The value of open data in Public Administrations

The public sector should not only be consideres a large open data provider, but also as one of the main and first users in any government open data project. According to the report on success stories and best practices for the re-use of public sector information, it has been estimated that almost 60% of infomediary companies have clients as public administrations. Open data can directly benefit administrations in a variety of ways, helping optimize the use of available government resources and improving public services, promoting innovation and increasing transparency and active citizen participation.

Lograr una administración pública ágil y eficiente es clave para su correcto funcionamiento. Los datos abiertos pueden proporcionar mejoras en la eficiencia y efectividad de la administración de diferentes maneras.

Achieving an agile and efficient public administration is essential for its proper functioning. Open data can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of administration in different ways:

On the other hand, the openness of an increasing amount of data is also enabling the implementation of novel and innovative ideas and practices in the field of public management, such as:

• Allowing the administration or third parties to use the data to develop new innovative services or improve the efficiency of existing public services through complementary or alternative solutions.
• Identifying patterns through the data analysis to make the most appropriate and informed decisions.
• Encouraging administrations to take a more active role in developing and implementing public policies.
• Contributing to the increase of the data quality, being able to benefit from the improvements proposed by the reusers of them. 

Finally, thanks to open data, significant improvements are being made in the transparency and accountability of administrations, as well as increasing the possibilities of citizen participation, through actions such as:

• Enabling the creation of applications and platforms that allow citizens to directly report on their experience with public services, providing valuable feedback to administrations.
• Enabling a better monitoring and knowledge of the daily government actions and decisions, thanks to a greater information availability and a better accessibility to it.
• Improving the active participation and the commitment of the citizens with public policies thanks to a better understanding of them. 
• Contributing to the recovery of citizens' trust in public administrations and their governments.

In short, open data is being used not only by society as a whole to actively participate in their governments and influence the way in which public services are implemented, but they are also being used by administrations themselves to feed back, reflect, collaborate, understand, learn and be able to begin a new era of data driven policies.