public positions, etc.) are the most downloaded.

Promotion actions. Open Data Euskadi actively participates in activities and events to publicize the open data catalogs and promote their reuse through the organization of open data contests. Within the promotion activities, the ideas and applications competitions stand out, as well as the training courses to workers from Basque administrations, which contribute to increase the open data awareness of public employees.

Creation of a data community. Open Data Euskadi has launched an inter-institutional working group composed of citizens and experts working together to identify possible challenges and opportunities in the open data world.

Nowadays, Open Data Euskadi is one of the fundamental pillars of the transparency strategy of Basque Government. Currently, the transparency area of Basque Government is working on several projects with the aim of offering more high quality data to encourage its use and reuse. Some of these projects are:

Opening of additional meteorological data and improvement in access to facilitate their reuse.

Data visualization portal of Basque Government. The objective is to create a space where collect visualizations or graphics related to the existing datasets in OpenData Euskadi and other Basque Government sources, to make data more accessible, consumable and understandable for citizens.

Incorporation of a higher number of data linked to the Open Linked Data infrastructure of Open Data Euskadi.

Unique and depurated repository of persons (public positions ...), entities (public and private entities, foundations, associations, etc.) and equipment (buildings, facilities, etc.) to link open data of Basque Government.

Implementation of a pilot project for the homogenization and standardization of open data from different Basque public administrations (Commitment within the Open Government Partnership - OGP). This would help to offer more integrated information, facilitating its reuse.