The European Commission estimates that the data economy -the one whose business model is based on the exploitation of data to generate products and services-will reach a value of 550,000 million euros in the EU27 in 2025. This figure means that it will go from occupying 2.8% of GDP to 4%. Only in our country, it is aimed what will generate more than 50,000 million euros and 750,000 jobs.

In the same report, the Commission also indicates that, to achieve a high growth scenario, it is necessary to reduce the concentration of data in the hands of a few and to bet on data sharing policies that promote innovation and the advancement of the society. For this reason, among other actions, the Commission launched the Support Center for Data Sharing (SCDS), focused on researching and reporting on data sharing practices and those elements that influence their success.

Data sharing drives collaboration among researchers, developers, and creators of products and services, which can lead to important new discoveries, as well as impact the positive reputation of data-sharing companies. Companies are beginning to be aware of this situation, which is leading us to see more and more examples of private exchange initiatives and data sharing. This affects organizations of all kinds, including large companies that run, manage or have access to large volumes of data. Let's look at some examples of sharing:

HealthData 29 

The 29 Foundation, together with Microsoft, has launched Health29, a platform for sharing open data sets for research purposes. Garrigues and the Chair of Privacy and Digital Transformation of the University of Valencia have also participated in the project.

Organizations that wish to can register as publishers and start sharing anonymized data, ensuring privacy and security. There are currently 3 publishing organizations. All of them share data related to COVID-19:

• HM Hospitals shares clinical data related to the treatment of COVID-19, including diagnoses, treatments, admissions, ICU visits, diagnostic imaging tests, laboratory results, discharge or death, among others.
• The league provides data related to PCR and antigen tests performed on the players and staff of LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank clubs.
• Sanitas, as part of your project Data4good, provides researchers with demographic datas and clinical information (medications, vital signs, laboratory information and diagnosis) of patients with COVID-19 who have been admitted to their medical centers.

These data can be used to better understand the behavior of this disease and its treatment, but also to carry out predictive models of the evolution of the disease or epidemiological models. Researchers who want to access this data need to fill out an application, which must be approved by the publisher.

In the context of the project, a guide with the technical and legal framework to create a public repository of data from health systems.

It should be noted that Microsoft includes this action in its initiative to promote data sharing, Open Data Campaign, as Belén Gancedo, Director of Education at Microsoft Ibérica explained to us, in this interview.

Data for Good  

Data for Good it is the name of the data sharing initiative of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg's company, formerly called Facebook, just like the social network -which does maintain the name-. Facebook has three billion users. Data for Good intends to use anonymized information about this community to "help organizations provide better services."

The web offers various data and tools, including maps. It also has a section for impact with examples of data usage. While some products require the signing of a data exchange agreement, others are public and open source, such as:

• High Resolution Settlement Layer: It is a population density map that uses census data, satellite images, and machine learning algorithms to detect structures. It has been used, for example, to analyze access to health centers in Spain.
• Movement Range Maps: consists of a map with daily updated mobility data (here is an article about the methodology). They have been used by governments and agencies around the world to measure the effects of mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic or the level of economic activity.
• Social Connectedness Index: map that measures the levels of friendship on Facebook between countries and regions in the world. This index helps predict economic, migration or health patterns, among others. It has been used by New York University, for example, to predict trade exchanges between geographic units in Europe.
• Commuting Zones: maps the areas where citizens live and work, based on transfers, and using machine learning algorithms. This information is only accessible, at the moment, for academic institutions, think-tanks or NGOs.

In addition, they also offer survey results on the economic impact on SMEs around the world, the climate change, the equality at home waves trends and impact of COVID-19 .

These tools are also available through the Humanitarian Data Exchange Portal of the United Nations Organization.

Google Health 

Google Health has the goal organize the world's health information and make it universally accessible and useful. Within the project, both services are offered for all users, as well as specific ones for doctors.

In the general services part, we can find:

• COVID-19 Open Data Repository. Aggregate data from more than 20,000 sources to help better understand the behavior of the virus. Users can download the raw data sets or visualize them through maps and tables.
• Google Health Studies. Users can join studies and answer surveys to help institutions and researchers better understand the specific health problems and needs of a community. The particular data is encrypted for further aggregation and analysis in such a way that neither Google nor the researchers receive any private data.

Google also develops technology solutions aimed at improving healthcare. One of the fields where they are most focused is on jobs with Artificial Intelligence with different purposes such as helping diagnose cancer or prevent blindness.

Uber Movement 

The mobility company Uber also provides data and tools, in this case, to understand how and why citizens move. Through the Web Uber Movement you can view, filter and download free, aggregated and anonymized data of trips made through your app. The service is only available and moment for some cities, among which are Madrid and Barcelona.

Specifically, it has 3 data services:

• Travel times. Provides the average travel time between two "zones" in a city for a specified time and date.
• Speed. Provides data on average speed derived from vehicle readings provided by Uber services, aggregated by street segment and with hourly granularity.
• Mobility HeatMap. This is a heat map showing the density of traffic in different areas of each city.

Thanks to this data, travel times can be compared and the impact of various events on the city can be understood. They are very useful for making decisions related to the challenges of urban transport, from reducing traffic jams and emissions to improving road safety.

All data is available through an interactive visualization, although it can also be downloaded in CSV format. This data is licensed Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial.

In short, we are facing 4 different examples of data sharing, but with a common goal: to promote advances in society through the improvement of knowledge. All this data is essential to drive new research, improve decision making and even generate new products and services. 

Content elaborated by datos.gob.es team

The bet of the technological giant Google with open data it has been evident in various initiatives carried out in recent years. On the one hand, they launched the search engine Google Dataset Search, that facilitates the location of open data published in hundreds of repositories of international institutions and governments, among which is datos.gob.es. On the other, they launched their own data opening initiative, where they offer standardized and readable data sets by machines in order to be used by machine learning systems. This last initiative is part of Google research, the portfolio of research and innovation projects from Google: from the prediction of the spread of COVID-19 to the design of algorithms, through the learning of automatic translation of a greater number of languages, among others. In these and other projects, Google has not only opted for the publication of datasets, but the company itself also acts as a reuse of public data. In this post we are going to some examples of Google solutions and projects that integrate open data into their operations.

Google Earth

Through a virtual globe based on satellite images, Google Earth allows you to view multiple cartographies. Users can explore territories in 3D and add markers or draw lines and areas, among other tools.

One of his latest updates has been the incorporation of the Timelapse function, which has involved the integration of 24 million satellite photos captured during the last 37 years (specifically, between 1984 and 2020). In this way, changes can be observed in the different regions of the planet. Among other information, the solution shows the forest changes, the urban growth or the heating of our planet, which allows us to become aware of the climate crisis we are experiencing in order to act accordingly. It is therefore a fundamental solution for environmental education, with great potential for use in classes.

Integrated data comes from the program Landsat the United States Geological Survey, and the Copernicus program and the Sentinel satellites of the European Union. Specifically, there were 20 petabytes of satellite images that have been made available to users in a single large, high-resolution video mosaic, for which more than 2 million hours of processing have been required. It should be noted that both the Copernicus and Landsat data are open to reuse by any individual or company that wishes to launch its own services and products.

Google Translator

Another of the technology giant's best-known tools is its translator, which was launched in 2006. Ten years later it was updated with the Google Neural Machine Translation System (GNMT), which uses more modern machine learning techniques for its training.

Google does not make public the exact data it uses for training the system, although in its report Google's Neural Machine Translation System: Bridging the Gap

between Human and Machine Translation They do highlight that they have performed benchmark tests with two publicly available corpus: WMT'14 English-to-French and WMT´14 English-German.

Although much progress has been made, the system still does not match the level of quality that is obtained with a translation carried out by an expert human being in the field, especially in the case of the most minority languages, so they are followed making adjustments and advances. Another area where it is also necessary to continue working on the biases of the data that they use to train the system and that can lead to stereotypes. For example, it has been found that the translator introduces biases when using masculine and feminine in the translation of phrases from neutral languages, without gender, like English or Hungarian. In these cases, the feminine is used by default for tasks related to care and beauty, and the masculine for better valued professional options. The tech giant has indicated that is already working on the resolution of this problem.

Other examples from Google Research

Within the afore mentioned Google Research, different projects are carried out, some of them closely linked to reuse. For example, in the context of the current pandemic, the mobility reports with anonymous information on displacement trends–Which can be downloaded in csv format. These reports make it possible to understand the impact of movement restriction policies, as well as to make economic forecasts. The data has also been leveraged by their own teams of data scientists to perform predictions of the spread of COVID-19 using graphical neural networks instead of traditional time series-based models.

They have also developed projects in the field of meteorological prediction, to develop estimates in increasingly specific areas (it is no longer just a question of whether it will rain in my city, but whether there will be rainfall in my area). For this, resources from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and a new technique called HydroNets, based on a network of neural networks to model the real river systems of the world.

You can see more information about the latest advances in Google Research at this article.

All these examples show that open data is not only a source for the creation of innovative solutions for entrepreneurs and small companies, but also that large companies take advantage of their potential to develop services and products that become part of the company's portfolio.

Content prepared by the datos.gob.es team.

96 ideas from 33 countries. Those have been the proposals presented to the UE Datathon 2021, a competition organized by the Publications Office and the Presidency of the Council of the European Union to promote the use of open data as a basis for new ideas, innovative products and services.

Proposals could be submitted to three different categories: “A European Green Deal”, focused on promoting sustainability, “An economy that works for people”, focused on reducing poverty and inequality, and “A Europe fit for the digital age ”, which seeks improvements in competencies related to data and european strategy in the matter.

For each of these categories the jury has chosen 3 finalists.

CleanSpot, the Spanish presence in the contest

There were 12 proposals from Spanish teams for the EU Datathon 2021, one of them, CleanSpot, has achieved a place in the final, within the “A European Green Deal” category.

CleanSpot is an app that seeks to promote awareness and incentive of recycling through gamification. The app allows you to locate recycling and reuse points, such as clean points, specialized containers or collection services and centers. The novelty is that it also allows calculating the CO2 that each user avoids emitting into the atmosphere by performing a daily action such as throwing waste into the corresponding recycling container or donating it for reuse. Users can share their results and thus show the community how much they have reduced their carbon footprint, contributing to caring for the environment.

The users with the best score in the ranking receive prizes and recognition. In addition, each time the user goes to a collection or recycling point to deposit their waste, they accumulate points, which can be exchanged for discounts on municipal taxes, savings checks in local businesses or direct payments.

In addition, the app allows you to save favorite locations or services, and gives the option of receiving notifications, for example, reminders about the passage of the mobile clean point - for this service to be available in a specific municipality, prior integration is necessary -. It also allows the generation of awareness campaigns, with advice on recycling or information on specific actions in each area.

Finalists from 8 different countries

This year, the presence of finalists from multiple territories stands out. Only Italy repeats with three teams, one shared with France.

• In the category of “A European Green Deal”, CleanSpot will face each other with FROG2G, from Montenegro, and The Carbons, from India. FROG2G is an interactive visualization tool, created to offer a viable model to make Europe greener, while The Carbons allows you to compare the greenhouse gases that are emitted, for example, when you have a cup of coffee or take a drive.
• In the category "An economy that works for people", we find CityScale, from Ukraine, a tool to visualize, compare and find the best place to live; ITER IDEA, from Italy, a portal that facilitates the mobility of women in Europe; and PowerToYEUth, from Portugal, focused on locating public funding for SMEs and promoting youth employment.
• Finally, in the category “A Europe fit for the digital age”, the finalists are Democracy Game, from Greece, a virtual debate tool; TrackmyEU, from Italy and France, which makes it possible to explore EU policies, follow topics of interest and make the voice of the citizenry heard in Brussels; and VislmE-360, also from Italy, which offers a 360ᵒ view of visual impairments in the EU.

Next steps

The nine finalist teams have 5 months to develop their proposals, from June to November. Proposals will be evaluated by a jury of experts, based on criteria such as lThe open data used and the fitness for purpose. The winner will receive € 18,000, while the second and third will receive € 10,000 and € 5,000 respectively.

The award ceremony will be on November 25, 2021, within the framework of the EU Open Data Days, an event that this year has its first edition. In this event, aimed at push the use of open data in Europe to generate value, we will be able to see the various opportunities and business models offered by the reuse of public information.

Collaboration and the search for common good practices is essential for the development of a homogeneous and interoperable open data ecosystem. In this sense, the Open Data Charter (ODC) brings together more than 150 governments and organizations with the aim of promoting the opening and reuse of government data based on common criteria to respond to social, economic and environmental challenges. Between the entities adhered, we found some of our country, as we will see in this article.

What does the Open Data Charter do?

The Open Data Charter promotes policies, common practices and resources that allow governments and civil organizations to collect, share and use public datato respond effectively and responsibly to the fight against corruption, climate action or pay equity. Their work can be summarized in two facets: articulating global norms and helping governments translate them into concrete reforms adapted to their context.

In 2015, the ODC developed the International Open Data Charter with 6 principles representing a set of standards agreed worldwide for the publication of data. These principles are:

• Open by default. Governments must open their data on a regular basis, being necessary to justify the reasons why certain data are kept closed, such as security or data protection reasons.
• Timely and Comprehensive. The data must be published quickly and completely, and, whenever possible, in its original form and without modifications.
• Accessible and Usable. They must be machine readable, easy to find, and free, under an open license.
• Comparable and Interoperable. Common standards should be used.
• To improve Governance and Citizen Participation. Open data facilitates transparency and accountability.
• For Inclusive Development and Innovation. They also help drive inclusive economic development through the creation of services and products based on them.

On its website, the ODC offers a resource series to assist in the application of these principles, as well as guides and reports that reflect the benefits of open data in all sectors.

Spain in the Open Data Charter

Our country has different organizations and entities that have signed the International Open Data Charter, and therefore undertake to incorporate these principles into their open data policies.

City councils

At the local level, there are 5 attached city councils. The City Council of Madrid was the pioneer in 2015. Not only was it the first city in our country to adhere to the Charter, but also the first in Europe. Their commitment was reflected in an audit of all their information and the elaboration of a publication calendar, in addition to the approval of a Transparency Ordinance which includes the principles of the ODC.

They followed Zaragoza in 2016, Gijón and Salamanca in 2017 and Alcobendas in 2019. All of them have acquired the commitment to make their data available to citizens in open formats in order to achieve accountability and make better use of data, increasing the value of the service they provide to citizens.

Autonomous communities

There are 3 Communities currently adhered to the International Open Data Charter

• The first Community to join was the Generalitat de Catalunya in 2018. Among other actions, the Generalitat has come to organize events jointly with the ODC. Last September they carried out a work session in order to define recommendations on which data is most effective to open to fight the pandemic.
• In 2019 the Castilla y León meeting. Castilla y León's commitments to the Open Data Charter are reflected in its future Transparence law, where the so-called "Open Data clause" is included, that establishes that all computer development that is carried out, with its own or third-party means, must facilitate the extraction of the information that is collected, recorded or collected in reusable formats, thus promoting the principle of "Open by default".
• The last region to join was Asturias, which have recently signed up. The Principality is working on a new portal that will be launched this year.

Although it is not yet included, it should be noted that the Valencian Community, has also requested your membership.

Non-governmental organizations

The ODC Principles have also been endorsed by 72 organizations and non-state actors working to support its implementation with governments around the world. Among them we find two Spanish entities:

• Asedie is the Multisectoral Information Association, which brings together infomediary companies that create valuable products based on open and private data. Among other actions, Asedie performs each year a analysis of the situation and evolution of the sector, as well as conferences with national and international speakers.
• DesideDatum is a consulting firm specialized in data openness, transparency, data governance and open government. Its clients include a large number of Spanish public administrations.

Advantages of adopting the principles of the Open Data Charter

Regions that have joined the Open Data Charter do so driven by a series of advantages, as they are:

• Have a common framework. The ODC principles ensure consistency of the opening policies of data at national and international level. In addition, it is a commitment to open information and transparency.
• Get medium in the implementation of open data projects. The ODC shares experiences and tools that can help when launching such an initiative.
• Get contacts to turn principles into practical actions. The ODC works with experts in anti-corruption, climate change and agriculture to develop guides on how to use open data and solve various challenges.
• Reach agreements in the main international forums. The ODC collaborates with governments and institutions such as the G20 and the OECD.

Institutions wishing to adopt the International Open Data Charter must make a public statement (you can use this model) which includes the actions to be taken to achieve the principles or means of verification to evaluate progress, among other aspects. This document should be sent to info@opendatacharter.net 

2021 has been the year chosen by the Publications Office of the European Union to organize the first Open Data Days of the European Union. Under the name EU Open Data Days, they will take place from November 23 to 25 with the aim of “promoting the value of open data in Europe and highlighting the opportunities they offer to different business models”. The event, which will be virtual, is made up of two proposals:

• EU Dataviz 2021. On November 23 and 24 there will be a conference program focused on open data and visualizations. This program is currently in the definition phase of the agenda, seeking proposals that contribute to enhancing the digital future of Europe.
• EU Datathon 2021. On November 25, for its part, the final of the EU Datathon 2021 will be held. Through this competition, which is now in its fifth edition, the Publications Office of the European Union seeks to promote the creation of products based on open data, such as mobile or web applications, that offer a response to different challenges related to EU priorities.

The registration period to participate in the EU Dathaton has recently been opened, which will run until May 21 (for more information you can read this article). At the same time, as we anticipated, the deadline has been opened to seek speakers for the EU Dataviz, as we will see below.

Who can submit a proposal to EU Dataviz?

The call is aimed at citizens around the world interested in open data, regardless of the sectors to which they belong: academics, private entities, journalists, data visualization professionals, graphic designers and officials of international organizations, from the EU and national, etc.

Proposals submitted to EU Dataviz 2021 should be oriented towards two specific topics:

• 30-45 minute plenary speeches presenting good practices, new use cases and emerging trends on the development of open data and / or data visualizations.
• Thematic sessions of 45 to 60 minutes (including questions and answers) with a practical approach that show initiatives and results, practices to follow and practical advice.

These sessions will have to be related to the topics included in the two days of presentations.

How will the EU Dataviz 2021 conference program unfold?

The event will be divided into two days, one more focused on open data and the other on visualizations:

Day 1: Open Data - November 23, 2021

During this first day it will be revealed how open data can contribute to the digital future of Europe. The challenges and benefits of data reuse and how to make it interoperable will be discussed, along with related topics such as:

• Open data initiatives that support policy making.
• Use cases and good practices of international, national and regional entities.
• How to improve data quality, interoperability and linked open data.

Day 2: Data Visualization - November 24, 2021

The second day will be dedicated to showing examples and good practices on the presentation of data in an attractive, efficient and ethical way. In addition, the different methods of applying data visualization techniques and some related topics will be discussed, such as:

• State-of-the-art tools and technologies in data visualization
• Emerging trends in data visualization
• Powerful visualization in the age of big data

How are the proposals presented?

To participate it is necessary to fill in this form. The deadline for submitting proposals is May 21.

How will the proposals be chosen?

Proposals received will be evaluated by the EU DataViz 2021 Program Committee, according to 4 criteria.

1. Relevance of the proposal to the EU DataViz Conference, i.e. whether it can be implemented at the EU level to help shape the digital future of the region and improve the lives of its citizens.
2. Clarity and quality of the proposal.
3. Innovative approach or professional experience of the collaborator.
4. Applicability to the EU public sector and / or use of EU or European open data in the proposal.

Each criterion will be valued for a maximum of 25 points each, with 100 being the maximum possible score.

Whether you are a public body that has launched an open data initiative, a company with innovative solutions based on data or a visualization professional, from datos.gob.es we invite you to present your proposal. Good luck to all participants!

Many people don't know, but we are surrounded by APIs. APIs are the mechanism by which services communicate on the Internet. APIs are what make it possible for us to log into our email or make a purchase online.

API stands for Application Programming Interface, which for most Internet users means nothing. However, the reality is that thanks to APIs today we can do all those fantastic things that we love so much in the digital world. From logging into any Internet service, making a purchase on Amazon or reserving a hotel room on Booking. All these services are possible thanks to APIs.

A simple way to explain what an API is for is as follows: a mechanism by which two software programs can “talk” and exchange the data they need to fulfill the functionality for which they were designed. For example, to log in to our email provider, there is a program in charge of validating that we have a correct username and password. However, this program must receive that username and password from a person who interacts with a web browser or a mobile application. In order for the mobile application to know how to send that program the username and password of the person who wants to access the service, it uses an API as an exchange language. This API defines the way the mobile app sends this data and the way the validation program consumes it. Thus, when a new mobile application requires the same validation process, it will be enough to follow the same API to verify the user's credentials.

The importance of APIs in creating data products

In this new post, we focus on the field of APIs as a key technological base for the creation of data products. The fundamental characteristic of digital disruption is the role of data as the main transforming element of organizations and society. This is why data products are becoming more common and valuable. Data products are digital applications and services created with the integrated data component from design. The data component does not have to be the only characteristic of the product or service, but it does play a fundamental role in the operation of the product (physical or digital) or service. Take, for example, a mobile map application. Its main functionality may be to show us a map and physically locate our current position. However, the application can be understood as a data product where, in addition to our current position, we find nearby services such as restaurants, gas stations, libraries, etc. In addition, we can over-print weather information or current traffic conditions. An application of this type cannot be understood without an ecosystem of APIs that allow the intercommunication of the different services (meteorology, traffic, points of interest, etc.) with the application itself.

How to Manage APIs in Data Products: The Friendliness Checker API Example

Having clearly understood the importance of APIs in data products, let us now analyze the complexity of managing one or more large APIs in a data product. Creating good APIs is hard work. You need to determine what data you are going to provide and accept our API. We must estimate the volume of requests that we will have to assume. We must think about the update mechanisms as well as the monitoring of the use that the API is having. Not to mention the security and privacy of the data that the API will handle.

For these and many other reasons, the Support Center for Data Sharing has created the API Friendliness Checker tool. The Support Center for Data Sharing (SCDS) is a European project led by a consortium of three companies: Capgemini Invent, Fraunhofer Fokus and Timelex.

The API Friendliness Checker tool allows API developers to analyze whether their APIs comply with the OpenAPI specification: an established and widely recognized standard for developing APIs. The OpenAPI specification was developed with accessibility criteria in mind. The goal is that the services and applications that implement it can be understood by humans and machines alike, without the need to access programming code or documentation. In other words, an API developed under the OpenAPI specification is self-contained and can be used out of the box without the need for additional documentation or code. In other words, an API developed under the OpenAPI specification is self-contained and can be used out of the box without the need for additional documentation or code.

When we use the tool, the API compatibility validator allows the developer to compare their API against the essential quality and usability criteria defined by the OpenAPI specification. The tool allows you to copy the specification url of our API to evaluate its compatibility. It is also possible to copy and paste the description of our API in the editor of the tool. Just by pressing the validate button, the compatibility checker will evaluate the API and display any comments for improvement.

 

For more information on the technical characteristics of this validation tool, all the information can be consulted on the SCDS website https://eudatasharing.eu/es/node/578.

If you are thinking of creating a new data product, we are sure that this tool to validate your API before putting it into production will be of great help. Finally, if your digital product is based on real-time data, you will surely be interested in exploring these other concepts such as event-oriented systems and asynchronous APIs.

Do you want to know more about the APIs?

As we have seen, APIs are a fundamental element in the world of data. Whether you are a publisher or a reuser of open data, at datos.gob.es you have at your disposal some materials that can help you:

• Report "How to generate value from data: formats, techniques and tools to analyze open data". Aimed at reusers, it discusses the world of APIs in more detail, including practical examples on their use on the Internet.
• “Practical guide for the publication of Open Data using APIs”. Aimed at those data portals that do not yet have an API, this guide offers guidelines to define and implement this data access mechanism.                                                   

This Saturday, March 6, Open Data Day 2021 is celebrated worldwide. This event, which takes place annually on the first Saturday in March, seeks to promote the reuse of open data around the world.

In our country there are several organizations that have chosen the next few days to launch events related to the opening and reuse of information. Next, we collect several of them:

Datathon 2021: The role of open data in the face of challenges in a Post-Covid world

The “Datathon 2021: Challenges in a Post-Covid world” seeks to promote the interest and use of open data, mainly in the areas of tourism, agriculture or health. Its objective is to stimulate participants by offering data and tools of interest for the development of applications related to the use and reuse of open data, in addition to promoting citizen participation in new challenges that improve citizens' day-to-day lives.

The competition is promoted by different local and university institutions of the Valencian Community:

The process will be as follows:

• The competition will begin on March 5 with an informative day at 5:00 p.m. in remote format. Different representatives of the organizing entities will participate and there will be a round table on open data in the field of tourism, health and agriculture with those responsible in these fields. The session will end with practical information on how to participate in the Datathon.
• From then on, and for 3 months, six workshops will be held, together with experts in the field. With these workshops, participants will learn about the resources of the Valencian Government's open data portal, learn how to process the request for this information, and address the processes of collection, integration, visualization and geolocation of different types of data.
• Throughout the process, a team of student volunteers from the UA MultiTEC association will tutor the participants and resolve their doubts.

The call is open to any person of legal age interested in data management. The dates to consider are the following:

• The registration period ends on March 5. Registration is done using Eventbrite.
• The configuration of equipment can be done until March 18 through the following form.
• The completion and delivery of projects will end on May 14. A prize of 1,000 euros and three second prizes of 500 euros will be awarded for each of the challenges: tourism, health and agriculture.

The Datathon evaluation team will take into account the impact and importance of the challenge solved, the creativity and innovation of the application, the use of data, the suitability for the award category and the degree of completion achieved.

Journalism and open data visualization

The MPVD Agora on Journalism and Data Visualization organizes a session on Thursday, March 4 to celebrate the Open Data Day 2021 that will be broadcast on YouTube.

The session, which will begin at 3:00 p.m. and will last an hour and a half, will have 2 different parts:

• An introductory workshop to Observable, a tool for learning D3.js. The workshop will be given by Adrián Blanco Ramos, graphic editor of the Washington Post
• A talk about The owners of the game, an investigation about the hunting grounds in Spain published by El Mundo. José Fernando Leal (@ricologias), one of the coordinators, will be in charge of explaining all the details.

The session will be recorded for those who cannot see it live. It can be accessed through the YouTube channel MPVD Master of Journalism and Data Visualization. In this channel you can find previous sessions, dedicated, for example, to how to work with data and electronic records available in different formats and sources or how to create simple, clear and attractive stories through the analysis and visualization of data allows.

Although the videos are developed within the framework of the Master in Journalism and Data Visualization at the University of Alcalá, both the videos of this conference and those of the previous ones are available open to any user interested in the subject.

Conference - The DATA in the Local Administrations 20/30. Experiences and challenges March 9, 2021. On-line.

The Alcobendas City Council and the Institute for the Transfer of Knowledge in Public Innovation - ITCIP, with the support of the FEMP, organize a conference to publicize projects that local administrations are developing around the world of data.

The session will take place on March 9 online. Among other issues, subjects related to architecture, life cycle, governance, security and data protection and analysis will be addressed. Some of the experiences and proposals that will be discussed are the Data Offices, the Data Delegate, efficient forms of storage, data management and conservation, its application to public services in smart city projects and its role in the openness, transparency and reuse.

The event will have the participation of representatives from the FEMP, the European Commission, the Community of Madrid and cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Zaragoza, Malaga, Gijón, Logroño, Alcobendas, Sant Feliu de Llobregat and Mataró. In addition, the conference has the support of Oracle, which will provide the vision of the most innovative trends related to data.

You can see the full agenda at this link.

The conference can be followed for free, through the ITCIP page. You can sign up at this link.

At datos.gob.es we invite you to join some of these proposals and celebrate Open Data Day.

Those interested can suggest scenarios, projects or ideas for the organization of the event, or participate in the promotion and dissemination of the meeting, which will take place worldwide on March 7.

Madrid, November 28, 2019. On March 7, the Open Data Day 2020 (# DD2020) will be held worldwide, giving a new opportunity to development and progress through the management of open data. In this new edition, in which the tenth anniversary of this international meeting is celebrated, we suggest to the participants to coordinate to reach a higher number of people - professionals, citizens interested in the use of open data, researchers, journalists, political decision makers ... - to build new solutions to the problems of each community using data.

Organized in Madrid by the Ontological Engineering Group (OEG) since its inception, and in collaboration with the node of the Open Data Institute in the Community of Madrid (ODI Madrid) since 2016, the International Open Data Day has been a good opportunity to collaborate in the management, organization, visualization and communication of projects through the use of open data that municipalities and public institutions make available to the citizen.

On this occasion, and after several years celebrating the meeting in the centre of Madrid, the organization has opened the door to organize the Open Data Day in a new scenario of the Community of Madrid, to make participation more open and closer.

Those who want to collaborate with ODI Madrid and the OEG in the organization of #ODD2020 can complete the form created for this purpose, or send an e-mail to mailto:odi_madrid@delicias.dia.fi.upm.es expressing the intention to participate in the organization of the open data day 2020.

Among the proposals that are already available for Open Data Day 2020 we can find TheyBuyForYou and ACTION, two H2020 projects that will participate with mentoring and teams organization on issues related to the control and management of expenditure and public procurement, and with a design of specific programs of Citizen Science and Open Science through open data.

 More about OpenDataDay:

http://madrid.theodi.org/2019/11/26/organiza-con-nosotros-el-dia-de-los…

https://blog.okfn.org/2019/11/08/getting-ready-for-open-data-day-2020-o…

https://www.europeandataportal.eu/es/news/save-date-open-data-day-2020

Content prepared based on the information received from ODI Madrid.

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

We invite all companies that have successfully carried out projects with reusable data generated by Spanish public administrations to submit their application for the Aporta Awards. 

The Aporta Awards 2017, an initiative promoted by the State Secretariat for the Information Society and Digital Agenda, the Public Enterprise Body Red.es and the General Secretariat for Digital Government, have been created with the aim of disseminating and recognizing success stories that may serve to help other public sector professionals to innovate and focus on reuse of open data as an engine for digital transformation and innovation.

Companies wishing to participate have until September 12 to present projects carried out in the last two years in which data reuse has contributed to the generation of social value, new businesses and/or improvements to society.

Applications, which will refer to initiatives that have made use of open public data generated by the Public Administration or data provided by private entities, must be submitted using the form available in the electronic head office of Red.es.

Projects will be evaluated during the month of September by representatives of the Aporta Initiative. The originality, usefulness and impact of the initiative will be taken into account in terms of the beneficiaries thereof.

The best two initiatives will receive recognition in the Aporta Conference to be held in late October 2017.

We hope that our dissemination and recognition of success stories in the reuse of public data will help many other professionals in the private sector to innovate and commit to the use of data generated by Public Administrations as a source of competitive advantage.

All information in datos.gob.es and Competition Rules of the 2017 Aporta Awards.