Over the last year we have heard about 5G on numerous occasions, often linked to hoaxes and fake news with no scientific basis that make us forget what is really important: 5G will mean an unprecedented technological revolution that will affect our professional and personal lives, and that will bring about changes in all sectors of activity.

What exactly is 5G?

5G refers to the fifth generation of mobile communication networks. The previous four were characterised by the following functionalities:

• 1G: first mobile phones with talk-only capability.
• 2G: phones incorporate the ability to send SMS.
• 3G: handsets are able to connect to the internet.
• 4G: broadband is developed, capable of assimilating the exponential increase in mobile data consumption, facilitating functionalities such as video streaming and augmented reality.

5G is not entirely new, but an evolution of previous generations that allows for more efficient use of spectrum. 5G technology significantly improves performance in several aspects:

• High density of connected devices: The higher network capacity allows a greater number of devices to be incorporated through simultaneous connections, facilitating, among other things, the mass deployment of sensors and massive machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
• Faster speed: The speed of 5G is approaching 15 to 20 Gbs per second, which is almost real time. This is expected to further expand the use of virtual desktops or cloud storage. Applications can be accessed and software can be run remotely instantaneously.
• Lower latency: Latency is the time it takes for a data packet to be transferred within the network. That is, the time it takes for an action to be executed from the time we have launched it.  With 5G, latency is around 1 millisecond (ms) compared to 20-30 ms for 4G networks.

Benefits that go well beyond the mobile pone

All this not only means improvements for our smartphones, but also a huge employment and economic opportunity. The European Union highlights the impact of 5G in key sectors such as transport, healthcare and industry, with a benefit of more than €500 billion per year worldwide for 5G-enabled service providers.

In the healthcare sector, it will streamline secure online consultations and remote procedures, such as robotic surgery, improving resource efficiency. In transport, it will be a boon for autonomous vehicles: cars will be able to connect with each other (vehicle-to-vehicle or V2V) to share data on routes or their speed, which can be a big improvement in terms of safety. The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) estimates that, with the advent of this technology, the risk of traffic accidents could be reduced by 65-68%. And in the industrial sector, it will serve to optimise process automation and control of operations by improving the interconnection between the various machines, objects and devices in the production chain.

Its impact on Smart cities and the world of open data

This revolution will also reach Smart Cities. The ability to manage millions of devices in real time will drive the Internet of Things (IoT), with more and more objects becoming connected to each other. By 2025 there will be 55.7 billion connected devices worldwide, 75% of which will be connected to an IoT platform, many linked to smart city environments.

This growing number of interconnected objects, capable of capturing information and talking to each other, will generate an unprecedented volume of data that can be analysed to make informed decisions about what changes or new projects will most benefit citizens.

In addition to 5G, another factor that will facilitate immediacy is edge computing. This technology allows data to be processed and analysed locally, i.e. as close as possible to the sensors that generated the data. This avoids moving all the raw data to central servers, improving efficiency and saving time.

Despite these opportunities, there are still challenges to overcome. Security concerns, cost of implementation or the need for scalable and versatile infrastructures are barriers to overcome to facilitate the expansion of new use cases.

5G in Europe and Spain

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of resilient, high-speed communications for working remotely, in our daily lives, and for sustaining business operations and processes. This fact, coupled with the advantages and opportunities mentioned above, has led the European Union to include 5G as one of the 7 key areas of the FRR (Recovery and Resilience Facility). It is estimated that a significant part of its planned digital budget of EUR 150 billion will be used to fund 5G network infrastructure. This is coupled with funds from the Connecting Europe Facility and the Digital Europe Programme strategic investments. All of this is part of the 5G Plan for Europe.

In Spain, the promotion of 5G is one of the lines of action of the Digital Spain 2025 Agenda. The 5G technology promotion strategy will have a budget of 300 million euros in 2021. This strategy continues the work started with the National 5G Plan 2018-2020, which has contributed to making Spain the European country with the largest number of cities with available 5G services and pilot projects where possible applications of this technology are being tested.  The calls for proposals to promote the development of 5G technology pilot projects, carried out by Red.es, have helped to launch use cases that experiment with virtual reality and augmented reality in Andalusia or promote the supervision of railway infrastructures using drones and industry 4.0 in Galicia. All this has led to the fact that, according to the latest DESI index, Spain is above the EU average in terms of 5G network readiness.

In our country, 5G will make it possible to extend broadband coverage at high speeds in rural and isolated areas, which will help reduce the digital divide and fight depopulation. It will also boost the availability of digital public services.

In short, this is a great opportunity that will accelerate the digital transformation of society and the economy.

Content prepared by the datos.gob.es team.

As a new year begins, it is time to take a look at the strategic, regulatory and political situation that will affect the world of open data in the coming months.

In this article we will focus on the situation in Europe. If you want to know the Spanish framework, you can read the article " The data strategies that will shape 2021 in Spain".

Europe stresses importance of data to drive recovery and innovation

After a 2020 marked by the global pandemic, 2021 is expected to be the year in which both health and economic recovery begins. In this sense, the European Commission considers data as a fundamental asset to overcome the crisis linked to COVID-19, and will therefore continue to promote its openness and reuse.

Already at the end of 2019, with the presentation of the European Green Deal, the Commission set out the roadmap to follow based on two pillars: digitisation and environmental sustainability. Among other issues, the Green Deal highlights the need to promote accessible and interoperable data, which, combined with digital infrastructure (supercomputers, cloud storage, ultrafast networks) and artificial intelligence solutions, facilitate informed decision-making.

Along the same lines is the white paper on Artificial Intelligence, published in February 2020 with the aim of ensuring an AI ecosystem of excellence and trust, based on regulation and investment. Among other issues, the document emphasises the need to ensure access to reusable data in accordance with the FAIR principles. This data must be comprehensive and representative in order to train AI systems and ensure their reliability.

Objectives and lines of action for 2021

The Commission's objectives for 2021 include boosting Europe's digital sovereignty, i.e. improving its competitiveness beyond its borders. To this end, it has established a European data strategy to drive the data economy and a digital single market, where data is shared between member states. This strategy will be accompanied by considerable investment, as the Recovery Plan for Europe, designed to help repair the economic and social damage caused by the pandemic, indicates that €143.4 billion will be allocated to the "Single Market, Innovation and Digital Economy".

This European data strategy is based on:

• A multi-sectoral data use and access governance framework. The proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European data governance, published at the end of 2020. This regulation establishes a legally binding framework that provides mechanisms for the re-use of public sector data that usually cannot be exploited due to third party rights or personal data protection. The regulation facilitates the transfer of personal and business data for the common good, establishes the figure of neutral data sharing service providers, and obliges states to establish a single point of information, among other issues. This regulatory proposal is accompanied by an impact assessment that analyses the possible policies to be implemented in this area on the basis of their effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and legal and political feasibility. It states that "the general public is in favour of a comprehensive data strategy and the altruistic transfer of data, as well as the implementation of technical tools that allow citizens to actively participate in the data economy".
• This regulation complements the Directive on open data and re-use of public sector information, which extended the scope of Directive 2003/98/EC and its 2013 reform. During the first quarter of 2021, the implementing act on high-value databases, the re-use of which is associated with considerable benefits for society, the environment and the economy, is expected to be adopted, as set out in this directive.
• Boosting public-private collaboration and investments in data, capabilities and infrastructure, with a focus on data storage, cloud, 5G and interoperability. In this regard, one of the commission's major projects is the pan-European cloud federation. On 15 October, the relevant ministers made a joint declaration called 'Building the next generation cloud for businesses and the public sector in the EU' to combine private, national and EU investment in the deployment of competitive, green and secure cloud infrastructure and services. The main focus is on the deployment of European data spaces in sensitive areas such as health, industry or the environment to help overcome technical and legal obstacles. A first initiative in this field is GaiaX.
•  The empowerment of people, and investment in SMEs and their training, through actions such as the new Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) grants or the Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027), which among other actions proposes the development of ethical guidelines on artificial intelligence (AI) and the use of data. It also updates the European Digital Skills Framework, including AI and data-related skills, and support for the development of learning resources for schools.

 Finally, other plans and strategies related more generally to data have also been approved during 2020, such as the European Strategy on Open Source Software 2020-2023, the Cybersecurity Strategy or the Berlin Declaration on the digital society and value-based digital governance.

With all these measures, the European Commission seeks to make data one of its priority axes, a valuable asset, which should be reusable, accessible with guarantees and serve as a basis for numerous economic and social activities.

If you want to know how these strategies, plans and regulations are reflected in Spain, we invite you to read the article " The data strategies that will shape 2021 in Spain".

You can see a summary of the data-related strategies that will mark 2021 in Europe and Spain in this link .

Updated 02/02/2024

In 2020, the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European data governance (Data Governance Act) was made public. This is an initiative that was already announced in the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions entitled "A European strategy for data", one of whose main objectives is to promote a single market for data that favours its rapid handling and, at the same time, is based on the principles and values of the EU.

The text of this proposal was preceded by a public consultation process with wide participation, especially with regard to the data governance model (section 2.1) whit almost eight hundred contributions. Furthermore, as highlighted in the preamble of the proposal itself, the regulatory options finally adopted considered the previous analysis in which the different possible alternatives for achieving the objectives sought were analysed.

Although this new initiative was initially assessed positively, the truth is that it could raise doubts about its necessity, given that Directive (EU) 2019/1024, of 20 June 2019, on open data and the re-use of public sector information, was approved a little over a year ago.

Why then a new regulation now?

Firstly, the new proposal takes the form of a Regulation - not a new Directive - to establish a mandatory, directly applicable regime throughout the Union to harmonise the EU internal market, given the risk that unilateral regulation by States will end up fragmenting it if there is no minimum harmonisation to help boost cross-border digital services. However, the competence of the Member States with regard to the organisational measures to be taken is respected, as is their ability to legislate on access to public sector information, so that the Regulation will not affect existing state rules in this area.

Secondly, it should be noted that the regulation is complementary to the 2019 directive, given that the achievement of the objectives set out above requires an approach which goes beyond the limitations to which that party is subject. Specifically, it is a question of establishing new regulations for those sets of data on which third parties have rights that make their re-use difficult, as is the case in particular with the protection of personal data, intellectual property or, among other legal assets, statistical or commercial confidentiality. Indeed, the existence of these legal barriers may seriously hinder - and even prevent - the re-use of data of enormous value when it comes to implementing projects of great impact in the current social and technological context, such as those relating to research and those based on the innovation required by the digital transformation. The measures incorporated in the proposal for a Regulation are intended to offer solutions specifically aimed at addressing these obstacles, incorporating mechanisms that provide greater legal certainty and therefore strengthen the confidence of the holders of these rights and interests.

It is also intended to establish a number of identical mechanisms throughout the Union to encourage reuse, as is the case with:

• The establishment of a reporting regime for data sharing providers, which will be neutral, i.e. they will not be able to use the data for purposes other than making it available to re-users. The services they provide must also be transparent and non-discriminatory.
• The promotion of altruism in order to facilitate the use of data for the common good on a voluntary basis, including the implementation of a form at European level to facilitate the provision of consent for the transfer of data.
• The obligation for States to establish a single point of information which, in addition, must have a register in which to submit requests for re-use so that, once received, they are sent to the corresponding bodies and entities for resolution within a maximum period of two months.
• The creation at European level of a committee of experts with the aim of facilitating re-use, which will also have an advisory role for the Commission.

What are the main legal guarantees of the Regulation?

With these objectives in mind, the initiative aims to lay the foundations for building a model of European data governance based on transparency and neutrality as a counterweight to trends in other areas. Specifically, the aim is to establish a regulatory framework that reinforces the confidence of citizens, businesses and other organisations that their data will be reused in accordance with minimum legal standards, thus facilitating control over the uses made by third parties. Thus, among the main novelties of the proposal:

• Public bodies that allow the re-use of this type of data affected by the rights and interests of third parties are obliged to adopt the technical, organisational and legal measures that guarantee their protection.
• The possibility is established for public bodies to impose an obligation that data may be re-used only if it has been subject to "pre-processing", which consists in making it anonymous, pseudonymous or, where appropriate, deleting confidential information.
• It is foreseen that re-use is only allowed in environments directly controlled by the public body if there is no other alternative that can meet the needs of the re-user.
• Public bodies are recognised as having the power to prohibit the use of the results of data processing that contains information that endangers the rights and interests of third parties.
• The collaboration of public bodies in the collection of consent from the data subjects is facilitated without the re-users having direct contact with them.
• Effective conditions and guarantees are established for cases in which the processing of the data is to take place outside the European Union, including express acceptance of submission to the jurisdiction of the State in which the public sector body that facilitated the re-use is located.

As the European Commission emphasised in a recent Communication on the occasion of the review carried out after two years of application of the General Data Protection Regulation, its provisions " helps to  foster  trust-worthy innovation, notably through its risk-based approach and principles such as privacy by design  and  by  default ". This is precisely the approach of the new proposal: to establish the bases of a regulatory model based on the protection of the rights and interests affected, thus facilitating the optimal legal conditions that will allow the re-use of public sector information to be promoted with the appropriate guarantees.

The following infographic provides a summary of the main aspects of the DGA. Click on the images to go to the different versions:

Two-page version                                                            One-page version

Content prepared by Julián Valero, professor at the University of Murcia and Coordinator of the Research Group "Innovation, Law and Technology" (iDerTec).

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

Have you ever stopped to think about how much open source software you use in your day-to-day life without even being aware of it? From most of the apps on your smartphone, to your connected home devices, to the software running in your car. In all of these programs, much of the code is partly based on open source software.

The vast majority of the websites we visit in our daily lives work thanks to open source software (sometimes called free software). From the operating system of their servers and the databases that store information, to the code of their applications, they are, fundamentally, free software. Moreover, 90% of the world's cloud infrastructure is based on Linux as the operating system (OS), perhaps the most recognised free and open source software in the world. 

But what is free or open source software?

Open source software combines copyright and a license to give users the freedom to run the software, analyse it, make modifications, and share the code and its modifications with others. Open source software facilitates innovation and agility in the development of new applications as it eliminates barriers and friction when collaborating.

European open source software strategy 2020-2023

At the end of October 2020, the European Commission published an update of its 2020-2023 strategy for the promotion of open source software in the European digital space. The strategy is built on the capacity of open source software to achieve technological sovereignty in Europe. The essence of open source software is aligned with the values of the European Commission, which ensures that all member states benefit from it.

The title of this strategy, Think Open, points to a change of approach in which software solutions are designed from the standpoint of openness, sharing, reuse, security, privacy, accessibility and legal considerations. It also demonstrates a clear commitment to actively support the open source developer communities. 

No less important is the fact that this strategy complements the equivalent European strategy for data.

Increasingly, free software development and open data are becoming more closely related. Much of today's most widely used free software aims to extract value from data in order to make intelligent decisions. This new strategy on free software, together with the also recent European Directive (2019/1024) on open data and the re-use of public sector information, provides the perfect legal framework to enhance Europe's digital transformation in the hands of free software and open data.

Objectives of the strategy

As mentioned above, the benefits of using open source software are: 

• The code is public, it can be reused and adapted in a collaborative way.
• The code can be improved and audited for security issues, regardless of suppliers.
• This adaptability of the code ensures potential interoperability between systems and solutions. 

These benefits clearly support the high-level objectives of this strategy:

• To support the Commission's policy priorities and activities with secure digital means and state-of-the-art solutions.
• To provide the Commission with high quality, reliable and borderless digital public services
• Enable the transformation of the Commission and maximise its role in policy making.
• To make the Commission a world-class \"open administration\". An agile, collaborative and innovative administration.
• Ensuring the security of the Commission's IT assets.
• Ensuring the technological resilience of the Commission.

In order to launch and implement this new strategy, the Commission is planning to set up an office for the coordination of the open source software Programme. This office will be responsible for implementing a series of concrete actions aimed at having the greatest transformational impact. The following are some of the concrete actions planned.

          Source: Open Source software strategy 2020-2023.  

It is hoped that these actions will provide the tools to strengthen and expand the open source culture. The aim is that, gradually, the source code will be made available to all Commission developer teams.

Once the legal barriers are removed, an increasing number of solutions developed internally, under the open source paradigm, will be made available to the general public. The contributions of thousands of citizens to open source projects will undoubtedly contribute to building Europe's digital sovereignty.

Content elaborated by Alejandro Alija, expert in Digital Transformation and Innovation.

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

Just a few months ago, in November 2019, Ursula von der Leyen, still as a candidate for the new European Commission 2019-2024, presented the development of a European Green Deal as the first of the six guidelines that would shape the ambitions of her mandate.

The global situation has changed radically in the little more than six months since then due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and as a result, many strategic plans of companies in practically all sectors and many roadmaps and roadmaps have been blown up. public policies of governments. Despite the great uncertainty in which we find ourselves, what is clear is that a thorough review will have to be undertaken to adapt these policies and plans to the new reality that is still taking shape.

However, it seems certain that the need and convenience of the European Green Deal has been reinforced in the current context. The Green Deal was conceived as an engine for the transformation of the European economy in the coming decades, but circumstances have made it a fundamental pillar for the reconstruction of the European economy in the short term after the shock induced by the confinements of the population.

In this sense, the European Union has an important advantage over other global players and that is to a large extent that its priorities are already aligned with the main challenges that we will face as the health crisis subsides. In any case, an EU growth strategy that aims to turn Europe into a continent without polluting emissions by 2050 may not seem ambitious enough to us now and we may even deem it pertinent to accelerate this transition.

The plan for the roll-out of the European Green Deal was published with a very ambitious tentative timetable that foresees the development between 2020 and 2021 of actions corresponding to the main key areas: climate ambition, clean, safe and affordable energy, industrial strategy for the economy circular and clean, sustainable and intelligent mobility, common agricultural policy beneficial to the environment and zero pollution and toxic-free environment.

If we analyze the main areas of action of the Green Deal, we clearly see that innovations based on data and artificial intelligence, together with other specific technologies, will be key to solving a good part of the challenges it aims to address. And of course all the documents already published recognize this, integrating data, open data, artificial intelligence and other technologies in the different planned actions. Those that are already available clearly indicate the path that the lines of work that will be approved in the coming years will follow.

EU strategy on biodiversity by 2030

The European biodiversity strategy to reintegrate nature into our lives, published on May 20, 2020, recognizes that “investment in research, innovation and knowledge sharing will be key to obtaining the best data and developing the best nature-based solutions”. As an example, he cites the European Forest Health Assessment, where the European Commission commits to "work with other data providers to further develop the Forest Information System for Europe." These commitments represent a good opportunity for the Spanish forestry sector on its way to transition towards a precision forestry industry approach.

Furthermore, the strategy expressly cites "the need to eliminate bycatch of endangered species or reduce them to a level that allows full recovery." To this end, it is proposed to intensify the collection of data on bycatch of all sensitive species. In this sense, the awarded project in the Aporta 2019 challenge is oriented, Optimatics System, which is designed to help fishermen make decisions in real time and thus rationalize fishing in the fishing grounds.

Ultimately, the European Biodiversity Strategy aims for research and innovation to help the Commission support and finance investments in nature-based solutions by providing objective criteria to prioritize 'green' solutions over 'gray' solutions.

Farm-to-table strategy

The “farm to table” strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system, also published on May 20, 2020, aims to ensure that Europeans have affordable and sustainable food, combat climate change, protect the environment and biodiversity and increase organic farming. This ambitious line of action also integrates the use of data and artificial intelligence in numerous places.

For example, it recognizes that the Common European Data Space on Agriculture, defined in the European Data Strategy, “will enhance the competitive sustainability of Union agriculture through the processing and analysis of data on production, land use, environment and of other types”, to then clarify that these data will allow “the precise and adapted application of the production approaches at the farm level and the monitoring of the results of the sector, in addition to supporting the initiative on carbon sequestration in soils agricultural”. That is, a clear orientation towards precision agriculture.

The key tool to achieve these objectives and for the transition to be fair and beneficial for all is the Common Agricultural Policy, which must be fully aligned with the Green Pact. The new CAP, proposed by the Commission in June 2018, aims to help farmers improve their performance as measured by environmental and climatic criteria. To do this, it proposes, for example, better use of data and analytics and a greater emphasis on investment in green and digital technologies and practices.

The European Union programs Copernicus and the European Sea Observation and Information Network (EMODnet), major open data sources, are cited for their contribution to reducing investment risks and as facilitators of sustainable practices in the fishing and aquaculture sector.

The improvement of data collection systems such as the 2009 Regulation on pesticide statistics or the Agricultural Accounting Information Network are also under attention and improvements are planned that will contribute both to fill the current gaps in the available data, how to promote evidence-based policy making.

New Action Plan for the circular economy

The New Action Plan for the circular economy for a cleaner and more competitive Europe, published on March 11, 2020, also recognizes a decisive role for research, innovation and digitization and therefore data during the transition. In this line, it is intended, for example, to promote the dissemination of environmental data by companies, which will force them to improve their systems for data capture and monitoring of objectives.

In the same way, innovation models based on massive customization or a closer relationship with customers are mentioned, which can accelerate the circularity and dematerialization of our economy. These models will only be possible using intensively data and artificial intelligence combined with other technologies such as blockchain or internet of things.

In addition, the European Commission will define a European data space for smart circular applications, with data on value chains and product information that will provide the architecture and governance system necessary to promote applications and services such as product passports, mapping of resources and information to consumers.

As part of the plan, the indicators, and therefore the data collection systems, on the use of resources will continue to be developed, in particular with regard to consumption and material footprints, which will be associated with the monitoring and evaluation process. of the advances obtained.

Open data 

Finally, it is worth highlighting how open data is being used at the European level to promote the development of new solutions. The open data competition organized annually by the European Union, the EUDatathon, dedicated the first of its four challenges to the European Green Deal in 2020. The European Union Publications Office, organizer of the competition, has received 30 proposals (25% of the total) addressed to this challenge, which is a remarkable success considering the novelty of a concept forged only in recent months.

This interest from the open data community has also been reflected in the Spanish participation, which, with 4 proposals, has been the second country most committed to the Green challenge. Among the 3 shortlisted proposals for the final phase, there is a Spanish one, Dataseeds, which aims to help SMEs in the agriculture sector to contribute to the ecological restructuring of the EU industry.

Undoubtedly, the new growth strategy of the European Union represents a new source of opportunities for all economic sectors, but in all of them data will represent a key factor for their development, increasing the potential of other technologies such as intelligence. artificial knowledge and specific knowledge of each domain. And in Spain we have enormous potential both in the form of natural resources and in the form of capacities that can take advantage of this source of opportunities and generate competitive advantages in many sectors during this transition that has just begun.

Content prepared by Jose Luis Marín, Senior Consultant in Data, Strategy, Innovation & Digitalization.

The contents and points of view reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of its author.

The European Commission has already published the official call for entries for the European Green Leaf 2022 (EGLA) and European Green Capital 2023 (EGCA) awards, which aim to recognise the progress made by cities committed to sustainability.

This year, the deadline for submissions will remain open until 28 October and the financial allocation for both awards will be up to one million euros combined, to support cities in effectively implementing new urban sustainability measures. This increase in the prize money aims to raise awareness of the objectives of the European Green Deal.

Prize money and benefits

The two winning municipalities or cities of the European Green Leaf 2022 award will each receive 200,000 euros, while the winning city of the European Green Capital 2023 call will receive 600,000 euros. The main objective of both grants is to make the winning cities take on new responsibilities in the fields of sustainability and environment.

In addition to the economic award, the winners of both prizes will have a seal of approval from the European Commission that will allow them to enjoy benefits such as increased media coverage at an international level, as well as receiving a greater focus on environmental projects and foreign investment.

Furthermore, not only the winning cities or municipalities will benefit, as the finalist cities will have access to a knowledge network that already includes the most outstanding candidates from previous years, where they can share knowledge about how to learn to overcome new key challenges in terms of sustainability.

Deadlines and requirements for submission of applications

The European Green Leaf 2022 awards are aimed at municipalities with a population of between 20,000 and 99,999 inhabitants, with a maximum of two population centres to be awarded. On the other hand, the European Green Capital 2023 award remains open to cities with a population of more than 100,000 inhabitants.

The 28th of October 2020 at 23:59 (CET) is the date and time limit for all nominations to be submitted to both awards. All information on how to register, the rules and legal bases, as well as the participation process, can be found on the official website.

La importancia de los datos abiertos en las smart cities

When we talk about open data in smart cities we refer to a basic concept to understand the development of smart cities and the processes of active participation of citizens.

In an increasingly digital society, the importance of data processing and management is essential for companies and administrations. In this sense, smart cities are not an exception, as they represent an important opportunity to check the usefulness of this information to promote new ways of citizen participation in smart cities, to boost informed decision-making and to improve the efficiency of public services.

The INSPIRE 2020 conference was to have been held between 11-14 May in Dubrovnik. However, the global pandemic in which we are immersed forced its postponement, as happened with a large number of informative, cultural or sports events.

In this situation, the organising committee has not given up, and has launched a virtual edition that will take place from June 3 to 12.

What is the event about?

The event will take place under the motto: “Bringing sustainability and digitalization together”. The idea is to debate how the transition to the digital world could help build a more sustainable Europe, but without forgetting what are the environmental, economic and social problems and risks that digitization entails.

In this process of finding a balance between sustainability and digitization, data and artificial intelligence are essential, as evidenced in the European Green Deal. More and more voices are raised in favour of the development of a specific digital ecosystem for this area, focused not only on data, infrastructure and algorithms, but also on their analysis and the implementation of ideas and applications. Specifically, the Green Deal refers to accessible and interoperable data, and its combination with digital infrastructure (supercomputers, clouds, ultrafast networks) and artificial intelligence solutions, as keys to the EU's economic strategy to emerge from the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the event, innovative ways to use data and digital solutions for the implementation of policies that seek to achieve sustainable development goals will be shown, with the focus on the circular economy and the reduction of carbon levels. All this will guide future work on existing data legislation, in particular the INSPIRE Directive.

What is the INSPIRE Directive?

The INSPIRE Directive establishes a series of general rules for the creation of a Spatial Information Infrastructure in the European Union, based on the Infrastructures of the member states. Its objective is to promote the availability of quality geographic information, which serves to formulate, implement, monitor and evaluate policies in the EU. Its transposition into the Spanish legal system is developed through the so-called LISIGE law.

INSPIRE's legal roadmap is coming to an end, however the evolution of infrastructure will continue. For this process to be successful, we must ensure its sustainability in collaboration and partnership with other actors beyond the initial scope of the Directive, a process that can be driven by events such as the INSPIRE 2020 conference.

What is the Conference program?

The program scheduled for the May event had to be adapted. Organizers of special sessions and workshops have been invited to adapt their participation in the form of webinars. Although in some cases it was not possible, a large number of participants accepted the invitation. Thanks to this, an interesting program has been created, which you can see at this link. By clicking on each presentation, you can see a summary of the specific contents that will be discussed in the slot.

There will be sessions focused on statistical and geospatial data, public-private partnerships, or democratizing the use of data. The Green Deal will also be discussed, for example, the role of Smart cities in achieving sustainability objectives or the importance of building a common data space, and specific examples of work in this direction will be shown, such as the ICT4Water cluster. 

How to attend the seminars?

All seminars are free. To attend you have to register individually in each of them. It is a unique opportunity to catch up on what is happening in Europe related to the Inspire directive, and the role of open data in achieving a sustainable and digital Europe.

The new Directive on the opening of data and the reuse of public sector information, which was adopted last June, will replace and improve the old Directive 2003/98 / EC on the reuse of public sector information. Among the most significant changes within this new Directive is the objective of specifying a list of high-value datasets among those held by public sector bodies.

The creation of a list like this is a very important milestone because, for the first time in 15 years of Directive, we will have an explicit and common guide on what are the minimum datasets that should always be available, as well as the conditions for their reuse throughout the European Union - which will include their reuse for free, through application programming interfaces (APIs), in a machine-readable format and, where appropriate, including the bulk download option.

The questions we all ask ourselves immediately are: what are the high-value data they refer to? And what are the specific criteria that we should apply when identifying such high-value data?

The Directive defines high-value data as “documents whose reuse is associated with important benefits for society, the environment and the economy, in particular because of their suitability for the creation of value-added services, applications and new, high-quality and decent jobs, and of the number of potential beneficiaries of the value-added services and applications based on those datasets”. This definition offers several clues as to how these high-value datasets are expected to be identified through a series of indicators that would include:

• Their potential to generate significant social or environmental benefits.
• Their potential to generate economic benefits and new income.
• Their potential to generate innovative services;
• Their potential to benefit a high number of users, in particular SMEs
• Their potential to be combined with other datasets.

On the other hand, the Commission opened a consultation process some years ago that has served to evaluate public opinion on the priority of the data to be published. There are also several studies and reference entities in which the Commission has been inspired and which have been publishing its own recommendations related to high strategic value datasets, such as:

• The results of the MEPSIR study on the exploitation of the information resources of the European Union.
• The technical annex of the G8 Open Data Charter.
• The matters that generate business by the infomediary sector in Spain, according to the analysis of the sector carried out by ONTSI.
• The criteria established by the ISA program of interoperability solutions of the European Commission.
• Standard UNE 178301:2015on Open Data in Smart Cities.
• The data analyzed by the Open Data Barometer and the Global Open Data Index..
• The datasets to be published proposed by the Federation of Municipalities and Provinces - FEMP.

In addition, the Directive itself offers us once again another additional clue in its annex on what datasets could be finally selected for their high-value, through a series of priority domains that largely coincide with the proposals made by the organisms mentioned above: geospatial data, earth observation and environmental, meteorological, statistical, companies records or transport data.

It should also be remembered that the data related to some of the aforementioned topics are also regulated by specific sectoral legislation - such as Directive 2007/2 / EC on spatial data (INSPIRE), Directive 2003/4/EC on environmental information and Directive 2010/40 / EU on transport data - and therefore such legislation should also be taken into account when defining the final scope of application.

However, as the new Directive clarifies, neither the thematic list is closed nor the specific datasets are still defined. And it is that the European Commission has recently commissioned a new impact study precisely with the objective of defining in detail and substantiating what those datasets called “high-value” should finally be. However, there are also critical voices that cry out for the need for a better definition of the analysis criteria when deciding what these data will eventually be, and also for involving the whole society in the process. Fortunately, both critics and the Commission agree that the solution is to broaden the debate and establish a series of public and expert consultations - as is already reflected in the Directive and in the planned impact study - such as case of the debate that will take place in the next edition of the Aporta Meeting on December 18 in Madrid and whose motto is precisely “Driving high-value data”.

Therefore, we will still have to wait for some time until all the studies and consultations planned are completed in order to finally know in detail what will be the high-value data of mandatory publication in the European Union, although it will surely be with sufficient margin before finalizing the deadline for the Directive transposition in July 2021.

Content prepared by Carlos Iglesias, Open data Researcher and consultan, World Wide Web Foundation.

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

Interview with Wendy Carrara, project manager of the European Data Portal of the European Commission.

What role does the European Commission, especially DG CONNECT, play in the promotion of openness and re-use of public sector information?

The European Commission has been supporting accessibility and re-use of public sector information for quite some time now. Public sector information is data collected by governments. Most of which can be released openly without infringing any privacy concerns. The revised public sector information directive that had to be transposed into National legislation by July 2015 further underlines the ambition to systematically publish data for free or a marginal cost. Now looking at DG CONNECT, it is at the forefront in contributing to the Digital Single Market. The Digital aspect is something that we tend to take for granted as we have gotten used to browsing the Internet for pretty much everything and anything. It’s a natural step for the European Single market to make the best out of the digital world to drive its economy and society. The Digital Agenda for Europe, as well as previous initiatives and now all the activities launched in the context of the Digital Single Market are clear illustrations of this ambition.

As part of the Action Plan of the European Commission in favor of data economy, the European Data Portal (EDP) launched its final version last February. We would like you to explain us the mid-term roadmap of EDP, which are the next steps of this European initiative?

The EDP is currently collecting information about the data – so called metadata – made available by national portals across Europe. Currently we are harvesting data from over 70 different catalogues all over Europe covering 34 European countries, for a total of close to 600,000 data sets. Our next steps consist of enhancing the portal by making the data easier to find and follow. We have recently added a registration feature enabling users to save their SPARQL queries as well as follow specific data sets and catalogues. Users can therefore access specific data sets more easily. RSS feeds also enable users to receive notifications if the data sets are updated. Small enhancements are also being made to make the user interface increasingly user friendly, such as adding pictograms and flags to give more information about the data at first glance. Another series of updates consist of adding a calendar listing events organized in different countries that address open data directly or indirectly. We will also have a dashboard showing how countries are doing in the field of open data, the maturity of their open data policy, as well as how developed their portals are. Both the dashboard and the calendar will be released for the International Open Data Conference taking place in Madid in October.

Currently we are harvesting data from over 70 different catalogues all over Europe covering 34 European countries, for a total of close to 600,000 data sets.

In addition, there are many ongoing updates such as the addition of use cases to the library section. The Portal is also multilingual. Currently it is available in 12 languages and we will be having all 24 languages by the end of this year. It’s not just the user interface that is translated. We use one of the European Commission tools to translate metadata from all data sets into all official EU languages. This way, data can be found from any country and whatever the language. In our featured data section on the Portal, we regularly publish insight and compare data from one country to another, that’s a practical illustration of how it easy it can become to use open data.

We use one of the European Commission tools to translate metadata from all data sets into all official EU languages.

To ensure more data is published by countries and easy to discover, we will continue promoting the DCAT-Application Profile which is a very practical standard to ensure all data sets have high quality metadata. It’s a bit like the ID card of the dataset.

As Project Manager for the implementation and launch of the European Data Portal, which were the biggest challenges managing this project?

That’s a very interesting question! One of the biggest challenges lies in presenting everything we want to share in a meaningful manner. The data, the training, the studies, and all the resources we have to share. Open data isn’t just something for the techies, it is something that everyone can benefit from if they have a good understanding of what open data can do for them. Policy makers, managers, data publishers and of course the technical people, citizens, businesses, civil society, etc, all have a part to play. The idea was to convey the relevant messages to each of these persona and make sure they could visit the portal and find what they were most interested in. With that in mind, the next challenge is of course how to structure the data. Finding a meaningful way to take into consideration the diversity of working with 28 plus countries can be a challenge. Our technical architecture is therefore quite complex! Add to that the multilingual aspect where we had to make sure that names and labels were equivalent from one language to the next. Here several European thesauri exist, such as Eurovoc, mapping equivalences in all official EU languages. This was very helpful. Alongside, we have contributed to the DCAT-AP developments mentioned above. We are also working closely with the countries on checking mappings we have made from the data their portal have to the data categories of the DCAT-AP. All this takes time but the countries are very cooperative.

Open data isn’t just something for the techies, it is something that everyone can benefit from if they have a good understanding of what open data can do for them.

How does the EDP help to open data movement in Europe?

The European Data Portal is all about making data accessible across Europe. Imagine the diversity of data sets being published across Europe, add to that the different languages they are published in. The EDP brings information about all this data together and provides it in a multilingual fashion. Anyone using any European language can search through the data made available. Imagine you’re looking for a list of cycling paths in the Netherlands but you want to be able to search for this data in Spanish.

We are also making a lot of learning resources accessible online. Anyone can follow the eLearning modules or run their own open data session using the material from the Training Companion. References are added on a regular basis to ensure these training features of the portal are up to date and relevant.

All in all, I would say that it’s not just data that we’re making accessible, it’s open data in general, by making it easier to understand and see what benefits it can deliver.

In your opinion... What measures would be needed to continue promoting the reuse of data within the EU?

There are a number of EU initiatives around promoting the Digital Single Market. The Free Flow of Data Initiative will be launched this autumn. It will include open data of course, as it is part of the broader data agenda.

Promoting the reuse of data is something that will continue of course. In November, the European Data Portal will release a study built on a survey of how businesses are making use of open data. This will help further communicate the benefits of open data to a broader audience.

Apart from the pan-european website, in which other initiatives is the European Commission working to encourage openness and re-use of data by the member states?

The European Commission is involved in supporting a large range of activities in the field of open data. To name a few projects, for the past 18 months, the Open Data Incubator for Europe has been distributing grants to small business making use of open data. Other projects funded under the Horizon 2020 funding programme or other programmes address how to make use of data. The Policy Compass is a very interesting example of how to aggregate and analyse data.

In addition, there have been two calls for funding that have been open since the beginning of the year to support cross-border harmonisation processes. The calls address the aggregation/harmonisation of datasets covering cross-border areas in priority domains. Of course the Free Flow of Data initiative will strengthen the policy ambition underpinning current and future actions.

Beyond the economic potential of the re-use of public sector information, how can open data help address the social challenges in the EU and what open data initiatives do you know whose goal is to improve the quality of life in European cities?

There are a number of other projects looking into the benefits of open data, supporting startups or combining open and big data together. When we were writing the report on open data and cities, it was amazing to see how many local initiatives have been taken at city-level to drive open data in the context of smart city-related activities. Our study showed that one of the most popular datasets are linked to mobility. Cities are close to the people and to the data. They can work on environmental issues as well as urban planning together for instance. It’s all about making better use of the evidence they have to govern their actions. It’s also about sharing the data with the community in order to improve existing activities and develop innovative services.

Most popular datasets are linked to mobility. Cities are close to the people and to the data.