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The pandemic that originated last year has brought about a significant change in the way we see the world and how we relate to it. As far as the education sector is concerned, students and teachers at all levels have been forced to change the face-to-face teaching and learning methodology for a telematic system.

In this context, within the framework of the Aporta Initiative, the study "Data-based educational technology to improve learning in the classroom and at home", by José Luis Marín, has been developed. This report offers several keys to reflect on the new challenges posed by this situation, which can be turned into opportunities if we manage to introduce changes that promote the improvement of the teaching-learning process beyond simply replacing face-to-face classes with online training.

The importance of data to improve the education sector

Through innovative educational technology based on data and artificial intelligence, some of the challenges facing the education system can be addressed. For this report, 4 of these challenges have been selected:

·      Non-presential supervision of assessment tests: monitoring and surveillance of evaluative tests through telematic resources.

·      Identification of behavioral or attention problems: alerting teachers to activities and behaviors that indicate attention, motivation or behavioral problems.

·      Personalized and more attractive training programs: adaptation of learning routes and pace of students' learning.

·      Improved performance on standardized tests: use of online learning platforms to improve results on standardized tests, to reinforce mastery of a particular subject, and to achieve fairer and more equitable assessment.

To address each of these four challenges, a simple structure divided into three sections is proposed:

1.     Description of the problem, which allows us to put the challenge in context.

2.     Analysis of some of the approaches based on the use of data and artificial intelligence that are used to offer a technological solution to the challenge in question.

3.     Examples of relevant or highly innovative solutions or experiences.

The report also highlights the enormous complexity involved in this type of issues, so they should be approached with caution to avoid negative consequences on individuals, such as cybersecurity issues, invasion of privacy or risk of exclusion of some groups, among others. To this end, the document ends with a series of conclusions that converge in the idea that the best way to generate better results for all students, alleviating inequalities, is to combine excellent teachers and excellent technology that enhances their capabilities. In this process, open data can play an even more relevant role in improving the state of the art in educational technology and ensuring more widespread access to certain innovations that are largely based on machine learning or artificial intelligence technologies.

In this video, the author tells us more about the report:

Climate change, air pollution and sea pollution. These are the 3 main environmental problems for Spanish citizens according to the latest Eurobarometer "Attitudes of European citizens towards the Environment", published in March 2020. The survey also highlights that 90% of the Spanish population considers to protect the natural environment important. Citizens want more action to be taken and believe that responsibility should be shared between companies, national governments, the EU and citizens themselves.

As with other sectors, such as education or health, open data can also help us to overcome environmental challenges. On the one hand, it provides us with detailed information to understand the situation and to be able to look for solutions. On the other hand, they serve to implement solutions that help us raise awareness and reduce our environmental footprint.

In its report "The Economic Impact of Open Data Opportunities for value creation in Europe”, ", the European Data Portal highlights that data can "contribute to reducing total energy consumption in Europe, increasing the use of sustainable energy sources, protecting biodiversity and raising awareness of CO2 emissions", as well as generating an economic impact of around 1€ billion. Let's look at some examples:

• Reducing energy consumption. Open data-based applications can serve as a tool to help households and institutions to understand and reduce their energy consumption. In this sense, the Regional Government of Castilla y León has launched an Energy Datahub that provides detailed and visual information on energy consumption in the more than 1,500 centres managed by the Regional Government: educational centres, health centres, administrative offices, hospitals, etc. The scorecard facilitates the disaggregated analysis by type of energy (electricity, gas, diesel) and by geographical location, allowing informed decisions to be made. According to the Board itself, thanks to the energy scorecard they have saved more than 12 million euros in electricity since 2015.
• Increase the use of sustainable energy. The 2018 EU directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources sets a target for the share of renewable energy in gross final consumption to be 32% by 2030. To help achieve this target, publicly available data on urban planning, use of public services or weather conditions can be cross-checked to create solutions that help make housing more sustainable. One example is Solarmap, which allows the profitability of a solar panel installation to be calculated for a specific location.
• Improving biodiversity: Changes in ecosystems can lead to mass extinctions of species and the limitation of available natural resources, which can affect not only our economy but also our own way of life. In this sense, open data serves as a basis for solutions that, for example, help us monitor various parameters of port waters (such as Environmental Control Panel), improve waste management (Punto limpio) or publicise noise pollution (MAdb).
• Raise awareness of air pollution and the reduction of CO2 emissions. Although, as we saw at the beginning of this article, we Spaniards are very aware of climate change, however, if we look at the individual habits of citizens, we see that there is still much to be done. Only 38% try to reduce their energy consumption, 28% choose less polluting forms of transport, and 36% buy local products. It is therefore necessary to continue raising awareness, for example through indicators of air quality in cities such as GV Aire. There is also a need for applications that promote the use of more efficient means of transport, such as bicycles or public transport (Barcelona metro bus rodalies bici).

You can find more examples in the applications section of datos.gob.es and in our environment section.

Public administrations have a fundamental role in the infomediary sector, that is, in the business of data reuse. On the one hand, on the supply side, thanks to their role as publishers of open data, an original source of free information that can be used to create valuable products and services; and on the other hand, on the demand side, since administrations can also reuse this information and even be customers of the infomediaries.

This is the starting point of the new report from the National Observatory of Telecommunications and the Information Society (ONTSI), entitled "Public Administrations and the Reuse of Public Information". This report analyzes the weight and the way in which the administration interacts with the infomediary sector, becoming one of its main clients.

Specifically, the report determines that almost 50% of the infomediary companies have the public administrations as clients. The services most demanded by public bodies are consultancy and specific studies, data processing and the generation of visualization tools.

In order to produce the report, representatives of various bodies at all levels of administration were interviewed in depth: all the Ministries, 6 Autonomous Communities and 10 City Councils. All those interviewed agreed on the need to promote collaboration between the public and private spheres to improve the publication of information and the creation of valuable services. From the point of view of reuse, these collaborations boost economic activity and have an impact on three areas:

• Impact on users: They have a greater knowledge of public activity, improve their perception of administrations and can benefit from more personalized and higher quality services. In addition, they can take advantage of public information to create new businesses.
• Internal impact on the administrations themselves: The benefits are multiple, from the improvement of management and administrative processes, to cost savings or boosting the skills of public workers.
• Political impact: Greater knowledge of the environment allows for more informed decisions, in accordance with the reality and needs of citizens.

In this sense, the report contains a series of examples of good practices, which clearly show this impact, and which are included in the infographic below.

The report also includes an analysis of the challenges to be overcome by the administrations and a series of recommendations to obtain greater value and promote such public-private partnerships.

You can download the full report at the end of the article. Accompanying this report, the ONTSI has also published the study "From the Infomediary Sector to the Daya Economy. Characterization of the Infomediate Sector. Edition 2020", focused on the evolution of the market and business models based on data and information.

In Spain, there are numerous open data initiatives promoted by different levels of the administration: city councils, autonomous communities and state bodies. This ecosystem, as rich as it is diverse, generates a large volume of valuable information, but it also poses an obvious challenge: how to make it easier for any person or entity to easily locate the data they need, without having to go through dozens of different catalogs?

To respond to this need, the National Open Data Catalogue, hosted in datos.gob.es, acts as a single point of access to the set of data made available to citizens by the Spanish public sector. Its harmonizing function allows information from multiple initiatives to be centralized, offering reusers a common space to search for data more efficiently. In addition, thanks to its federation with the European Data Portal (data.europa.eu), the datasets published by Spanish administrations gain visibility at the international level.

Steps to follow

Publishing open data in the National Catalogue is a simpler process than it seems if you know the key phases.

1. Pre-planning

Before you start, it's a good idea to prepare the ground. To this end, it is recommended to carry out a plan of measures to promote the opening and reuse of open data, in which the agency defines, among other issues, what data it is going to open, for what purpose and under what criteria of quality, updating and format. Good planning allows you to anticipate technical needs, coordinate the teams involved and ensure that the published data will be really useful for reusers.

In datos.gob.es you can find multiple resources to help in this task, such as this template, or various guides, such as the Guide for the deployment of data portals. Good practices and recommendations.

2. Registration of the organism and the user

The second phase focuses on managing the registration of the body and the users who will be in charge of the publication. User accounts are reserved only for open data publishers or organizations (they are not required to access or download catalog datasets).

In order to federate data in the national catalog, the agency must be registered in the official taxonomy and validated by the datos.gob.es team. In turn, responsible users need to have an authorised account, either as staff of the organisation itself or as accredited external providers (previously authorised). Without this administrative step, it is not possible to access the tools needed to catalog and publish data. This video explains how to apply for a user account:

3. Cataloguing

In this phase, the agency prepares the metadata of its datasets following the established application profiles, preferably DCAT-AP-ES. At this point, it is determined if it has its own catalog capable of generating metadata in RDF or if it will be necessary to resort to other alternatives. Validation using SHACL templates is critical to ensure that metadata meets technical and semantic requirements, avoiding errors that can impede federation.

4. Federation

Federation is the process by which the agency's metadata is incorporated into the national catalog. This federation can be carried out in two ways:

• Manual: involves registering each dataset individually, completing a form for each dataset detailing its metadata.
• Automatic: the registration and update is done periodically from an RDF file where the metadata available through a url on the publisher's website is included. It is no longer necessary to work individually with each dataset, but the process can automatically span multiple datasets.

In both modes, before federating to production, we recommend that you use the sandbox to verify that the datasets are integrated correctly and that the metadata is displayed as expected.

5. Maintenance

In order for published data to remain useful, up-to-date, and accessible, ongoing maintenance is necessary. This involves reviewing and updating metadata and resources when necessary or fixing broken links, among others. These activities are essential to ensure the quality of the catalogue and to ensure that open data continues to generate value over time.

Infographic summary of the flow to follow

To facilitate the understanding of the steps to follow, we make available to users the following infographic-summary. However, the  datos.gob.es support team will be happy to answer any questions or comments.

Did you know that open digital heritage is fundamental to understanding the world around us, to boosting a more creative economy and to meeting agreed educational goals? It is estimated that around 90% of the world's cultural heritage has not yet been digitized. Of the remaining 10% that has been digitized, just 34% is available online while only 3% of that work is open

Most cultural institutions have a great deal of valuable information. This information is usually found mainly in the form of collections, but also in the files of authors, dates, technique, etc. Both the works and their information are susceptible to being converted into open data.

Some examples of museums that have digitized and opened their collection are The Rijksmuseum (Netherlands), the Statens Museum for Kunst (Denmark) or the Metropolitan Museum (USA).

What new products can be created by reusing cultural data?

New technologies offer us endless possibilities when it comes to creating new products through the reuse of cultural data. This is the case of new educational platforms such as BNEscolar, which allow for the learning of art from a different point of view. Open cultural data can even be used to generate scaperoom games or new art pieces. They can also be used as design tools or to complement films and documentaries.

In short, it can be established that cultural data are endowed with a great value that, through greater openness, could be of great benefit for the creation of new initiatives that provide benefits for the whole society.