Castilla y León

When the open data portal of Castilla y León was launched more than 7 years ago, its managers understood that the project had a great potential and, with the passage of time, it would become more important. Since then, they have made a great effort so that the initiative could grow in a sustainable way over time.

Open data as part of the open government strategy

Since its creation, the open data portal was integrated into the Open Government Model of the Castilla y León Regional Government. This mean, without a doubt, an important political drive. But this had to be completed with the work and commitment of the entire organization.

By working transversally with the entire organization, the leadership of the project was assumed by the Corporate Web service, since it had a management experience that facilitated the coordination of the initiative. In this way, it has been possible to promote the publication of new data sets taking advantage of the communication and collaboration channels that already existed for contents publication in web portals. An example is the transparency portal, which have combined efforts and sought synergies.

Main actions lines

1. Incorporation of information

One of the main lines of work of the initiative focuses on the incorporation of more information into the catalog. In March 2012, there were 83 initial datasets, which went to 199 in November 2016. It currently has more than 450. 2018 was the year with the largest number of published datasets.

But beyond the number of datasets, the number of records and the usefulness of the information matter. Thus, in recent months, highly demanded information has been published, such as sections with fishing plans, livestock farms and various information on health or energy consumption (with 100.000 rows of data), among other contents.

2. Dissemination and awareness

Another important line of work is the dissemination and awareness, both internal and external, being of great importance the training courses, aimed at both publishers and reusers.

In addition to the face-to-face training of the internal (functional and IT) staff, the training on open data is also aimed at other groups such as companies, entrepreneurs, university staff and non-university teaching staff. Especially relevant is the training of the latter group. Making the initiative known to trainers helps them acquire useful digital skills, know the potential of open data and use them in their educational programs to extend knowledge among thousands of students.

Part of this training is done through webminars. This is a very necessary modality in a community as extensive as Castilla y León.

The Open Data Contest is another of its star performances, aimed at measuring the impact and promoting the reuse of public information. With three editions carried out (the last one recently resolved), its dissemination has already served as an advertising campaign for open data. The more than 100 projects that have been presented in total show the wide possibilities offered by Open Data initiatives.

Aligned with the commitment to involve the educational community, the contest also has specific prizes for students and for the development of open didactic resources.

Finally, their commitment to openness has led them to coordinate the Data Reuse Working Group in the Sectoral Committee on Electronic Administration. Currently, work is being undertaken on the analysis of common data sets, the use of vocabularies and the search for commitments to publish datasets by all the autonomous communities. This collaboration between administrations should serve to combine efforts and offer better content and services to reusers.

All these actions have led to the Open Data Initiative of Castilla y León to become a model for the opening of public information. But, as the maturity of the initiative grows, new challenges are also emerging, which are no less exciting:

• Promote internal reuse, through the identification of success stories that show that there is great potential in this regard.
• Exploit data visualizations.
• Continue collaborating with the rest of the national initiatives.

Castilla y León will have to face these challenges without abandoning the focus on the opening of quality data or dissemination and awareness actions that have given such good results.

Content prepared based on the information received by Antonio Ibañez, Jefe de Servicio de la Web Corporativa, Junta de Castilla y León.

Contents and points of view expressed in this publication are the exclusive responsibility of its author.

The III Open Data Contest of the Junta de Castilla y León has come to its end, and one more year it has been a success. Almost 60 nominations have been received, and an expert jury has selected 8 winners divided into 3 categories.

Ideas Category

This category was aimed at participants who did have a good idea, although they did not have the technical capacity, the resources or the time to implement an open data project.

• The First Prize went to the Intelligent Energy Management Platform in public buildings of the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León. The objective of this tool would be to promote the integrated management of energy resources. For this goal, it would allow the detailed visualization of the consumption and its analysis, facilitating the comparison between different supplies and their temporal evolution.
• The second prize went to SEMFOD, a tool for market segmentation in the forestry sector. Thanks to this tool, you could identify farms with forest land that are not being exploited to generate new economic benefits.
• OxigenaT won the prize reserved for students enrolled in the courses 2017-2018 or 2018-2019. It is an application that would use environmental data, such as historical air quality, to automatically predict pollution levels. In this way, real-time announcements and short-term forecasts could be offered.

Products and Services Category

In this case, the projects had to go a step further in their development. The idea was not enough. In this category, the content should be accessible to all citizens via online.

• The winner of the category was Juega Castilla y León, a game to demonstrate - and expand – user´s knowledge of the region. After selecting a municipality, the application shows a series of questions that should be resolved to increase the user score, to improve their position in a ranking of participant. Among other questions, the application asked about how the population of a municipality has evolved, what is its altitude or even what is the most frequent name among its inhabitants.
• The second prize went to Planrepuebla.es. This project provides information about municipalities, jobs, grants, subsidies and initiatives to fight against depopulation. Its objective is to encourage citizens to start a new life in the so-called empty Spain.
• In this category, NaturCyL: Natural spaces of Castilla y León won the prize for students. It is a mobile application that provides information on the natural areas of the autonomous community of Castilla y León and its facilities (parking, recreational areas, viewpoints, trails ...).

Educational Resource Category

The last category consisted in the creation of new and innovative open learning resources (published with Creative Commons licenses) that could be implemented in the classrooms of the autonomous community.

• The First Prize was for the Data Laboratory from the IES Politécnico de Soria, a project that seeks to promote the use of data in the Technician degree for data analysis and decision making.
• The second prize was obtained by Evolution of the population in Castilla y León from the IES Julián Marías. This project consists of a series of color maps that represent the evolution of the population by provinces and periods from 1986 to 2018.

In addition, a special mention has been granted to the Agromapa Castilla y León, a website that allows to visualize in a simple and didactic way the crops in the different municipalities of Castilla y León.

Congratulations to all the winners!

The Junta de Castilla y León has launched their third edition of the open data contest. Its objective is "to recognize the development of projects that use datasets from the Open Data portal of the Junta de Castilla y León". In short, it look for boosting open data and re-users community in Castilla y León.

On this occasion, 3 categories have been established:

1. Ideas Category: Ideas to create a study, service, website or application for mobile devices, using datasets from the Open Data portal of the Junta de Castilla y León. It give an opportunity to those people or entities that, without having the technical capacity, the resources or the time to implement a project with open data, do have the idea.
2. Products and Services Category: Projects that are accessible to all citizens via the internet through a url. These projects must consist of studies, services, websites or applications for mobile devices, using datasets from the Open Data portal of the Junta de Castilla y León.
3. Educational Resource Category: Creation of new and innovative open educational resources (published with Creative Commons licenses) using data sets from the Open Data portal of the Junta de Castilla y León to help teaching in the classroom.

A jury, made up of representatives of the Autonomous Administration and the sponsoring company, GMV, will choose the eight winners based on a series of criteria, such as its usefulness, originality or public value. Three prizes will be awarded to the Ideas Category, three to the Products and Services Category, and two to the Educational Resources Category made by educational centers. In the first two categories (Ideas and Products and Services) an award will be reserved for students enrolled in the courses 2017-2018 or 2018-2019.

The prizes will consist of an economic endowment (12,000 euros to be distributed) and individualized advice on business development, provided by the Business Development Area of the Institute for Business Competitiveness of Castilla y León (ICE):

1. Ideas Category: First prize: € 2,000 / Second prize: € 1,000 / Prize for students: € 1,000.
2. Products and Services Category: First prize: € 3,000 / Second prize: € 1,500 / Prize for students: € 2,000.
3. Educational Resource Category: First prize: 1,000 euros in technological material / Second prize: 500 euros in technological material.

The candidatures can be presented at the electronic headquarters of the Regional Government of Castilla y León: Open Data Contest of the Community of Castilla y León (2018). The contest is open to both natural and legal persons, with the exception of public administrations and those individuals or legal entities that have participated directly or indirectly in the call. The deadline to submit the projects is from December 21, 2018, to February 10, 2019.