entidades locales

The publication of open data is a practice that drives technological development, benefits the business sector, and informs citizens. However, there are still some institutions that do not publish their data in open format, either because they lack the means or the necessary guidance to do so.

To solve this problem, in a firm commitment to transparency and the reuse of public information, the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) has created a list that serves as a guide to take the first steps in open data that can also serve as a reference for the different local entities.. The idea is to complement the catalogues of published datasets and try to get at least these datasets published. The reason? As the FEMP points out, "the fact that all local administrations publish sets of data on a specific topic generates synergies and opportunities for products and services, which can be replicated in different entities".

In 2017, the FEMP published a first list of 20 recommended datasets, rising to 40 in 2019 and reaching the current 80 that were submitted in 2023.

 The FEMP's 80 outstanding datasets can now be consulted on a website that gathers detailed information, and a document summarising the information. In this post, we analyse its content and recommendations.

Evolution of municipal open data engagement

Over the last few years, the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces has been expanding the list of open data to be published by local entities. This expansion reflects not only the increasing maturity of local administrations in their capacity to manage and publish data, but also the increasing demand by citizens, businesses and other social agents for useful and reusable information to develop services, research or simply to better understand their urban environment.

The 80 recommended datasets, covering almost all areas of local management, are presented, structured in categories that respond to the most relevant information needs of citizens:

• Urban planning and public space

Among the priority data, it is recommended to publish information on general urban development plans, urban planning licences, technical inspection of buildings, street maps, cartographic representations of natural spaces, monuments and inventory of immovable property, etc.

• Transport

This category refers to datasets about public transport, cycle lanes, public car parks (including those for people with reduced mobility), electric vehicle charging points, loading and unloading zones, traffic and accidents.

• Environment

In this sector, the FEMP recommends publishing data on air and water quality, meteorological data, noise pollution, trees, parks and gardens, waste management, clean points, recycling containers, natural spaces and risk areas.

• Public Sector

Here the publication of budget data, subsidies, procurement, average supplier payment period, public debt, regulations, transparency obligations and administrative procedures is recommended.

• Demography and society

Data is collected on the municipal census, unemployment and employment, social aid, assistance services for people in need, census of associations and municipal facilities (educational, health, sports).

• Tourism and culture

We found datasets on tourist accommodation, tourist flows, places of interest, cultural agenda and events.

The FEMP not only recommends what dataset to make available to citizens, but also offers guidance and good practices to carry out this task. Through the web, various information on each dataset is easily accessible:

• Your description.
• If available, recommended vocabularies to ensure interoperability.
• Whether they are high value sets (and the subcategory to which they belong).
• Recommended minimum refresh rate.
• File formats in which it is recommended to have the information.
• Examples of bodies that have already opened such a dataset, for reference.
• Some examples of visualisations that have been made with such open data.
• Etc.

Materials for data management and openness

To facilitate this opening-up process, local authorities have a number of resources at their disposal. Among others:

•  The Standard Ordinance on Data Governance in the local entity, developed by the Open Data Group of the FEMP Network, which provides a common legal framework for the process of data openness and data management.
• Templates and guidance for the formulation of the RISP (Re-use of Public Sector Information) Plan, including key issues for developing an open data initiative.
• Guide for the deployment of data portals, a monographic report that compiles best practices and recommendations for developing and maintaining data portals in municipalities.

Challenges and next steps

Despite progress, the full implementation of these 80 datasets is a challenge for many municipalities, especially smaller ones, which may face technical or resource difficulties in publishing them.

Therefore, the continuous support of supra-municipal bodies such as provincial councils, autonomous communities and the FEMP itself is essential, as well as inter-municipal collaboration to share good practices, tools and technological solutions.

The extension to 80 priority datasets marks a milestone on the road to a data-driven governance model, where public information is transformed into a common good that generates value for both administrations and society as a whole.

We encourage you to consult the new project website and to progressively incorporate these datasets into your municipal portals, thus contributing to the construction of a more complete open data ecosystem, useful and transformative for our cities.

Although local governments are the closest actors to citizens, they often face limitations in terms of resources and capacities to implement open data effectively. The diputations, as intermediate institutions between central government and municipalities, play a key role in coordinating, supporting and facilitating open data at the local level.

In this article, we will explore the work of the Diputaciones in this area, showing some examples.

Why is it important for local authorities to commit to open data?

Local open data is of great importance to citizens because of its high granularity. These data provide information on specific settings, which gives a detailed picture of the situation of citizens in that area and shows disparities between municipalities.

This offers multiple advantages. On the one hand, public administrationscan develop better policies and manage resources more efficiently. On the other hand, businesses, researchers and entrepreneurshave the opportunity to develop new, more customised solutions based on the needs of each location. It also improves transparency and accountability, fostering trust in local institutions, and facilitates citizen participationby giving residents access to key data about their municipalities, which can contribute to more active and informed decision-making.

Challenges for local authorities in opening up their data

Despite the advantages, local authorities face a number of challenges in trying to make their data available to citizens, many of which are related to resource constraints and technical capacity:

• Lack of technical and human resources: Many municipalities, especially small and medium-sized ones, do not have the trained staff and resources to manage and publish open data. Lack of IT and data management expertise can hinder the implementation of open data initiatives.
• Inadequate infrastructure: Open data requires adequate technological infrastructure, such as platforms and storage systems to host data in an accessible and secure way.
• Awareness and resistance to change: In some municipalities, both policy makers and public employees may not fully understand the benefits of open data, leading to resistance to change.
• Data quality and standardisation issues: Municipal data are often scattered across different systems and formats, which can make standardisation and validation difficult. Ensuring that data is correct, up to date and in reusable formats is a major technical challenge.
• Cost of implementing, maintaining and updating data: Opening up data involves not only having the right infrastructure and staff, but also investing in platforms, software and other tools needed to make the information accessible to the public, which can be a barrier for municipalities with tight budgets. Moreover, once data is available to the public, it is necessary to keep it up to date and ensure that it remains relevant, which is a constant effort.

How can county councils help local authorities to overcome these challenges?

The Diputaciones are supra-municipal entities whose functions include legal, economic and technical assistance and cooperation to the municipalities in their province, especially those of smaller size or fewer resources. Among other things, they offer support in technological and managerial matters, for example in administrative tasks, the provision of public services or economic development.

In the context of open data, local councils can act as "facilitators" of open data at local level, through different actions:

1. Technical advice and training

The Diputaciones offer training to municipalities so that municipal employees can learn how to manage and open data. This is something that the Diputación de Salamanca, for example, has done with this course, whose objectives included raising participants' awareness of the importance of open data as a means to enhance citizen participation, helping them to understand technical issues in order to boost the degree of openness of institutions.

The Diputación de Castellón, for its part, provides support to small municipalities in opening their data, offering support materials related to open data. Another example is the Provincial Council of Albacete, which provides technical assistance, monitoring and support to its 87 municipalities through the Provincial Sustainability Observatory of Albacete (OPSA), an entity in collaboration with the University of Castilla-La Mancha. To this end, it offers sustainability reports (with 25 indicators), monitors its localization plans and emission studies, offers training and guides related to the sustainability of its municipalities related to open data, etc. 

2. Technological infrastructure

Some councils provide digital platforms and tools for municipalities to upload and share data in a simple way. This includes hosting open data portals or analysis and visualisation tools.

This is the case of the Diputación de Bizkaia, whose scope affects the foral public sector (Foral Entities) and the Local Entities of Bizkaia. Through the BiscayTIK foundation, municipalities can join the Open Data Bizkaia portal so that their data can appear on this portal. In addition, a customised view is generated that can be embedded in the municipality's own website, in case they want to have their own open data portal.

Another example is the Diputación de Córdoba. Its provincial strategy consists of unifying efforts and making a common platform for all municipalities, through automated processes of extraction and processing of structured information for publication, without the need for manual dedication on the part of staff. Through the Enlaza project, the platform receives and monitors information obtained both from citizens and from the sensors and systems of the multiple municipal services, and then carries out a cross analysis of the data. With this service, all the town councils in the province of Cordoba can have a homogeneous catalogue of open data with automated loading, which in turn is federated with datos.gob.es, saving this procedure for smaller administrations.

The Diputación de Albacete, for its part, has a platform with an open data exhibition of the panel of local indicators of the province (48 sub-indicators with a historical series of +15 years). The standardization of open data facilitates municipal and provincial analysis, allowing the comparison of municipalities with graphical and georeferenced output. Includes download space with user registration.

Thanks to these actions double efforts and duplication of uploading of information on various platforms are avoided. In addition, the standardisation of open data facilitates regional analysis and comparison between municipalities, generating new opportunities for innovation and improvement in the quality of life of citizens.

3. Grants or funding

Sometimes, the local councils allocate financial resources so that small municipalities can implement open data projects. An example of this is the Diputación de Valencia, whose functions include fostering and developing the right of access to information, as well as promoting the re-use of public data. To this end, in 2024, it launched a series of aids.

In this line the Diputación de Albacete has an annual aid or call for municipalities to implement their Agendas 2030 or projects related to sustainability and included in their plans. For example, in February 2025 the call was published with a budget of € 325,000.

4. Awareness-raising and reuse promotion actions

Another area where county councils can help is the promotion of favourable frameworks for data re-use. The Diputación de Castellón, for example, maintains a close relationship with civil society organisations and universities to meet their data demands. With the collaboration of the Diputación de Barcelona and the Government of Aragón, organised in 2024 the III National Open Data Meeting, where the importance of open data as a resource for understanding and achieving interesting and sustainable tourism was disseminated.

For its part, the Diputación de Bizkaia is launching competitions such as the Open Data & Artificial Intelligence Challenge, aimed at identifying initiatives that combine the reuse of data available on the Open Data Bizkaia portal with the use of this disruptive technology in various sectors.

In conclusion, the collaboration between councils and municipalities makes it possible to generate greater cohesion in the opening of data throughout the territory, ensuring that all municipalities, regardless of their size or resources, have access to the necessary tools and knowledge. However, local councils also have their technical and resource limitations, so this is an area where further progress needs to be made, with a focus on raising awareness of the benefits of open data and collaboration between institutions.

The FEMP's Network of Local Entities for Transparency and Citizen Participation has just presented a guide focused on data visualisation. The document, which takes as a reference the Guide to data visualisation developed by the City Council of L'Hospitalet, has been prepared based on the search for good practices promoted by public and private organisations.

The guide includes recommendations and basic criteria to represent data graphically, facilitating its comprehension. In principle, it is aimed at all the entities that are members of the FEMP's Network of Local Entities for Transparency and Citizen Participation. However, it is also useful for anyone wishing to acquire a general knowledge of data visualisation.

Specifically, the guide has been developed with three objectives in mind:

• To provide principles and good practices in the field of data visualisation.
• To provide a model for the visualisation and communication of local authority data by standardising the use of different visual resources.
• Promote the principles of quality, simplicity, inclusiveness and ethics in data communication.

What does the guide include?

After a brief introduction, the guide begins with a series of basic concepts and general principles to be followed in data visualisation, such as the principle of simplification, the use of space or accessibility and exclusive design. Through graphic examples, the reader learns what to do and what not to do if we want our visualisation to be easily understood. 

The guide then focuses on the different stages of designing a data visualisation through a sequential methodological process, as shown in the following diagram:

As the image shows, before developing the visualisation, it is essential to take the time to establish the objectives we want to achieve and the audience we are targeting, in order to tailor the message and select the most appropriate visualisation based on what we want to represent.

When representing data, users have at their disposal a wide variety of visualisation objects with different functions and performance. Not all objects are suitable for all cases and it will be necessary to determine the most appropriate one for each specific situation. In this sense, the guide offers several recommendations and guidelines so that the reader is able to choose the right element based on his or her objectives and audience, as well as the data he or she wants to display.

The following chapters focus on the various elements available (infographics, dashboards, indicators, tables, maps, etc.) showing the different subcategories that exist and the good practices to follow in their elaboration, showing numerous examples that facilitate their understanding. Recommendations on the use of the text are also provided.

The guide ends with a selection of resources for further knowledge and data visualisation tools to be considered by anyone who wants to start developing their own visualisations.

You can download the complete guide below, in the "Documentation" section.

The provincial councils and equivalent bodies such as cabildos or island councils are the governing bodies of the provinces and foral territories, responsible for providing legal, economic and technical assistance and cooperation to the municipalities. Their impact is of particular importance in smaller municipalities, with less economic and management capacity, to which they provide services that they could not provide on their own.

In the open data ecosystem, the provincial councils play a very important role. On the one hand, they are promoters of open data in small municipalities, without sufficient resources to carry out these tasks. On the other hand, they have a large amount of valuable local data, which helps to detect singularities and specific needs.

An example of data opening by these organizations can be found in the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.

The strategic and regulatory framework of Gipuzkoa Irekia: a common access point to the data of various entities of the Provincial Government

The Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa has an open data catalog, the Gipuzkoa Irekia portal. It offers access to multiple datasets resulting from the activity of the Provincial Council itself and other associated entities of Gipuzkoa: the autonomous bodies Uliazpi and Kabia, the trading companies Bidegi, Etorlur, and Izfe, the General Councils of Gipuzkoa, 82 municipalities, 6 associations and the Waste Consortium of Gipuzkoa.

Each entity is autonomously incorporating the data in the Gipuzkoa Irekia repository, which is broken down into two main blocks: information related to transparency and open data. All its activity is framed within the following regulatory and strategic context:

1. The "Norma Foral 4/2019, of March 11, on Good Governance in the framework of the foral public governance", whose objective is to consolidate the implementation of a new model of relationship between the Administration and the citizens.

2. The Open Government Partnership Euskadi initiative, where the main Basque administrations (Basque Government, Provincial Council of Alava, Provincial Council of Bizkaia, Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, City Council of Bilbao, City Council of Donostia, City Council of Vitoria-Gasteiz) have established several joint objectives to advance in the field of open data, such as:

• To advance in the standardization and normalization of data for its opening in a coordinated manner.
• To implement services based on open data that generate public value.
• Promote the culture of inter-administrative work.

3. The Digital Transformation Plan 2021-2025 of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, which establishes as an objective the development of the global data strategy that allows managing the availability, integrity and security of the data used in the organization. The data governance strategy foresees the creation of a data office whose implementation is in progress.

More than 2,200 datasets available to the public

Under this framework, the portal offers access to multiple datasets on population, health, economy or education, among many others. These data can be found in reusable and downloadable formats.

The working methodology for the publication is based on the information life cycle, a continuous cycle with 4 phases:

• Identification and selection of reusable information.
• Preparation and processing of the datasets.
• Publication.
• Maintenance of the datasets.

The datasets are gradually incorporated into the Gipuzkoa Irekia repository in collaboration with each of the entities responsible for the published data.

The datasets that have been worked on most recently are organized into several areas or families: sustainable mobility, sport and healthy living, and accountability. Among them, it is worth highlighting:

• Sustainable mobility: weekly traffic data, shows weekly data collected by the gauges installed in the main road networks of Gipuzkoa.
• Sport and healthy life: data on school children's participation in school sport activities, Gipuzkoa's federated licenses during the season and estimates of the number of people on Gipuzkoa's beaches.
• Accountability: subsidies granted, provides data on subsidies and grants awarded in competition by the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.

Currently, the most visited data are those related to urban real estate and those related to taxes on economic activities. Within the publication strategy, importance is being given to the publication of real-time data, the consumption of which allows the creation of services with live data, such as traffic data or hydrological data.

A continuous activity over time

The commitment of the organizations associated with Gipuzkoa Irekia does not end with the publication of the data, but they always have in mind to continue improving functionalities and services. In this sense, the objectives set annually within the strategic plan are:

• Consolidate the publication of data in Gipuzkoa Irekia to facilitate the location and centralized access to open data. Recently, the portal has been updated to reorganize the contents, update the support platform and, in addition, revise the aesthetics of the portal.
• Improve the availability of disaggregated data, in open, standardized and normalized formats, in order to improve the accessibility and exploitation of the data so that they can be processed in an automated way.
• To offer visualizations that facilitate the interpretation of published data.
• Contribute to the implementation of inter-administrative services that are fed with open data by the main Basque public administrations.

Use cases and applications based on Gipuzkoa Irekia data

All datasets can be freely used and redistributed by anyone, as long as the copyright conditions defined in each dataset are respected. Normally, the reuse conditions allow sharing, creating and adapting as long as the origin of the data is cited.

Several departments of the Provincial Council itself, as well as other public entities have taken advantage of these datasets to launch services such as: 

• KulturKlik. This is a common repository that brings together cultural events. The data of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa have been standardized in order to integrate them automatically.
• Social Observatory of Gipuzkoa Behagi. Shows indicators and visualizations with data on people at risk or in poverty, elderly or disabled, among others.
• Euskadi Traffic. It is an API that provides data on the traffic situation in the Basque Country with information from various administrations. This REST service is focused on application developers and, in general, public data reusers.
• Nik Hondartzak. It is an application that allows to consult during the beach season, in real time, the occupancy level of each beach.

These examples show the value of this more local data for citizens and public institutions. It is therefore not surprising that more and more councils are being encouraged to open their data and generate valuable services based on them.

In 2017, the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) published the guide "Open data: strategic guide for its implementation and minimum datasets to be published", which included a series of recommendations and guidelines for public data opening with the aim of driving its publication and reuse. In addition to information related to legal framework or governance model, the guide also included 20 datasets considered as "the most interesting, possible and easier to publish by public administrations".

After the guide success, the FEMP has continued working on expanding these datasets, identifying 20 new ones that will make possible to standardize the publication of open data and facilitate its management. For this, the FEMP count on the help of a multidisciplinary working group where different interest groups were represented: cities, citizens, companies, universities and public bodies.

The result is a new document, entitled Open Data FEMP 2019: 40 datsets to be published by the Local Entities, whose objective is to provide a "common open data model that facilitates interoperability and the reuse of public sector information", as well as to bring Spanish local entities’ commitment to normalize open data closer to the international community.

This new guide addresses not only what datasets should be published by local entities, but also how they should be published to make them more useful for citizens and reusers. Using different tabs - one for each recommended dataset – the report indicated the recommended format or update frequency when publishing each dataset. The guide also indicates each dataset reuse value or complexity (based on a scale from 1 to 5), as well as some recommended visualization to make easier citizens access to information.

The document is mainly oriented to medium to large cities, although smaller municipalities can also use it as a knowledge framework. It can help companies, citizens, universities, entrepreneurs, researchers, data journalists, students, etc. interested in the subject, although, the roles that can make the most of the information are:

• Those responsible for developing or that have to develop open data policies.
• Those responsible for Open Government policies (transparency, participation, accountability, collaboration).
• Those responsible for the development of Information Technology.
• Those responsible for "Smart Cities" and Innovation projects.

The following image shows which are the 40 datasets recommended in the document:

Here you can download the full report (in Spanish, with an executive summary in English):

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.