Noticia
On 16 May, Lanzarote became the epicentre of open culture and open data in Spain with the celebration of the IV Encuentro Nacional de Datos Abiertos (ENDA). Under the slogan "Data in the culture of open knowledge", this edition brought together more than a hundred experts, professionals and open data enthusiasts to reflect on how to boost the development and progress of our society through free access to information.
The event, held in the emblematic Jameos del Agua Auditorium, was organised by the Government of the Canary Islands, through the Directorate General for the Digital Transformation of Public Services, the Directorate General for Transparency and Citizen Participation, the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics and the Island Council of Lanzarote under the brand "Canarias Datos Abiertos".
The transformation to data-driven organisations
The day began with the inauguration by Antonio Llorens de la Cruz, Vice Councillor for Administrations and Transparency of the Government of the Canary Islands, and Miguel Ángel Jiménez Cabrera, Councillor of the Area of Presidency, Human Resources, New Technologies, Energy, Housing, Transport, Mobility and Accessibility of the Island Council of Lanzarote.
This was followed by a talk by Óscar Corcho García, Professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, who addressed the " Challenges in the transformation of an organisation to be data-centric, using knowledge graphs. The case of the European Railway Agency ". Corcho presented the case study of the European Railway Agency (ERA).
In his presentation, Corcho insisted that the transformation from a traditional to a data-driven organisation goes far beyond technology implementation. This transformation process requires strengthening the legal framework, harmonising processes, vocabularies and master data, establishing governance of the ontology model and creating a community of users to further enrich the model.
In this process, metadata, data catalogues and reference data are key elements. In addition, knowledge graphs are essential tools for connecting and integrating data from proprietary systems.
Open data for science in the service of public decisions
The first of the roundtables addressed how open data can serve science to improve public decisions. Participants highlighted the need to strengthen the data economy, move towards technological sovereignty and promote effective citizen participation.
Diego Ramiro Fariñas, Director of the Institute of Economics, Geography and Demography of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), highlighted:
- The importance of longitudinal data infrastructures, i.e. data that are collected over time for the same units.
- The value of linked data in breaking down information silos.
- The need to preserve statistical heritage.
- The project Es_Datalab, which allows cross-referencing data such as those of the Tax Agency with those of Health.
- The potential of synthetic data to reduce bias in AI applications.
Ramiro Fariñas also emphasised that the National Statistics Institute has transformed its entire statistical production towards data mining, and that leading institutes such as the Canary Islands and Andalusia are improving the publication of data to improve public policies. He pointed out two fundamental aspects: the need for greater interlocution between data producers and the training of administration staff to overcome the main barriers to putting science at the service of public decisions.
Izaskun Lacunza Aguirrebengoa, Director of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), stressed the importance of transforming the model of science, making it easier for scientific institutions to protect and share research information. He explained the concept of open science in contrast to some of the current practices, where knowledge generated with public funds ends up being controlled by private oligopolies that subsequently sell this processed information to the very institutions that generated it. Lacunza advocated public-public collaboration through initiatives such as the Office of Science and Technology in Congress.
Another participant in this round table was Tania Gullón Muñoz-Repiso, Coordinator of the Innovation and Geospatial Analysis Area of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, who shared how data is crucial for the management of emergencies such as the DANA. The Ministry's mobility data has hundreds of reusers, drives new businesses and enables predictive modelling. Gullón insisted that it is key that the data provided by citizens include an explanation of how it has been used, considering this feedback fundamental to give value to open science.
Open culture: removing barriers to knowledge
The round table "Open culture: how data brings us closer to knowledge" discussed how to remove barriers to access, study and transformation of knowledge so that it can be returned to society and its potential can be harnessed.
In this thematic block, Florencia Claes, Academic Director of Free Culture at the Office of Free Knowledge and Culture (OfiLibre) of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC), defined open culture as the current that seeks access to knowledge without barriers and the possibility of being able to appropriate that knowledge, study it and share it again with society. He highlighted interesting ideas such as that publishing content on the internet does not automatically mean that it is open, as open content must meet certain standards and conditions that are not always met.
Claes explained the value of Open Educational Resources (OER) and how the URJC has a specific office to disseminate open culture, open science and open data. He pointed out that there is a deficiency in the training of university teaching staff on licensing and OER, considering this training as a key element to advance in the culture of openness.
In addition, he stressed that mass access to data facilitates its control, error detection and improvement. For this, initiatives such as Wikimedia or OpenStreetMap are very interesting, both projects accept voluntary participation and your contribution is essential to building and maintaining online open environments.
At the same table, Julio Cordal Elviro, Head of the Area of Library Projects and responsible for relations with Europeana at the Ministry of Culture, explained the evolution of Europeana from simple harvester to digital library, with projects based on semantic metadata, highlighting the challenges of standardisation and digital preservation of more than 60 million cultural works. He explained that the emergence of Google Books acted as a catalyst to "get the ball rolling" in this area.
Cordal also presented the Hispanaproject, which compiles information on digitised collections throughout Spain and federates with Europeana, and mentioned that they have begun to generate OER. He underlined how the use of technologies such as OCR (rOptical Character Recognition) and the online availability of funds makes it easier for researchers to save infinite time in their work. "When you make data open and free, you are opening up new opportunities," he concluded.
On the other hand, José Luis Bueren Gómez-Acebo, Technical Directorof the National Library of Spain (BNE), shared the digital transformation process of the institution, its commitment to open licences and the importance of the emotional component that drives citizen participation in cultural projects.
Bueren explained how the BNE continues its work of compiling and digitising all the bibliographic works produced in Spain, keeping connected with Wikidata and other international libraries in a standardised way. Through initiatives such as BNE Data, they offer a more practical and didactic vision of the information they publish.
He stressed the importance of citizens re-appropriating the cultural content, feeling that it is theirs, recalling that the BNE is indebted to the scientific community and to all citizens. Among the innovative projects they are promoting, he mentioned the automatic transcription of manuscripts. As challenges for the future, he pointed to sustainability, the management of intellectual property and the need for cultural institutions to be able to adapt to new trends.
Prioritisation of public data openness
As in each edition, ENDA presented a specific challenge. This year, Casey Abernethy, Technical Manager of the Asociación Multisectorial de la Información (ASEDIE), and José de León Rojas, Head of the Negociado de Modernización del Cabildo Insular de Lanzarote, presented a methodology and tool to help public administrations decide what datasets they should publish and in what order of priority, based on:
- Data sets recommended by the FEMP.
- Priority sets defined in the UNE Standard on Smart Cities and Open Data.
- High-value assemblies according to European standards.
- Sets requested by ASEDIE (Top 10 ASEDIE).
- Sets derived from transparency indices or regulations.
The proposed methodology considers three fundamental indices: organisational maturity, technical difficulty and strategic relevance. The 4th challenge in the context of the Encuentro was specifically aimed at choosing the key datasets to be published in a public administration according to its open data maturity. This methodology has been implemented in an operational tool that can be found on the Meetings website.
The power of free software and open communities
During the afternoon, the panel "Unlocking the potential of open data" highlighted how free software and open communities drive the use and exploitation of open data:
- Emilio López Cano, Professor at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and president of the Hispanic R Community, showed how the R community facilitates the use of open data through specific packages.
- Miguel Sevilla Callejo, Research Assistant at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology of the CSIC and vice-president of the OpenStreetMap Spain association, presented OpenStreetMap as an invaluable source of open spatial data and highlighted its importance in emergency situations.
- Patricio del Boca, Technical Lead and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) CKAN technical team, explained the advantages of CKAN as an open source platform for implementing open data portals and presented the new Open Data Editor tool.
Open administrations at the service of citizens
The last round table addressed how administrations can bring data and its value closer to citizens:
- Ascensión Hidalgo Bellota, Deputy Director General for Transparency of Madrid City Council, presented "View Madrid with Open Data". Hidalgo stressed that the project has significantly reduced the number of citizen consultations thanks to its clarifying nature, thus demonstrating a double benefit: bringing data closer to the population and optimising the administration's resources.
- Carlos Alonso Peña, Director of the Design, Innovation and Exploitation Division at the Directorate General for Data, highlighted the cultural change that the Administration is undergoing, moving from data protection to responsible openness. He presented the Data Directorate General's initiatives to move beyond open data towards a single data market: the data spaces, where concrete solutions are being developed to demonstrate the business potential in this area. He also pointed to the growing importance of private data in the wake of the General Data Regulation and the obligations it establishes.
- Joseba Asiain Albisu, Director General of the Directorate General of the Presidency, Open Government and Relations with the Parliament of Navarre of the Government of Navarre, explained Navarre's strategy to improve data quality, centralise information and promote continuous evaluation. He commented on how the Government of Navarra seeks to balance quantity and quality in the publication of data, centralising data from the entire region and submitting metadata to external evaluation, with the collaboration of, among others, datos.gob.es.
The value of open data meetings
The IV ENDA has demonstrated, once again, the importance of these spaces for reflection and debate for:
- Sharing good practices and experiences between public administrations.
- Encourage collaboration between institutions, academia and the private sector.
- Promote the culture of open data as a tool for social innovation.
- Promote the development of skills in public administration staff.
- Improving public policies through information sharing.
After four consecutive editions, the National Open Data Meeting has established itself as a must-attend event for all the people and entities involved in the open data ecosystem in Spain. This event contributes significantly to building a more informed, participatory and transparent society.
ENDA will continue in 2026 with its fifth edition, committed to continue promoting the culture of open data as a driver of economic and social development in our country. The organisation has already announced that the next edition of the event will be held in Navarre in 2026.. Follow us on social media to keep up to date with events on open data and related technologies. You can read us on Twitter (X), LinkedIn and Instagram.
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Once again, Spain joins the celebration of Open Government Week (Open Gov Week), an international initiative promoted by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) that promotes the fundamental principles of amodern, citizen-friendlyadministration.
This edition, which will take place from 19 to 25 May 2025, brings together public administrations from around the world with the aim of promoting the values of open government: transparency, accountability, citizen participation and institutional integrity. To achieve these objectives, open data is a key element, as access to and re-use of public information is the foundation of open government..
Since Spain joined this alliance in 2011, it has demonstrated a firm commitment to the principles of open governance: it has been recognised on multiple occasions for its active role in the organisation of activities, being one of the States that promotes the most events during this week at an international level. In addition, this year our country holds the co-presidency of the Steering Committee and on 7, 8 and 9 October the IX Open Government Partnership Global Summitwill be held in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
In this post, we look at the agenda of events organised in Spain as part of Open Government Week. Among the hundreds of activities that will be held, we have focused on those related to access to information, open data and technological innovation.
What is Open Government Week?
Through workshops, information days, guided tours, talks and presentations, this action seeks to bring the workings of the institutions closer to society as a whole, foster understanding of public services and promote direct citizen participation.
The programming will include a diverse range of events, including:
- Institutional advertising campaign.
- Hackathon and innovation competitions.
- Debates and round tables.
- OPEN DAYS
- Launch of virtual content.
- Seminars and workshops.
- Participatory processes and citizen consultations.
Featured events in the 2025 edition
During this edition, numerous activities have been scheduled throughout the territory, focusing on the presentation of key projects and initiatives of the Administration. Below are some representative examples of the spirit of the Week, arranged by organising bodies:
- Ministry of Finance:
- Online presentation of the Central Treasury Archive content search portal (Monday 19 at 12.00h): through an online conference, access to the portal, the search modalities and the open accessible content it offers will be explained.. Some of the most outstanding online documents from the archive's collection will also be presented. Finally, other actions of the Archive relating to the Ministry's Document Management Policy will be disseminated for your information.
- Ministry of Culture:
- Spain is Culture (always available): The Ministry of Culture provides the public with a large amount of useful information accessible from the Spain is Culture portal. On the occasion of Open Government Week, they wanted to highlight this.
- National Institute of Public Administration:
- Stories of public innovation" conference (Tuesday 20 May): a day to discover how innovation is transforming the Administration. It will be possible to learn about the work of INAP's Public Innovation Laboratory (LIP) and HazLab, a citizen participation laboratory, together with other projects that promote change from different administrations to build a more open, collaborative and closer Administration. Sign up here.
- Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID):
- Workshop "Cooperation: a team effort" (Tuesday 20, 11:30 a.m.): through a cloud challenge, participants are invited to reflect on leadership, cooperation and teamwork, fundamental values in the development projects led by AECID. There are 20 places available, register here.
- Government of Navarre:
- Café with data (Monday 19): Training session on data quality and the benefits of metadata for publication in portals.
- Diputació de Barcelona:
- Workshop online "Where is the border between transparency and data protection?" (Monday 19 at 09.30h): the webinar will be given by Carles San José, consultant and trainer for the public sector in matters of transparency, data protection and administrative procedure in general. Entry:
- Webinar "I can't make a living! Be transparent or die trying" (Monday 19 at 11.30h): aimed at public staff, this is a virtual workshop on the importance of opening up data in administrations.
- Workshop on data spaces: what they are and how to make the most of them (Thursday 22nd at 10.00h):
- Webinar "Open data and mobility: take advantage of the use of Big data" (Thursday 22nd at 12.00h): how to take advantage of the mobility data that the Ministry of Transport makes available to the public for the analysis of road flows throughout the country.
- Online workshop "Master AI: become a prompts specialist" (Friday 23rd at 09.30h): this webinar is aimed at discovering how to communicate with generative AI tools to obtain more accurate results.
- Webinar "Public open source models of AI" (Friday 23 at 11.30h): this online seminar will present ALIA and its precedent AINA, as well as their uses.. Sign up!
- Madrid City Council: It organises a series of activities that highlight the use of open data in different sectors such as mobility or urban safety.
- Madrid Calle 30 (Tuesday 20, 09:30h): visit to the M-30 tunnels and its control centre. Attendees will learn about the datasets published on the M-30, how the information is managed and updated, and how citizens and the private sector can access, reuse and add value to this data.
- Air quality and meteorological data (Tuesday 20, 13:00h): visit to an air measurement station and explanation of how environmental data are collected to help make urban policy decisions.
- Municipal Police (Thursday 22nd, 09:30h): visit to the control centre, where incidents, operational coordination and public safety actions are managed.
- Urban installations: lighting, tunnels and ornamental fountains (Friday 23rd): a sample of how the operation of essential urban services is managed in real time through the municipal control centre.
- Game with data on social networks: Madrid City Council will share games and challenges on social networks related to the open data on its portal throughout Open Government Week.
An agenda with more than 400 events all over the country
These are just some of the events planned, but there are many more. We encourage you to consult the full calendar of activities available during the Week on the Open Government portal and to share your experiences and proposals.
Open Government Week is not just an institutional showcase, but a meeting place where the Administration listens, explains and learns from citizens. The diversity of scheduled events - ranging from education to security, social inclusion to victim care - reflects the public sector's commitment to getting closer to the day-to-day realities of society.
Thanks to these initiatives, the bond of trust between public authorities and citizens is strengthened, favouring a more collaborative, fair and efficient public administration
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An increasing number of administrations are driving open data and its reuse through contests and hackathons. An example is Malaga City, which has just presented its I Open Data Reuse Contest.
The Data Portal of Malaga City has more than 1,800 available resources, grouped into 800 data sets, which follow the NTI classification. All of them have been published under a free use license, so that any citizen can analyse, reuse and redistribute data to generate a higher economic and social value.
With the aim of enhancing its use and boosting the generation of applications and value-added services, the city council has announced this contest, which has 4 categories:
- Best application for mobile devices
- Best web application
- Best chatbot
- Best analysis of historical data
This contest is one of the actions that the City Council is going to carry out in the framework of the II Open Administration Week, which will take place from March 11 to 17, 2019. The open Administration Week seeks to bring Public Administrations closer to the citizenship.
The call is open to any natural or legal person - except public administrations and those who have participated directly or indirectly in the call -. You only need a project that responds to any of the previous categories and meet the following requirements:
- The project must be original, that is, not submitted to any other contest.
- In addition, you must use at least one of the 800 data sets published in the Open Data Portal of Malaga City. The data set could be combined with other open or private data sources.
To help participants, a list has been created on YouTube with videos of interest. These videos show how to obtain information through an API or how to perform an analysis with Carto or Powerpivot.
Those interested in participating can submit their proposal until March 4, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. through this online form.
The winners will receive a cash prize of 500 euros per category. In addition, they will see how their work is promoted in the different official channels of the Malaga City Council and in the next DataBeers event, which will be held on March 27 during the GreenCities 2019 conference.
For more information, you can read the contest rules here.
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The interest in open data is growing and proof of this is the large number of events around this subject that will be held in our country during the coming months. Here we summarize the most important ones.
A must-attend event is the Open Gov Week, which will take place from May 7th to 11th. This international event is promoted by the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative of 76 countries, including Spain, to "promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance". The activities include courses, seminars, public debates, presentations, open days, contests and hackathons, among other activities (you can see all the activities here).
Public information opening, to promote its reuse and generate valuable services for citizens, is one of the topics that will be addressed. The opening session, entitled The Open State: Main Challenges and Opportunities for Public Authorities and Civil Society, include a panel discussion where representatives of public authorities, experts and civil society will share their vision on the value of open data and the need to protect information. This session will take place on Monday, May 7th from 9:00 a.m.
In addition, during the Open Gov Week, different activities have been organized to promote some of the Spanish open data portals. This is the case of Madrid City Council Open Data Portal. During 2 sessions - on Thursday, May 10th at 3:30 p.m. and Friday 11th at 12:00 p.m. – the people in charge of the service will explain how they manage public information access. This activity is aimed at teachers of secondary school and university.
The Transparency and Data Protection Council of Andalusia will also promote its Open Data Portal, in a session that include, among other things, simple examples of public information reuse. The event can be followed by streaming or in-person on Friday 11th at 10:30 a.m.
But not only public administrations promote events around open data, but also we increasingly see private events that address this topic, among other issues. On June 6th and 7th, the OpenExpo Europe 2018 will be held in Madrid, where experts will share the latest trends in Open Source, Free Software and Open World Economy (where open data has a prominent role). It is a professional event where companies linked to technological innovation from different fields, such as Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, cybersecurity or IoT, will showcase their innovations and technological solutions.
Finally, it is also important to highlight the activities aimed at promoting the use of open data among the youngest citizens. On the 3rd of May, the final presentation of a pilot project of the City Council of Barcelona is held. Through a contest, 3rd and 4th ESO students have learned to use analysis tools and to elaborate proposals based on data from Open Data BCN. Another example is the Open Summer of Code, an international program to be held in July in Spain and Belgium with the aim of "providing students with the training, support and network necessary to transform open innovation projects into powerful real-world services".
These are just some of the appointments that will take place in the coming months, but every day there are more and more activities designed to give citizens an understanding of open data world, spreading its value and promoting its reuse.