Measuring the impact of open data is not always easy. As we saw a few weeks ago, there are several theoretical models that are not easy to implement, so we have to look for different approaches. In the Aporta Initiative we use a mixed approach, as explained here: a quantitative analysis through indicators on data publication and its characteristics, and a qualitative one through the collection of cases of data use.

This approach is also used by various local, regional and state initiatives in our country. In today's article, we will focus on concrete examples of mechanisms implemented by Spanish open data initiatives to monitor and measure the impact of the use of their data.

Quantitative analysis

One of the first steps in monitoring impact is to know quantitatively if users are accessing the published data. To do this we can use different tools.

Dashboards

Thanks to the incorporation of web analytics tools in open data platforms, such as Google Analytics or Motomo (which until 2018 was called PIWIK), a series of indicators can be set around data consumption variables, such as how many users visit the web, what is their origin, which data sets are most in demand or in what format they are downloaded. All of this information is of great value when it comes to making decisions that imply improvements to continue promoting the reuse of public information.

With this data, dashboards can be created so that users can also know this information. This is the case of the Castellón Provincial Council, the Madrid City Council, the Catalan Government, Renfe, the Basque Government or the datos.gob.es itself.

Conducting surveys and periodic studies

In addition, it is advisable to carry out frequent public consultations and studies that allow us to know directly the impact of our data. The ONTSI periodically carries out a characterization study of the sector, and an analysis of the Public Administrations as reusers of their own data and that of third parties. Another example is the report on the Infomediary Sector of ASEDIE, now in its 8th edition. This report measures the products and services based on open data that have been generated. Both reports use a stable methodology that allows comparisons between different years. 

Qualitative analysis

It consists of the identification of use cases through different mechanisms, such as

Application and enterprise tracking

Thanks to the mapping of open data use cases, we can know what the impact of a certain data set is. In many open data platforms, whether local, regional or state, we can find a section of applications or companies with examples and reuse success stories that in turn serve as reference and inspiration for the creation of new value services. In the case of datos.gob.es, we have a form for companies or applications that wish to register their information, but we also carry out a proactive search, through contact with the main actors in the ecosystem and media alerts.

Other examples of portals that have applications sections are Andalusia, Castilla y Leon, Navarra, Barcelona, Santander, Malaga, Zaragoza, Valencia, Vitoria or Bilbao, although there are many more.

Implementation of data communities

In order to be aware of new developments in the field of reuse and to exchange knowledge and experiences to align the data publication strategy with the needs of reusers, some initiatives have opted for the implementation of communities. This is the case of the Basque Country, which has created a space to centralize everything that happens around the reuse of its data. This community has been especially useful to collect and measure the work that has been developed on COVID-19 using open data. Under its umbrella there are also activities and competitions that encourage reuse.

For its part, the Castellón Provincial Council has created a Provincial Council of Reusers, a mixed public-private body made up of technicians from the provincial institution itself, and people with recognized professional backgrounds in different economic sectors. These professionals meet once a quarter to hold a conversation to monitor use cases and which favours constant feedback and the enrichment of the Provincial Council's open data strategy. 

The National Library of Spain is working along the same lines and has launched a collaborative work platform so that those citizens who wish to do so can participate in specific projects to enrich the Library's data, making it more accessible and easier to reuse.

In short, all these activities allow monitoring the activity of an open data initiative and its impact on society. They help us to know what challenges we are solving in fields as important for humanity as the environment, health or education. In this way, we will be able to know its evolution over time and easily detect trends and possible areas of improvement, which will lead us to distribute the efforts and resources available in a more effective way.  

Content elaborated by datos.gob.es team.

We have been talking about the digital transformation for years, but perhaps it has been in the last few months when we have had to stay at home and resort to teleworking or e-commerce, that we have noticed the need for it the most. Many companies have had to transform quickly, adapting their internal processes, their relationship with customers and even their business models to new needs.

However, the digital transformation is nothing new, and before the health crisis there were already many organizations with a long way to go. This is reflected in the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which each year measures the performance and evolution of the EU Member States in terms of digital competitiveness.

DESI INDEX

The DESI Index performs its analysis based on 5 indicators: Digital Public Services, Connectivity, Human Capital, Integration of Digital Technology and Use of Internet Services.

In this index, Spain is above the European Union average, occupying the eleventh position, with unequal scores in the various markers:

• The score where our country stands out the most is Digital Public Services, where it is in second place in Europe, improving its position with respect to last year, thanks to the application of a default digital strategy throughout its central administration. One of the indicators driving Spain's position in this dimension is open data, where we are in second place in terms of maturity in Europe. We are also above average in the availability and use of e-government services.
• Spain also performs well in the area of connectivity (5th place), driven by the good implementation of high-speed networks: 80% of households have fiber optic coverage, well above the EU average (34%).
• In contrast, Spain is below the EU average in the human capital indicator (16th place), with 43% of people between 16 and 74 years of age still lacking digital skills. It does improve on last year's percentage of ICT graduates and specialists in total employment. The report highlights the government's efforts to improve this situation, with actions such as the Strategic Plan for Vocational Training in the Education System 2019-2022, which seeks to create forty new degrees in different ICT fields.
• With regard to the integration of digital technology, Spain ranks 13th, in line with the EU average. Spanish companies take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technologies and are above Europe in the use of electronic information exchange systems (43% compared to 34%), although slightly below in access to macrodata analysis (11% compared to 12) and the use of the cloud (16% compared to 18%). With regard to emerging technologies, the report highlights that Spain has developed a significant number of coordination measures, especially in the field of cyber security.
• Finally, the use of Internet services has increased since the previous year, and the country has obtained results above the EU average. However, it is worth mentioning that it is still used more for leisure activities (consuming multimedia content), than for day-to-day business, such as banking or e-commerce.

The study was carried out before the pandemic, so the results do not include the actions carried out in recent months, such as the publication of the Digital Agenda 2025, which includes the promotion of a Data Economy. The measures to be developed include the implementation of an Artificial Intelligence Strategy, the development of a Data Office with a Chief Data Officer at the head and the creation of an Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council, among others.

OTHER REPORTS ON DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN SPAIN

In addition to the DESI index, in recent months two reports of particular importance when it comes to digitalization have been published in our country: the "Digital Society in Spain Report 2019" and the "COTEC 2020" report.

Digital Society in Spain 2019 Report

This report, published by the Telefónica Foundation, includes data and indicators that describe the state of Spanish society in relation to the media, uses and digital services. Specifically, it focuses on the deployment of telecommunications infrastructure, the level of implementation of the most advanced technologies and the state of the art of Spanish digital life.

The conclusions of the report are very much in line with the DESI index, which it takes as a reference. It highlights that 9 out of 10 inhabitants are Internet users, and that the gender gap in cyberspace has been completely eliminated, although an age gap still exists. The report also highlights that our country has a very good connection, with ultra-fast network coverage in three out of every four homes.

The study indicates that the main technological currents that are shaping the digital transition in Spain revolve around artificial intelligence, industry 4.0 and cyber security, with the first one standing out above all: while in 2013 only one out of every fifty emerging companies focused its activity on artificial intelligence, now one out of every twelve do so.

The report ends with an analysis of the degree of digital development presented by the Autonomous Communities, describing the current situation and the challenges facing each region.

You can read the full report at this link.

COTEC 2020 Report

The COTEC report, on the other hand, focuses on a fundamental aspect to boost the digital transformation: the R&D+I. The report shows us the innovation map in Spain, through the analysis of the main indicators and national, regional and international strategies.

The report analyzes data from 2018 and shows that R&D has gained weight in the productive structure for the second consecutive year, driven mainly by private investment. However, we are still far from countries like France, Italy or Germany.

The autonomous communities maintain heterogeneous levels of effort. The five most advanced regions are the Basque Country, Madrid, Navarre, Catalonia and Castile and Leon).

The report also focuses on education, where it highlights that Spain has a higher rate than the European average in STEM graduates, but with a much wider gender gap than in most surrounding countries. It should be noted that our country has a low proportion of people with an average educational level, since we have a high rate of population that leaves school at an early age, and a high percentage of young people who graduate from university.

You can read the full report at this link.

After taking a look at these reports, we can conclude that both the public and private sectors are making an effort to promote the digital transformation of Spain in order to make the digital transformation and innovation a driver of economic and social development in our country. There are still areas for improvement, but there is no denying the interest in tackling the challenges ahead.

Making a city "smart" is not easy. According to the report Smart cities: understanding the challenges and opportunities, the budget constraints and the lack of infrastructure are the two main barriers for populations wanting to implement Smart cities initiatives. In this context, interoperability and collaborative platforms that allow the sharing of resources are key to success.

It was with this idea that the Ciudades Abiertas (Open Cities) project emerged 3 years ago, an open, collaborative and interoperable government platform, which was a beneficiary of the II Call for Smart Cities.

Collaboration between municipalities based on 4 lines of action

The Ciudades Abiertas project is led by Red.es and four city councils: A Coruña, Madrid, Santiago de Compostela and Zaragoza. Together, these city councils are developing various initiatives that can be reused by other bodies.

Recently, Ciudades Abiertas has updated its website, incorporating a new design, a highlights section with the latest news of the project and additional functionalities such as execution indicators.

The actions have been developed around 4 pillars:

• Open data: Open data is the most critical requirement of Smart Cities, as the above-mentioned study rightly pointed out. In this sense, the Open Cities project provides the technical and conceptual means necessary for the "management of unique shared data, open by default, georeferenced and semantically annotated by the city". Work is currently underway on the publication of a generic data REST API - or the development of a SPARQL access point to perform complex queries on several datasets at once, among other actions.
• Vocabulariums: The platform offers a catalogue of common and open vocabularies and data structures on Github for use by participating municipalities or any other entity. You can already access the vocabularies on the Municipal Agenda, Population Register or Public Bicycle, the last one to be incorporated in April of this year. They are currently working on other vocabularies such as Traffic or Budget and Budgetary Execution. Within this framework, a couple of videos have also been created to inform about what the vocabularies are and how they are generated and to raise awareness about the advantages of their use, in a simple and didactic way.
• Participation:  The project seeks to promote citizen participation in several of the legislative, implementation and control activities carried out by the municipalities, in areas such as participatory budgets or day-to-day management. To this end, a methodology has been developed and two catalogues are provided, one of participatory processes and the other of instruments for participation. A list has also been included with specific examples of participatory processes that can be taken as a reference when setting up an initiative of this type.
• Transparency: Accountability is also a fundamental area of Smart Cities, so mechanisms are needed to ensure that all activities carried out by the council are provided with full transparency. One way to provide this information is through simple visualizations, easy to understand by citizens without technical knowledge. The project explores different ways to facilitate these visualisations. Two interesting reports have been prepared: Report with the Analysis of External Visualisation Systems and the Report with the Analysis of Visualisation Extensions for CKAN.

Next steps

The Open Cities project is still in full development. Among the activities to be developed in the coming months is the definition of new vocabularies until completing those recommended by the UNE 178301:2015 standard, or the creation of a general scorecard that allows comparisons of all the transparency indicators between cities, thanks to the homogenization of the data and its availability in reusable formats. They are also working, through collaborative workshops with citizens, on the design of visualizations that allow to offer information on transparency in an interactive way and with a simple language.

All these actions will facilitate the creation of new Smart Cities projects not only in these cities but in various territories throughout the country.

The Multisectorial Information Association (ASEDIE), which brings together the infomediary companies of our country, has, among its objectives, to promote the use, reuse and distribution of information, both public and private, creating value-added products. In this sense, it has launched an initiative to promote the complete opening of three datasets by all the Autonomous Communities (ACs), following unified criteria that facilitate their reuse.

Specifically, the idea is to open three databases, including the tax identification number of each of the entities. These databases are:

• Cooperatives
• Associations
• Foundations

These datasets have been called the "Top 3 ASEDIE 2019". This action was presented in last year''s edition of the Infomediary Sector Report and the evolution of its result has been included in the latest edition of this year''s report. It is worth noting that 764 companies participated in the 2020 edition, an increase of 10% over the previous edition. This increase in participation reflects the growth of the sector in Spain, both in the number of companies and employees working in this activity, and in its turnover, with an aggregate turnover of more than 2 billion euros.

Driving the opening of three new data sets

Since 2018, ASEDIE has been urging those responsible for the databases of cooperatives, associations and foundations in the 17 Autonomous Communities to make an effort to:

1. Identify and open the 3 requested databases
2. Unify download formats
3. Unify the forms to be filled in when registering

These actions mean going one step further in the commitment to information quality, facilitating its standardization. According to ASEDIE studies, 60% of infomediary companies highlight that the main barrier to the reuse of information is that it is only available in some Autonomous Communities or Town Councils. With actions such as the one developed by ASEDIE, it would be possible to homogenize the available information helping to break down this barrier.

2019: a not very encouraging situation, but with a great margin for improvement and projection

During 2019, ASEDIE only found this type of data open in very localized areas of Spain, such as the two mesetas, the coastal areas and the two archipelagos (Balearic and Canary Islands). The overall picture reflected that, in many Communities, most of these three databases remained closed or open without CIF.

2020: great improvements achieved in the sector in recent months.

In this case, the Asedie 2020 Report shows that the situation has improved considerably compared to the previous year, as new areas can be seen where the Autonomous Communities have opened these three databases.

At the date of the presentation of the Report, there were already eight Communities with open databases of Associations, Cooperatives and Foundations. In Navarra, two databases that was closed the previous year were opened in 2020, although without a tax identification number. The Basque Country has two completely open databases and one in the absence of a tax identification number. In Catalonia, these three databases are now completely open with a tax identification number, while in Aragon, the database for cooperatives has been opened in the absence of a tax identification number.

The autonomous community that has had the greatest performance over the last year has been the Balearic Islands, as it has shifted from having the three closed to opening them completely in just one year. The community of Castilla y León is another of those that have all three databases completely open.

The situation will also continue to improve over the coming months, as it is estimated, according to the report, that 88% of the Autonomous Communities are considering action plans to open or improve the publicity of registers of this type.

Next steps: continue to push for the opening of homogenized data

Once ASEDIE has achieved the necessary momentum and after the good reception by the Autonomous Regions, on 18 March the "Top 3 Asedie 2020" was presented, so that this work of opening and homogenization does not stop and the Autonomous Regions that already have the first Top 3 open, will continue with their work:

• Commercial establishments
• Industrial parks
• SAT records

In short, thanks to these initiatives, public-private collaboration will be boosted by making it easier for companies to reuse public information, which will have a great impact on the generation of new business and wealth.