encuentros Aporta

The 9th edition of the Aporta Meeting is already underway. The appointment will be on December 18 in Madrid, in the morning (from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.), and will be focused on high-value data.

High-value public and private data mean an extraordinary source of information to consider due to its great impact on citizens. When we talk about high-value data we refer to those categories delimited by Directive (EU) 2019/1024, of June 20, 2019, related to the geospatial, environmental, meteorological, statistical, commercial and mobility categories. This type of data are a key element to boost innovative services and generate socio-economic and environmental benefits for the entire population.

The relevance and interest of the community for high-value data has led to consider them the main axis of the new edition of the Aporta Meeting. Under the slogan "Driving high-value data", the challenges and opportunities that we will have to face in order to take advantage of all the value of this type of data will be addressed.

The event will be structured in 3 colloquium tables, each one focused on different actors linked to the data ecosystem: high-value data publishers, accelerators that try to boost their reuse, and companies that generate high-value services and products based on reuse.

• Table 1: Towards the availability of high-value data. The first table will be formed by representatives of the public administrations generating high-value data. The objective is to analyse which data sets are already available and their potential applications, as well as which ones should be opened to respond to user demand and under what conditions: automated readable formats, downloadable through application programming interfaces (API) and in a massive way, with the granularity and necessary formats, and based on the appropriate licenses.
• Table 2: Accelerating the use of high-value data. Table two will be a meeting point for projects aimed at boosting the European data-based entrepreneurship ecosystem. To this end, we have invite representatives of business accelerators and initiatives whose common denominator is to contribute to overcome the barriers faced by SMEs and data start-ups, in order to achieve success in the market.
• Table 3. New technological paradigms and the importance of data for their development. The last table will have agents from the reuse sector that will discuss the opportunities offered by the availability of high-value data and the challenges that need to be faced to encourage its use.

The full agenda will be available in the coming weeks. You can follow the event news in social networks, with the hashtag #Aporta2019 and in datos.gob.es.

8th Edition of Aporta Meeting will take place on November 28. In this occasion, the event will focus on the power of public data to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Under the motto "Innovation with public data", consolidated companies, start-ups and public bodies will share their experience about taking advantage of improvement and business opportunities linked to open data and new technological paradigms, such as Big Data or Artificial intelligence.

Thanks to these testimonies, attendees can learn first-hand about the challenges of an innovative project with open data, and discover possible solutions. The objective is to create an inclusive and dynamic event, where attendees can also share their concerns and own experiences through collaborative round tables.

The Meeting will begin at 9:30 in the Assembly Hall of the Secretariat of State for Digital Progress (Ministry of Economy and Enterprise).

• Round table 1: The value of open data reuse for Public Administrations

The first round table will be focused on public administrations and how the reuse of their data allows optimizing the services offered to citizens.

There are many examples of local, regional or state entities that have implemented services and applications based on public data to improve their agility and efficiency. These services allow a more direct communication, promoting transparency and accountability, as well as a greater participation of citizens in their locality or region political life. In addition, through the data analysis, these organizations can also identify behavior patterns that drive better resource planning and greater services personalization.

In order to address this issue, representatives from the following entities will participate in the round table: City of Madrid - who will moderate the debate-, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Junta of Castilla y León, Autonomous Community of Murcia, Renfe and Provincial Council of Bizkaia.

• Round table II: Public sector information and entrepreneurship

According to the latest data from the National Observatory of Telecommunications and the Information Society (ONTSI), currently, there are more than 530 small and medium-sized companies with the objective of creating ideas and new products based on public information and data. These companies generated a turnover of 1,500 - 1,750 million euros and more than 5,000 direct jobs in 2016.

Innovation based on public data is especially noticeable when we talk about entrepreneurs and start-ups. The availability of free public data or public data with a marginal cost reduce the risk of starting a new business.

Therefore, the second round table will be integrated by entrepreneurs and startups from different sectors that are developing new products and services based on public data reuse and analysis. This is the case of VisualNACert, a software developer that improves the management of agricultural farms, Piperlab, which uses Big Data technologies and data sciences to develop algorithms that improve decision making, or Naru Intelligence, which applies data analytics to biomedicine sector. This round table will be moderated by Barcelona Open Data Initiative.

• Round table III: Public data and business development

But open data is not only useful for entrepreneurs. An increasing number of private entities use public data to face business challenges and improve their competitiveness. For these companies, public data has become an additional business resource that contributes to maintaining leadership in their industry sector, reducing corporate costs, adapting to and evolving with agility in their environments and collaborating with clients - and even competitors- to face industry challenges.

Therefore, the third round table will be integrated by four international companies that will explain how public data use help improve their products or services, adapt to new markets and expand their radius of influence in the industry. These companies are Informa, Syngenta, GMV and Esri, who will share their experience under the moderation of the Secretariat of State for Digital Progress.

The complete agenda is available in this link. Although the event is free, places are limited. Therefore, those interested in attending must register in this link.

On 23 October, the Red.es Auditorium will host the “Local organisations and open data” conference, which forms part of a pre-event for the Aporta Meeting 2017. This session, which will take place in the afternoon (from 16:30 to 19:30) will be held in the format of a meeting and its objective is to bring together different agents that work in local open data ecosystems (publishers, reusers, etc.) to evaluate the current situation in this field at a local level.

In said meeting, the aim is to identify needs, opportunities and benefits in the drive towards opening data and data economy and analyse the needs and demands of reusers in sets of field data that are demanded and not offered. Finally, it will address the need to standardise vocabulary, APIs and data quality together with the evolution of open data platforms.

The work meeting will be structured into two blocks:

• 4 talks on the subjects of: “Guide to FEMP open data”, “State of open data initiatives at a local level”, “Data economy” and “Open data project within local administration”
• Roundtable discussion that will tackle: open data, technological support and the standardisation of its publication and reuse, local open data ecosystems and data economy and conclusions and work lines to put into action.

The aims of this meeting are to generate a community and space for debate regarding opening data in local organisations, obtain a view of the current state of opening data at a local level and identify barriers in opening and consuming data. It also aims to agree future work lines to create local open data ecosystems and drive and continue with actions that are being carried out by work groups in this field from the FEMP and RECI.

This event will be shared on social media with the hashtag #LocalOpenData. It has been organised with the collaboration of Red.es, Spanish network of intelligent cities (RECI - Red Española de Ciudades Inteligentes) and the FEMP – Network of local organisations for transparency and participation. The main conclusions that will be taken from this conference will be made clear during the Aporta Meeting 2017 on 23 October.

The seventh edition of the Aporta Meeting will be held next October 24, and this year has as its motto "The value of data in the global ecosystem", in which experts in open data, both national and international, will describe their views regarding the publication of public sector data and its reuse.

The meeting, open to all, will be organized in morning and afternoon sessions with round tables, talks and presentations. In the afternoon, as the final act of the conference, the Aporta awards will be given (aimed at recognizing the best experiences already completed in reuse of public data), as well as the awards to the winners of the Aporta Challenge (ideas, applications , solutions and/or services that use and reuse public data contributing to an improvement of efficiency in public administrations in Spain).

The event, which will also have various pre-events of a sectoral nature on the previous days, is organized by Red.es in collaboration with the Ministries of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda, and Finance and Public Function.