Interview with Julián Moyano, Aragón Open Data

The open data portal of Aragon emerged in 2012 and has not stopped growing since then. It currently has more than 2,100 datasets and a large number of applications. During these years it has incorporated new features to adapt to the real needs of citizens, such as its information structure that improves interoperability and homogenises the available data, or the incorporation of applications such as Open Analytics Data, which offers statistics related to the use of the most important portals of the Government of Aragon.

In the last few months, they have been working on the Aragon Open Data Focus Initiative, aimed at getting to know open data publishers and users better. To find out more about this interesting project and the rest of the activities they are developing, we have spoken to Julián Moyano, Technical Advisor of the General Directorate of Electronic Administration and Information Society, Department of Science, University and Knowledge Society of the Government of Aragon.

Full interview

1. What is Aragon Open Data Focus and what are its strategic points?

Aragon Open Data Focus is a way of bringing the data of the Government of Aragon's open data portal closer to society, and to those people who are not so familiar with the data, in order to encourage their use and interpretation.

Bringing together the data available in Aragon Open Data has required a better understanding of the real needs of the users and groups involved. These are the four strategic points of this work:

• Firstly, we have started with an initial analysis of the data and services available in Aragon Open Data.
• Second, through this analysis we have defined potential groups of users and agents of interest.
• Thirdly, from this point onwards, different meetings have been organised with these groups to look for synergies and establish lines of work.
• Fourthly, all this has resulted in the service called Aragon Open Data Focus with digital stories and narratives based on available open data and the concerns of the users.

Aragón Open Data Focus es una manera de acercar los datos del portal de datos abiertos del Gobierno de Aragón, Aragón Open Data, a la sociedad, y a aquellas personas que no están tan familiarizadas con los datos para favorecer su uso e interpretación.

2. To learn more about the users’ needs, you have held various virtual meetings. What groups have you met with and what conclusions have you drawn from these conversations?

The meetings have been a very important part of Aragon Open Data Focus. At the beginning of 2020, 8 meetings had been planned in person, to encourage participation and direct contact with these agents involved. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the first of those meetings had to be suspended, rescheduling the agenda of participants and calendar, to be held by videoconference. There has been a great deal of online activity and it has been very well received by the different groups of participants. The groups we have worked with have been:

• Public sector organisations: focused on companies and other public sector entities.
• Storytellers: journalists.
• Companies that reuse data.
• Students.
• Directors, managers and senior executives of private and public organisations.
• Developers and programmers from the technology sector.
• Auditors of public action, citizens' groups and social movements.
• Citizens, in general, new to open data.

The conclusions of all these meetings have been very valuable. The first of these is that it is necessary to talk and debate "one-on-one" with the agents involved, with the recipients of the services, with the possible and potential users of the data, in order to know their needs much better and share them in Aragon Open Data.

Some of the conclusions I would like to highlight that were obtained with the user groups were:  

• Those responsible for public sector bodies are demanding more cooperation within the administrations in order to correctly articulate the effort in terms of transparency and open data.
• Users with a more technical profile and familiar with the data demand more data in open formats, of better quality, improved descriptions, level of disaggregation and updated in real time.
• Interested parties and users with more general profiles want possibilities to relate data from different sources, visualisations, geopositioning of available open data, map visualisations and downloadable geographical information in open formats and with the possibility of integrating them into other websites.
• In addition, open data portals need to improve their dynamization, dissemination and constant approach to data providers and users. Permanent and rapid attention is also requested to new demands for open data or the resolution of users' doubts, linking any action to the culture of openness and transparency on the part of Public Administrations.

It should also be noted that the content, dynamics and conclusions of each of the events are available on the Government of Aragon's website: https://www.aragon.es/-/los-datos-abiertos-mas-cerca-de-la-sociedad-aragon-open-data-focus.

3. What actions are you developing to respond to user requests?

The meetings have been intense, full of ideas, proposals and debates. Now it is time to record the conclusions of these meetings in order to work on the action lines and demands suggested.

It is necessary to emphasize that these meetings and their conclusions are aligned with the Strategy of Aragon Open Data in which the evolution of the web portal of Aragon Open Data and the map of agents (journalists, researchers, citizens) that work with open data to offer an integral vision of the service are analysed. That is why Aragon Open Data Focus has a place in this Strategy.

With this, we continue profiling, working and complying with its lines of action, which allow us to promote the implication of the users and develop a data governance model that covers their demands: working on the opening of new resources, improving the existing ones and favouring their use.

4. What obstacles have you encountered when setting up Aragon Open Data Focus?

The main obstacle, as I have already pointed out, has been the coronavirus pandemic. Aragón Open Data Focus had a markedly face-to-face character, to talk and debate with those involved in a direct way with participative dynamics. We even had events planned in small villages and the rural environment of Aragon, to disseminate and share ideas about open data and to know first-hand their demands and needs. The pandemic made us change its dynamics and do it online, which has not been a problem either to hold these "meetings" and obtain conclusions.

Beyond that, we have noticed that users have great expectations about open data, and sometimes it is not easy to respond to them in this type of conference for different reasons: the inexistence of data in the administration (it is the responsibility of another organisation), technical problems, or due to the characteristics of the open data available. Circumstances that, although they may justify, not excuse, in detail the situation, are difficult to understand by the user or data demander, when we are in the 21st century, in the era of data and the digital economy.

5. What are the benefits for public administrations of this type of initiative?

Above all, it allows us to go deeper into the real needs of users and groups with whom we have worked in order to better focus our actions and future lines of work.

6. A few years ago, you told us that the datasets most demanded by users of Aragon Open Data were those related to the budget. Has this situation changed? What type of information do re-users demand now?

The budget data is still one of the most used in Aragon Open Data, both as open datasets and in the service that reflects it: https://presupuesto.aragon.es/

Today, if we look at the number of accesses, currently, the most demanded (it doubles the second resource with the most accesses) is data related to the coronavirus in Aragon, followed by cartographic data, data on the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) and statistical data.

7. How do you see the panorama of open data in Spain? What strengths do you think there are? And weaknesses? How could they be resolved?

The outlook in Spain is promising. Much has already been done to provide data in open formats by different public administrations at all territorial levels. Now, once their offer has grown in the number of datasets, the portals are been adapting to the demands of society which not only wants quantity, but also very specific data to make the most of it, for example: data on mobility, passenger transport, telecommunications infrastructures, digital services and health, in real time. This is in line with what the European Union has legislated on its new directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information as a strength. In other words, there is an important regulatory and institutional support for open data initiatives in Europe, in order to make the continent a truly data-based digital marketplace that improves the lives of citizens.

Weak points in the opening up of open data, which has good regulatory and legal backing, may be the response times for including a set of data requested from a given portal, and it would therefore be advisable to speed up the processes of opening up the data further. And in the event that there is no supplier acting as data manager, taking advantage of the possibilities of current technologies, for example, data recognition or automatic detection of schemes with quality and security validators, to allow open data to be opened and made available with the minimum of human intervention.

If data is an asset of the public administrations that serve citizens, companies and third parties in this new digital economy, they also have to lose that aura of closure and ownership, which they sometimes give off.