Noticia
On 20 October, Madrid hosted a new edition of the Data Management Summit Spain, an international summit that this year also took place in Italy (7 July) and Latam (20 September). The event brought together CiOs, CTOs, CDOs, Business Intelligence Officers and Data Scientists in charge of implementing emerging technologies in order to solve new technological challenges aligned with new business opportunities.
This event was preceded by a prologue held the previous evening, in collaboration with DAMA Spain and the Data Office. This was a session aimed exclusively at representatives of different levels of public administration and focused on open data and information sharing between administrations. During the day, participants discussed the transformative role of data and how its intensive use and enhancement are essential to achieve the digital transformation of public administrations.
As was mentioned in the session, data plays an essential role in the development of disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, and is a differential factor when it comes to launching an industrial and technological revolution that allows for the consolidation of a fairer, more inclusive digital economy in line with the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda. A true data economy with the vocation to nurture the development of two key and strategic processes for the reconstruction of our country: the digital transformation and the ecological transition.
Data spaces and open data, key to achieving data-driven government
The institutional opening was given by Carlos Alonso, Director of the Data Office Division. His speech focused on highlighting how the achievement of a data-oriented administration, an inseparable part of its digital transformation process, depends on the development of public sector data spaces, which enable data sharing with sovereignty and its large-scale exploitation. Data is a public good, to be preserved and processed in order to implement quality public services and policies. The aim is to achieve a data-driven, citizen-centred, open, transparent, inclusive, participatory and egalitarian administration, ensuring ethical, secure and responsible use of data.
In this process of designing public and private sector data spaces, open data is fundamental, as Carlos Alonso highlighted during his speech: "Data spaces are major consumers and generators of open data, and their availability must be ensured. That is, it is necessary to establish certain service level agreements to ensure access".
Sharing experiences between administrations
After this institutional opening, the conference addressed the opportunity provided by the creation of spaces for sharing and exploiting data in public administrations, and allowed for the dissemination of different data-related projects by representatives of the different administrative levels, including autonomous communities and local entities.
Andreu Francisco, Director General of the Localret consortium, formed by the local administrations of Catalonia for the development of telecommunications services and networks and the application of ICT, presented a digital metamodel, which aims to structure the technological architecture and services required in a digital city. It is a comprehensive solution that can be implemented in different territories and personalised according to the singularities of each city, making it easier for the inhabitants of the 877 Catalan municipalities to develop professionally and personally.
César Priol, Director General of Digitalisation and Citizen Services, of Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia (Basque Country) shared his experience in the creation of the Data Office, highlighting the importance of self-organising on an organisational, regulatory and legal level in order to have the capacity to transform not only the organisation, but also the territory with data.
Magda Lorente, Head of the Local Information Systems Assistance Section, and Sara Aguilar, Head of the Service of the Official Gazette of the Province of Barcelona and other Official Publications of the Barcelona Provincial Council, spoke of good practices in data management. Magda Lorente highlighted the importance of the Diputacions becoming data-oriented in order to assume their relevant role in the promotion of municipal data governance. According to a study carried out by the Diputació de Barcelona, which will be published at the end of November, 85% of municipalities could be left out of artificial intelligence and intelligent administration because their technical capacities do not allow them to materialise the necessary data orientation.
Sara Aguilar, for her part, presented an example of how the administrations are consolidating the way in decision-making based on quality data: the CIDO, a search engine for official information and documentation. This tool was created in 2000 with the aim of bringing government information closer to citizens in a user-friendly way. It provides access, for example, to more than 2,600 selection processes with open calls for applications and 1,600 open subsidies, thanks to the open data offered by the different municipalities of Catalonia. CIDO is based on a tag reader model and the use of artificial intelligence algorithms, which classify the information collected from the municipalities. They have more than 2 million ads, structured and documented open data that they serve through an API that can be integrated into any platform.
Roundtables and group dynamics to promote debate
During the course of the day, attendees were able to participate in different dynamics for the exchange of experiences. The first dynamic focused on open data and the second on interoperability.
In addition, two round tables were held, which allowed the subject to be approached from different points of view:
- The first round table, moderated by Carlos Alonso, focused on the challenges and barriers to data exchange in the public sector. Current methodologies, specifications and practices related to the processing of information, in order to achieve a fluid and continuous exchange of data between administrations, industrial sectors and citizens, were projected on a larger scale. The round table was attended by: Carlos Alonso, Jose Antonio Eusamio (General Secretariat for Digital Government), César Priol (Vizcaya Provincial Council), Miguel Angel Martinez Vidal (INE) and Magda Lorente.
- The second round table focused on how to accelerate the adoption of Open Linked Data in the public administration domain, moderated in this case by Oscar Alonso (IBM Consulting & DAMA Spain). Participants included Sara Aguilar (Barcelona Provincial Council), Oscar Alonso (DAMA Spain & IBM), Sonia Castro (datos.gob.es), Juan José Alonso (Orange) and Olga Quiros (ASEDIE). The conversation revolved around EU initiatives, such as the Data Governance Act, which are acting as a turning point in data policies. The act seeks to establish robust mechanisms to facilitate the re-use of certain categories of protected public sector data, increase trust in data brokering services and promote data altruism across the EU. This highlights how the EU is working to strengthen various data sharing mechanisms to promote the availability of data that can be used to drive advanced applications and solutions in artificial intelligence, personalised medicine, green mobility, smart manufacturing and many other areas. The importance of data ethics was also highlighted during the debate.
Materials available on the day
If you missed the session, the video is available on Youtube. The recording of the summit on the 20th has also been made public, a session that had a more business-oriented approach, with expert presentations and group dynamics focused on data governance, data quality, master data and data architecture, among other topics. Photos from the event are also available.
In addition, interviews with some of the speakers have been published on the summit's website, allowing a deeper insight into the projects they are carrying out.
Evento
On 20 October, Madrid will host a new edition of the Data Management Summit Spain. This event is part of the Data Management Summit (DMS) 2022, which was previously held in Italy (7 July) and Latam (20 September).
The event is aimed at a technical audience: CiOs, CTOs, CDOs, CIOs, CIOs, Business Intelligence Officers and Data Scientists in charge of implementing emerging technologies in order to solve new technological challenges and align with new business opportunities.
Date and time
The conference will take place at the Nebrija University, on 20 October 2022, from 9:30 to 19:30.
The day before, a DMS prologue will take place in the same space, exclusively for representatives of public administrations, from 14:00 to 19:30.
Agenda
The agenda is made up of presentations, round tables and group dynamics between professionals, which will allow networking.
The prologue on the 19th will focus on open data and the exchange of information between administrations. Carlos Alonso, Director of the Data Office Division, will be one of the speakers. Among the different activities, there are two group dynamics that will focus on open data and interoperability, as well as two round tables, in the first of which the red.es coordinator of the datos.gob.es platform will participate:
- Round table 1: Open Data and data interoperability in public administrations.
- Round table 2: Challenges and barriers to data exchange in the public sector.
Day 20 will have a business-oriented focus. This second day will also feature expert presentations and group dynamics focusing on data governance, data quality, master data and data architecture, among other topics. There will be three round tables:
- Roundtable 1: “Data Architecture, Data Mesh or Data Fabric?” which will discuss the Data Mesh architecture pattern, with a decentralised approach, as opposed to Data Fabric, which promotes a single unified data architecture.
- Roundtable 2: “How Data Governance changes with the new paradigm of open banking” that will address the evolution towards an economy based on full interoperability and APIs, where the traceability of processes is complete.
- Roundtable 3: “How to converge the different data quality models”, focusing on how to measure data quality, how to manage quality processes automatically and how to avoid Data Lake corruption.
You can see more about the event in this video.
¿Cómo puedo asistir?
El aforo de cada sesión está limitado a 60 plazas presenciales y a 100 online.
How can I attend?
The capacity of each session is limited to 60 places in person and 100 online.
Registration for the session on the 20th can be done through this link (currently the capacity is full, but you can join the waiting list). Registration for the 19th is available, but remember that this session is exclusively for Public Administrations.
More information on the summit website.
Blog
In the current environment, organisations are trying to improve the exploitation of their data through the use of new technologies, providing the business with additional value and turning data into their main strategic asset.
However, we can only extract the real value of data if it is reliable and for this, the function of Data Governance arises, focused on the efficient management of information assets. Open data cannot be alien to these practices due to its characteristics, mainly of availability and access.
To answer the question of how we should govern data, there are several international methodologies, such as DCAM, MAMD, DGPO or DAMA. In this post, we will base ourselves on the guidelines offered by the latter.
What is DAMA?
DAMA, by its acronym Data Management Association, is an international association for data management professionals. It has a chapter in Spain, DAMA Spain, since March 2019.
Its main mission is to promote and facilitate the development of the data management culture, becoming the reference for organisations and professionals in information management, providing resources, training and knowledge on the subject.
The association is made up of data management professionals from different sectors.
Data governance according to DAMA's reference framework
“A piece of data placed in a context gives rise to information. Add intelligence and you get knowledge that, combined with a good strategy, generates power”
Although it is just a phrase, it perfectly sums up the strategy, the search for power from data. To achieve this, it is necessary to exercise authority, control and shared decision-making (planning, monitoring and implementation) over the management of data assets or, in other words, to apply Data Governance.
DAMA presents what it considers to be the best practices for guaranteeing control over information, regardless of the application business, and to this end, it positions Data Governance as the main activity around which all other activities are managed, such as architecture, interoperability, quality or metadata, as shown in the following figure:
The Data Government's implementation of open data
Based on the wheel outlined in the previous section, data governance, control, quality, management and knowledge are the key to success and, to this end, the following principles must be complied with:
To achieve data compliance with these principles, it will be necessary to establish a data governance strategy, through the implementation of a Data Office capable of defining the policies and procedures that dictate the guidelines for data management. These should include the definition of roles and responsibilities, the relationship model for all of them and how they will be enforced, as well as other data-related initiatives.
In addition to data governance, some of the recommended features of open data management include the following:
- An architecture capable of ensuring the availability of information on the portal. In this sense, CKAN has become one of the reference architecture for open data. CKAN is a free and open source platform, developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation, which serves to publish and catalogue data collections. This link provides a guide to learn more about how to publish open data with CKAN.
- The interoperability of data catalogues. Any user can make use of the information through direct download of the data they consider. This highlights the need for easy integration of information, regardless of which open data portal it was obtained from.
- Recognised standards should be used to promote the interoperability of data and metadata catalogues across Europe, such as the Data Catalogue Vocabulary (DCAT) defined by the W3C and its application profile DCAT-AP. In Spain, we have the Technical Interoperability Standard (NTI), based on this vocabulary. You can read more about it in this report.
- The metadata, understood as the data of the data, is one of the fundamental pillars when categorising and labelling the information, which will later be reflected in an agile and simple navigation in the portal for any user. Some of the metadata to be included are the title, the format or the frequency of updating, as shown in the aforementioned NTI.
- As this information is offered by public administrations for reuse, it is not necessary to comply with strict privacy measures for its exploitation, as it has been previously anonymised. On the contrary, there must be activities to ensure the security of the data. For example, improper or fraudulent use can be prevented by monitoring access and tracking user activity.
- Furthermore, the information available on the portal will meet the technical and functional quality criteria required by users, guaranteed by the application of quality indicators.
- Finally, although it is not one of the characteristics of the reference framework as such, DAMA speaks transversally to all of them about data ethics, understood as social responsibility with respect to data processing. There is certain sensitive information whose improper use could have an impact on individuals.
The evolution of Data Government
Due to the financial crisis of 2008, the focus was placed on information management in financial institutions: what information is held, how it is exploited... For this reason, it is currently one of the most regulated sectors, which also makes it one of the most advanced with regard to the applicability of these practices.
However, the rise of new technologies associated with data processing began to change the conception of these management activities. They were no longer seen so much as a mere control of information, but considering data as strategic assets meant great advances in the business.
Thanks to this new concept, private organisations of all kinds have taken an interest in this area and, even in some public bodies, it is not unusual to see how data governance is beginning to be professionalised through initiatives focused on offering citizens a more personalised and efficient service based on data. For example, the city of Edmonton uses this methodology and has been recognised for it.
In this webinar you can learn more about data management in the DAMA framework. You can also watch the video of their annual event where different use cases are explained or follow their blog.
The road to data culture
We are immersed in a globalised digital world that is constantly evolving and data is no stranger to this. New data initiatives are constantly emerging and an efficient data governance capable of responding to these changes is necessary.
Therefore, the path towards a data culture is a reality that all organisations and public bodies must take in the short term. The use of a data governance methodology, such as DAMA's, will undoubtedly be a great support along the way.
Content prepared by David Puig, Graduate in Information and Documentation and head of the Master and Reference Data working group at DAMA SPAIN, and Juan Mañes, expert in Data Governance.
The contents and points of view reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of its author.