The EU Publications Office has awarded a six-year contract to a consortium including the Ontology Engineering Group of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The aim of the contract is to continue the development of the European Data Portal and to carry out consultancy and research work leading to the new data.europa.eu service.

data.europa.eu: a single access point for data across Europe

Until now, users wishing to locate public sector data related to Europe or member states had two platforms at their disposal:

• The European Union Open Data Portal (EUOPD), which provides access to data from the European Union institutions and other bodies for commercial or non-commercial use; and
• The European Data Portal (EDP), which federates the metadata of public sector information available in the open data portals of European countries. In the case of Spain, the datasets that the different organisations federate with datos.gob.es are automatically federated with the EDP, increasing their visibility at an international level.

The awarded contract aims, among other objectives, at the development, maintenance, operation and evolution of a pan-European data portal infrastructure combining the two current portals under the name data.europa.eu.This service is expected to act as a single point of access to open datasets made available by different publishers, including EU Member States, EU institutions, regional and local authorities, and possibly also NGOs and other international organisations. It will also integrate the EU web archive and resources with persistent URIs of EU institutions and bodies. In this way, it aims to facilitate the publication and re-use of open data across the region.

Continuing the impulse, analysis and assessment of the European open data ecosystem

The consortium's tasks will include fostering the provision of quality data and metadata, as well as promoting the re-use of public sector information across Europe. It will also continue to support the open data community through various actions such as participation in its own and third party events, the organisation of webinars and the production of news, articles and reports on open data developments, best practices and use cases.

In this sense, the consortium will continue to carry out, among others, two of the key studies that the EDP has been developing, such as the following:

• The Open Data Maturity Assessment in Europe. Every year, the European Data Portal publishes the Open Data Maturity Report, which measures the development achieved in the field of open data in Europe. In recent years, Spain has occupied second place in the maturity ranking, positioning itself as a trend-setter in the field.
• The analysis of the socio-economic impact of open data in Europe. The EDP also periodically produces reports in which the benefits of open data are gathered and its value is measured. In the latest edition in 2020, the size of the open data market was estimated at 184 billion euros and was expected to grow to between 199.51 and 334.21 billion euros by 2025.

3 key pillars

In short, the new portal will be based on three main pillars:

• Access to public data from across Europe through a single point of contact. It will offer more than 1 million datasets from 36 countries, 6 European institutions and 79 European bodies and agencies.
• Support to European institutions and Member States through community building, training and consultancy activities to improve, maintain and document good practice in data publishing. Assistance will be provided to those European countries where it is deemed necessary to improve data availability and enhance portals to foster the re-use of public data in each country and community.
• Evidence of the socio-economic benefits associated with the re-use of public data and incentives to encourage and demonstrate the creation of value and use of such data.

Through these pillars data.europa.eu seeks to support the creation and improvement of processes, products and services that reuse public data resources to create economic, social, political and environmental impact.

More information about the Ontological Engineering Group of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

The Ontological Engineering Group of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (OEG-UPM) is part of this project through a consortium led by Capgemini Invent, in collaboration with INTRASOFT International, and which also includes other organisations such as Fraunhofer FOKUS, OMMAX, con. terra, 52°North, agiledrop, Timelex, the Lisbon Council, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, CapGemini Idean and CapGemini Cybersecurity Services.

The OEG-UPM will work together with other consortium members on several of the studies related to the socio-economic impact of open data, the positioning of the future data.europa.eu in the context of the European Data Strategy, the future European Data Spaces and the European Open Science Cloud. It will also collaborate on the homogenisation of data in Europe to boost interoperability and on understanding the role that citizen-generated data can play in this context.

This Group has extensive experience in the area of open data. It leads the Madrid region node of the Open Data Institute and has collaborated in the design of the open data strategy, development and deployment of various open data infrastructures for several public administrations and non-profit organisations (e.g. the National Centre for Geographic Information, the National Library of Spain, the city of Zaragoza or the Regional Transport Consortium of Madrid). He has participated in the development of technical standards such as UNE 178301:2015 on Smart Cities and Open Data, or the series of technical reports and recommendations for the adoption of open data policies for the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, among other actions.

This new contract with the EU is a great opportunity to give visibility to these and other actions in our country. As Oscar Corcho, who leads the team at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, says, "The work on this six-year contract will allow us to transfer some of our experiences to the future of open data in the European Union and its Member States".

Last December the European Data Portal published a new report entitled Analytical Report 14: Enabling Smart Rural: The Open Data Gap, which examines the collection, availability and use of open data in rural areas.

27% of the citizens of the European Union live in rural areas where it is not easy to implement the same processes, technologies and activities that are driving the cities transformation. In a European context where smart cities are being promoting, the report focuses on the differences and synergies between rural and urban areas in terms of opening and reusing open data. To this end, the available resources have been analysed and 6 respondents have been interviewed: 3 experts from national portals in rural countries (Ireland, Romania and Slovenia) and 3 experts in agriculture, fisheries and the forestry sector.

Availability and reuse of rural data

The first part of the report focuses on knowing the availability of rural data, focusing on two categories of data:

• Rural population data: data relating to people living and working in rural areas, such as the availability of housing, connectivity, access to transport, demographic profile, employment levels or public services access, among others.
• Rural sectors data: Data related to the main sectors of the rural economy, that is, agriculture, fisheries and the forestry sector.

The conclusion reached by the report is that there is more open data from the second category (rural sectors), than from the first (rural population). Specifically, almost 14% (13.75%) of all EDP data sets are agricultural data.

Many of the challenges that public agencies face when opening data in rural areas are the same challenges they face in cities, such as lack of awareness or standardization. However, other aspects such as the digital gap or technological capabilities gaps (worse broadband connection, fewer devices ...) also influence

With regard to reuse, the report highlights the great potential of rural open data to generate economic and social benefits through several examples and success stories, such as increasing transparency in the agricultural products market. As before, the reuse of data related to rural sectors is higher than the reuse of data related to the rural population.

The report also highlights that the majority of rural data reuser and companies are located in urban areas, where awareness of the benefits of this type of data and its possible uses is higher.

Recommendations to boost the opening and reuse of rural data

The report ends with a series of recommendations for member state governments to promote the publication and use of data at the rural level. These recommendations are structured around 3 areas:

1. Data collection

• It is necessary to establish and institutionalize open data processes and practices in rural administrations, with close relationships to urban open data groups
• The report recommends paying attention to high-value agricultural datasets, because there is currently a a gap between their agricultural percentage of GDP and their open agricultural datasets.

2. Data opening

• Collaboration links must be established with complementary data owners, such as non-profit organizations, researchers or private organizations, that allow data to be opened and made available together.
• The report highlights the term Smart regions, covering both smart cities and nearby rural areas, to generate synergies, and recommends investing in understanding the key factors of smart regions that mean they are more fit for purpose.

3. Data reuse

• It is necessary to establish links with urban areas, through instruments such as study centres or universities.
• Finally, the report recommends to identify the rural-specific challenges, such as out-migration, health solutions that address distance, and food provenance.

The report concludes by highlighting the need to institutionalize the commitment to open data and foster the skills necessary for the publication and use of open data on both the population and the rural sectors, so that they are not involuntarily excluded from the benefits of data economy.

Once again, the European Data Portal has just published its Open Data Maturity Report 2019, which measures the development achieved in the field of open data in Europe. And, as in previous years, Spain occupies the second position, which makes it a prescriber in terms of open data.

According to the report, the average of open data maturity of the EU28 is 66%, only one percentage point above the data obtained in 2018. In the case of Spain, the score obtained has been 90%, three points more than in 2018 and well above the European average. Only Ireland, with 91%, is ahead of Spain.

With this score, Spain is part of the so-called group of Trend setters, along with Ireland and France. The countries that belong to this group are characterized by having an advanced open data strategy and a strong commitment to open data as a strategic asset to drive digital transformation.

In 2018, this group was formed by five countries, but only three have remained in 2019. Spain, like the rest of European leaders, has had to improve its score to continue remaining in the leading group.

At a general level, the report highlights that Europe is entering a consolidation phase, where the focus has been shifted from quantity to quality of published data. Once policies and open data platforms are implemented, European countries are trying to ensure the value of the data by driving its reuse.

Spain is above the European average in the 4 indicators analyzed

To produce the report, the European Data Portal has analyzed 4 key indicators: policy, portal, impact and quality. The growth of Spain has been driven by the portal and impact dimensions, as seen below.

• The “political” dimension analyzes existing policies and strategies to promote open data at the national level, as well as the existence of governance models. Spain's score in this section is 90% -the EU is 74%-, although it has decreased compared to 2018. This is because, although there are specific policies to boost open data, there is still work to be done for its implementation

• The “portal” dimension has been the one that has experienced the greatest growth in the last year, going from 78% in 2018 to 89% in 2019. This dimension focuses on the level of maturity of national open data platforms. For this, it analyzes the functionality, the use (user analysis), the data variety and the approach used to guarantee the sustainability of the platform.

• The “impact” dimension, in which Spain has obtained the best score, assesses the existence of methodologies to monitor and measure the reuse and impact of open data. In this case, the score obtained has been 100%, with a growth of 3 points compared to 2018.

• Finally, the “quality” dimension, which explores the level of automation of European platforms, the accuracy and reliability of the available data and the level of compliance in terms of the DCAT-AP metadata standard, has remained virtually the same as last year: 77% in 2019 compared to 78% in 2018.

Recommendations for further progress on open data

As in previous editions, the report ends with a series of recommendations for all the countries analyzed. In the case of Trend setters, the group to which Spain belongs, the following conclusions are included, among others:

• Promote thematic data ecosystems around the thematic domains defined in the recent Directive on Open Data and the re-use of Public Sector Information.
• Boost data in real time.
• Continue the work on improving the quality of metadata and data by boosting the use of tools (for example, for the validation of metadata).
• Work with training institutions to provide advanced open data courses and training.
• Engage universities and research institutions to develop country-specific metrics to measure impact.

You can see the factsheet of Spain in this link and those of the rest of the countries here.

Governments, private sector, donors, multilateral organizations ... there are many and diverse actors that have been building the open data movement during the last decade until it reach the current level. Each of them has its own agenda and interests, but in many cases sharing common objectives and constantly building bridges for collaboration.

Next, we will review the main characteristics and actions that have defined each of these actors, as well as the challenges that they have identified for the near future, according to the study on the first decade of data opening carried out in the framework of the project “State of Open Data”.

Civil society

Civil society has played a fundamental role in boosting the movement of open data. In fact, it was mostly a group of civilians who established the fundamental principles of open data more than a decade ago. Civil organizations have also frequently carried out campaigns to encourage the opening of new data, ensuring compliance with the current legislation and data commitments and raising awareness in public opinion so that the demand for data keep growing. In addition, civil organizations have served as a fundamental link between public institutions and communities of end users who have took advantage of this data.

On other occasions, these organizations have also taken care of resolving existing gaps in data availability, generating and publishing new open datasets based on their analysis and research work.

Governments

From that already famous first step taken by the Barack Obama administration, which was the initial revulsion necessary for dozens of governments to enter the path of open data, the role of governments within the data ecosystem has evolved from a mere raw material supplier into a more complex role, also working as a holder, facilitator, consumer and integrator. What initially emerges in many countries as an alternative to the need to respond more efficiently to the demands of public information, finally expands to become an integral tool not only for transparency policies, but also for many others such as Planning and innovation A revolution that last just a decade through which governments have totally changed the way they value and manage data.

But, above all, it is worth highlighting the main role that governments are called to take towards the survival of the open data movement, since they will be responsible for carrying out adequate data governance to ensure future sustainability.

Donors and investors

Large donors and other investors have been a key source of resources for open data advancement, as they have greatly provided the funding and support necessary to carry out data openings in countries and regions where the public or private initiative has not found motivations, incentives or resources to do it themselves. Some examples could be the case of the development of global norms and standards or the introduction of open data in less developed countries. Even these organizations have also set an example by opening their own data and thus giving rise to some of the most complete data initiatives.

However, if we can highlight the role of donors in one area, it is undoubtedly the creation and promotion of the large communities and international networks of collaboration that we have today: the Global Open Data Initiative (GODI ), the Partnership for Open Data (POD), the Open Data for Development (OD4D), or even the International Open Data Conference (IODC). In all these activities, donor support and initiative has been decisive when it comes to establish its viability.

Journalism and media

The (to date) brief history of open data has been closely accompanied by the emergence of a new stream of journalism based on evidence and data, leading to a growing community of data journalism, more organized and global. The higher accessibility to data and technology, necessary to work with them, the generalized crisis of the traditional business model of the sector or the increasing loss of confidence in the media have also been key revolutions to develop this new model of journalism that seeks to be again profitable and attractive from the point of view of the consumer, but at the same time has served as a great driver of data opening.

Against this new trend they have overcome difficulties to acquire the skills and abilities necessary to complete the profile of data journalist, as well as the pending challenge of the need to produce and contrast more data with their own means instead of relying mainly on those from "official" sources. That is why, at the moment, only some large media or other smaller, but highly specialized, can actually afford a permanent team of on-staff data journalists such as La Nación Data in Argentina, IndiaSpend in India or Nation Newsplex in Kenya. Even in these cases, teams will have to face other challenges for the future related to the scarcity of the resources they have, such as the proper management and archiving of the data used in their publications.

Multilateral organizations

The history of multilateral organizations has always been linked to the development of society, initially working only with governments, but also involving civil society and other organizations at present. Therefore, it is not surprising that in these organizations the irruption of the open data movement has had a considerable impact, mainly in two areas of the global agenda: on the one hand the improvement of efficiency and sustainability, and on the other hand the development of transparency and accountability.

Thus, the main multilateral organizations have not only been adopting open data as an internal tool for daily work for greater transparency, but they have also introduced data as a very useful tool for the global social and economic development agenda, even becoming part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Fr this reason, these organizations have also been great contributors to the development of national open data initiatives in those countries that have a lower level of development. The next big challenge for them will be to successfully introduce the same concepts in those countries that are particularly conflictive or socially and economically punished.

Private sector

Given the optimistic business forecasts around the open data for the coming years, supported by the multiple reports that emerged during these years from both public and private entities, no one doubts the great value and impact that data openness is having on the private sector. Thousands and thousands of companies have been nourishing this data to improve their businesses, either directly as raw material or as efficiency in their marketing processes, supply management, strategic planning or business intelligence.

At the same time, open data has also become a key innovation tool, giving rise to a multitude of new companies and new business models, and particularly working as a revitalizer of the small and medium-sized business segment. On the other hand, companies have also been playing a very important role as intermediaries of the data chain, offering value-added services on the data that end users demand.

The future in this sector is to strengthen its role as facilitators through new models of collaborative data governance and also as primary data generators and providers.

Researchers and evaluators

The role that research has played in these years of development of open data has certainly been relevant in aspects as important as monitoring the evolution of the movement of open data and the ecosystem around data openness, comparison of different open data management policies in search of the most appropriate formulas, or the clarification of the connection between the opening of data and the multiple benefits attributed to it, either transparency, economic development or social change.

There are also other organizations and projects that play an important role in research and evaluation activities. For example, we have the evaluation carried out by the OECD within its biennial OGD Report, the multiple reports published by the European Data Portal, including its complete study on the maturity of data openness in Europe or the  State of open data carried out collaboratively by hundreds of authors and reviewers coordinated by the OD4D network

On the other hand, one of the great future challenges pending in this area is undoubtedly to be able to continue deepening the knowledge of the multiple variables that come into play in these initiatives and the specific weight or relevance of each of them, and, in particular, to power deepen the impact of open data initiatives more formally and completely, which would greatly contribute to their prevalence over time. A better balance between the resources invested in the investigation of the economic value and those used in the investigation of the social value of the open data is also another of the pending challenges, given the clear dominance of the economic part at present.

The next 10 years

Although each of the actors we have seen have their own particularities, they all share the challenge of connecting the open data agenda with other social challenges that arise at present, such as the management of privacy or the growing inequalities. The need for greater training in terms of everything that surrounds data, increasing efforts in coordinating the data supply and demand, bringing the benefits of data opening to more sectors, improving evaluation of data or greater focus on inclusion are the objectives that these groups have jointly defined as essential for the near future of the open data community.

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.

On June 12, the European Data Portal (EDP) organizes a webinar to explain the main conclusions of its latest report, entitled Analytical Report 13: Open Data best practices in Europe's Top Performers. This report analyses the success factors shared by the leading countries of open data in Europe: Spain, Ireland and France.

These three countries have been chosen for their top positions in the EDP open data maturity ranking. They are prescribers in terms of open data due to their high performance and clear strategic focus.

The webinar will start at 13:30 CET. It consist of a general overview on the following aspects:

• Good open data practices in Ireland, Spain and France.
• Common factors that helped boost the development of open data in the 3 countries. These factors can be used as a guide for those countries that want to improve their open data strategy.
• Trends and opportunities, both at the European Union and country level. The analysis will be based on the four EDP evaluation dimensions: Policy, Portal, Quality and Impact.

The webinar will include representatives of the national open data portals teams from Ireland, Spain and France, who will share their experience devising and executing an open data strategy. The speakers will be joined by Cosmina Radu, Service Delivery Lead of the European Data Portal and co-author of the report.

The webinar is free but you need to register through this registration form.

More information on the European Data Portal website and on social networks (Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn).

Data sharing is a key enabler of growth, employment and competitiveness for Europe, as well as for the Digital Single Market envisaged by the European Union. (..) Re-using data can save costs, time and lives”. These are the first words of the new report of the European Data Portal (EDP), Analytical Report 12: Business-to-Government Data Sharing, whose objective is to support the supply of private sector data to public bodies (Business-to-government B2G) under preferential conditions for its re-use.

The report analyses the benefits and challenges of B2G data sharing, provide guidance in the form of principles of B2G data sharing, models, legal and practical considerations and technical means.

The importance of B2G data sharing

Data sharing can benefit both the public sector, as a re-user, and the private sector, as a publisher.

In the case of the public sector, as we have seen in other occasions, open data can help improve decision making and policy making, optimize public services and increase efficiency in both internal administrative processes and the delivery of services to the public. According EDP data, the accumulated cost savings for public administrations in the EU28+ in 2020 will be of1.7 bn. EUR.

Extending the re-use of data to private sector resources can only expand this potential. For example, behavioural patterns of citizens (traffic, shopping, diseases, etc.) can be used to understand, evaluate and predict population needs.

On the other hand, private companies can also take advantage of data opening:

• Improve companies’ reputation. B2G data sharing can be considered as a corporate social responsibility action, which can enhance community relationships and improve companies’ reputation.
• Improve employer branding. Associating a brand with a positive image (an open and transparent company that shares information) can boost the attraction and retention of talent
• Improve insight. The fact that third parties work and analyse a series of companies data can help answer questions they could not have found by working in isolation.
• Increase reciprocity. Data can help improve services that the company will use. As an example, Uber's open data can help improve traffic management by public agencies, which ultimately benefits the company.

Despite these benefits, private data cannot always be opened, due to strategic or confidentiality issues. However, there are different formulas to drive B2G data sharing. But before addressing these formulas, many companies need to face a series of challenges.

Barriers to B2G data sharing

In order to share their data, companies have to overcome organizational, technical and legal challenges.

• Organizational barriers: Before launching an initiative of this type, a company needs to collect, validate and prepare its database, so it will need new resources (according to the report, only 35% EU companies have robust processes for data capture, curation, validation and retention). These costs are easy to measure, while the benefits are sometimes difficult to calculate. In addition, it´s also important consider the possible ethical implications, the lack of leadership, and the reaction of customers, who do not always agree with sharing their data.
• Technical barriers: Data providers have to guarantee a series of basic processes, such as gathering and selecting the data. Likewise, it is necessary to address aspects such as data accuracy and completeness, avoiding duplications. And do not forget the anonymization, pseudo-anonymization or aggregation processes to guarantee the privacy of personal information.
• Legal barriers: The absence of a specific legal framework and a lack of reference cases, nor documentation about best practices or standard scenarios make difficult to implement these initiatives. Therefore, it is necessary to rely on the different national and international legal regulations that could affect data sharing process, such as intellectual property rights, data protection rights or competition laws, as well as establishing a governance model and seeking legal expert support.

Recommendations for a successful data sharing

In short, a successful and sustainable B2G data sharing must be legally compliant, technically feasible, socially acceptable, financially and commercially viable and has to mitigate risk effectively.

In order to comply with all these requirements, the EDP finalizes its report with a series of recommendations:

1. Team up with renowned and authoritative third parties. Partnering with prestigious researchers, associations or research centres helps to better understand the context, as well as to take advantage of its good reputation.
2. Involve the customers. Although data sharing process is carried out with all legal guarantees, customers may not agree. Therefore it is advisable to inform customers, increasing their participation in the process, through civic associations or benefits such as additional insight and services.
3. Use a code of conduct. It is necessary to define rules, values and principles, taking into account the ethical and legal conditions.
4. Set up a data sharing framework. This framework should include a financial model, training mechanisms, support services, metadata description processes, etc.
5. Specify contractual agreements. In the absence of a specific legal framework, it is necessary to sign a contract between the data provider and the data user, where the responsibilities of each party are clear.
6. Use new technologies. As for example, blockchain.

This is not a simple process. However, it can be seen as an opportunity. In the current economic context, companies need to properly manage their data, so, if they do not want to lose competitive advantages, they will have to face the organizational and technical challenges described above sooner or later. In addition, it could be an opportunity to establish mechanisms for B2G data sharing, so the benefit can be twofold.

Open data  indexes and Barometers are intended to reflect the international ranking of countries in their implementation of open data policies. Although it is practically impossible to measure exactly the level of openness, there are certain initiatives that give an overview of the interest in open data in the different countries of the world. In recent months, some of these indexes have been published, which, although they value different aspects related to open data, have the same purpose. How many global indexes are currently being produced in the world on open data? Do they reflect different realities? What methodology do they employ? What countries are analyzed? In this article we provide a description of the four most important indexes and some of their peculiarities.

Open Data Barometer (ODB) – World Wide Web Foundation

On June 1 the latest Open Data Barometer, prepared annually by the World Wide Web Foundation since 2013, was published. The Open Data Barometer assesses the policies and practices of open data that are being developed by 115 countries worldwide. Specifically, the Web Foundation measures how Governments make their data available to their citizens based on three main sources of information: evaluation questionnaires completed by experts, government self-assessments and other data from international databases.

The ODB analyzes three blocks of indicators aimed at measuring the progress of open data initiatives, implementation of open data programs and impact of open data in business, politics and civil society. It also analyzes the existence and quality of 15 sets of key data at national level (from government budgets, the census, public spending and public transport timetables, to crime statistics, environment or public contracts ...), the data refresh rate, accessibility, possibility of reuse, whether free of charge, type of license, interoperability, and so on. In short, more than 150 researchers and government representatives who make possible the production of a report which includes a set of conclusions on the general state of the open data sector in the world.

Informe anual European Data Portal  

On March 4 - World Open Data Day - the European Public Data Portal released its annual report in which it analyzes the level of maturity of the open data ecosystem in Europe. In the second edition of the report, the portal evaluates 31 countries (the 28 members of the European Union plus Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein). According to this report, the state of open data across Europe has improved overall but it also highlights significant discrepancies between countries, as well as political, legal and technical barriers.

In order to identify the level of a country's maturity two blocks of indicators are set, aimed at measuring the maturity of open data throughout Europe: the availability of open data and the maturity of data portals. The first assesses a variety of  aspects of open data policies in each state and to what extent each country carries out actions to measure the social and economic impact of data reuse. The second analyzes the level of maturity of the open data portals, measures the usability of the platforms, as well as the ease of data reuse and data access.

Global Open Data Index (GODI) – Open Knowledge Foundation

The Global Open Data Index, better known as GODI, is produced by the Open Knowledge Foundation. On 15 June, OKF published its global index of open data for 2017 which analyzes 94 countries and territories in the world. Through this index ten categories of data are analyzed. To measure the openness of these ten data types, Open Data Index bases its rating on responses to a questionnaire that includes questions about the format, openness, update rate or periodicity of publication of the data. The scores for each of these are added to create a final ranking where the level of openness of each national dataset is also displayed. This collaborative  initiative is open to any citizen who wants to become a country analyst.

Índice OURData Index – OCDE

The OURData Index (Open, Useful, Government Re-usable Data) analyzes the situation of open data in 28 countries belonging to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). The OECD OURData Index evaluates the efforts made by governments to implement open data in three critical areas: openness, usability and reuse of government data. The index data comes from member countries and focuses on government efforts to ensure the availability and accessibility of public sector data and to encourage greater reuse. The index is based on OECD methodology and the guidelines of the G8 OGD (Open Goverment Data) Charter. The OECD OGD analysis includes: business information, records, patent and trademark information, public bidding databases, geographic information, legal information, weather information, social data and transport information.

Experts point out that such studies should not be considered an accurate reflection of the real situation, because they are partial analyses selecting specific criteria and metrics, providing an incomplete picture of the open data ecosystem. Nonetheless, such indexes or rankings are useful for interested citizens, civil organizations and groups, and for politicians and data publishers. These rankings are especially helpful for those fields where open data is still an incipient subject.