Sector público

The importance of data in today's society and economy is no longer in doubt. Data is now present in virtually every aspect of our lives. This is why more and more countries have been incorporating specific data-related regulations into their policies: whether they relate to personal, business or government data, or to regulate a range of issues such as who can access it, where it can be stored, how it should be protected, and so on.

However, when these policies are examined more closely, significant differences can be observed between them, depending on the main objectives that each country sets when implementing its data policies. Thus, all countries recognise the social and economic value of data, but the policies they implement to maximise that value can vary widely. For some, data is primarily an economic asset, for others it can be a means of innovation and modernisation, and for others a tool for development. In the following, we will review the main features of their data policies, focusing mainly on those aspects related to fostering innovation through the use of data.

A recent report by the Centre for Innovation through Data compares the general policies applicable in several countries that have been selected precisely because of differences in their vision of how data should be managed: China, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

CHINA

Its efforts are focused on building a strong domestic data economy to strengthen national competitiveness and maintain government control through the collection and use of data. It has two agencies from which data policy is directed: the Cyberspace Administration (CAC) and the National Data Administration (NDA).

The main policies governing data in the country are:

• The five-year national informatisation plan, published by the end of 2021 to increase data collection in the national industry.
• The data Security Law (DSL), effective from September 2021, which gives special protection to all data considered to have an impact on national security.
• The cybersecurity law (CSL), effective since June 2017, prohibits online anonymisation and also grants government access to data when required for security purposes.
• The personal Information Protection Act (PIPL), effective from November 2021, which establishes the obligation to keep data on national territory.

INDIA

Its main objective is to use data policy to unlock a new economic resource and drive the modernisation and development of the country. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITy) governs and oversees data policies in the country, which we summarise below:

• The digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023, which aims to enable the processing of personal data in a way that recognises both the right of individuals to protect their data and the need to process it for legitimate purposes.
• The data protection and empowerment architecture (DEPA), which was launched in 2020 and gives citizens greater control over their personal data by establishing intermediaries between information users and providers, as well as providing consent to companies based on a set of permissions established by the user.
• The non-personal data governance framework also adopted in 2020, which states that the benefits of data should also accrue to the community, not just to the companies that collect the data. It also indicates that high-value data and data related to the public interest (e.g. energy, transport, geospatial or health data) should be shared.

SINGAPORE

It aims to use data as a vehicle to attract new companies to operate within the country. The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) is the entity in charge of managing the data policies in this case, which includes the control of the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC).

Among the most relevant regulations in this case we can find:

• The personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), which was last updated in 2021 and is based on consent, but also provides for some exceptions for legitimate public interest.
• The trust Framework for Data Sharing published in 2019, which sets out standards for data sharing between companies (including templates for establishing legal sharing agreements), albeit with certain protections for trade secrecy.
• The data Portability Obligation (DPO), which will soon be incorporated into the PDPA to establish the right to transmit personal data to another service (provided it is based in the country) in a standard format that facilitates the exchange.

UNITED KINGDOM

It wants to boost the country's economic competitiveness while protecting the privacy of its citizens' data. The Office of the Information information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is the body in charge of data protection and data sharing guidelines.

In the case of the United Kingdom, the legislative framework is very broad:

• The core privacy principles, such as data portability or conditions of access to personal data, are covered by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2016, the law of Data Protection Act (DPA) of 2018, the Electronic Communications Privacy Regulation of 2013 and the proposed Digital Data and Information Protection Act still under discussion.
• The law on Digital Economy established in 2017, which defines the rules for sharing data between public administrations for the development of public services.
• The Data Sharing Code which came into force in October 2021 and sets out good practices to guide companies when sharing data.
• The Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which initially came into force in 2018 requiring banks to share their data in standardised formats to encourage the development of new services.

EUROPEAN UNION

It uses a human rights-based approach to data protection. The aim is to prioritise the creation of a single market that facilitates the free flow of data between member states. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection and Innovation through Data Board are the main bodies responsible for supervising data protection in the Union.

Again, the applicable rules are very broad and have continued to expand recently:

• The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has become the most comprehensive and descriptive regulation in the world, and is based on the principles of legality, fairness, transparency, containment, minimisation, accuracy, storage, integrity, confidentiality and accountability.
• The programme for the Digital Decadeto promote a single, interoperable, interconnected and secure digital market.
• The Declaration on Digital Rights and Principleswhich expands on the digital and data rights already existing in the standard of protection.
• The Data Act and the Data Governance Regulation which facilitate accessibility to data horizontally accessibility to data horizontally, i.e. across and within sectors, following EU principles. The Data Law drives harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data, clarifying who can create value from data and under what conditions. The Data Governance Regulation regulates the secure exchange of data sets held by public bodies over which third party rights concur, as well as data brokering services and the altruistic transfer ofdata for the benefit of society for the benefit of society.

The keys to promoting innovation

In general, we could conclude that those data policies that adopt a more innovation-oriented approach are characterised by the following:

1. Data protection based on different levels of risk, prioritising the protection of the most sensitive personal data, such as medical or financial information, while reducing regulatory costs for less sensitive data.
2. Sharing frameworks for personal and non-personal data, encouraging data sharing by default in both the public and private sector and removing barriers to voluntary data sharing.
3. Facilitating the flow of data, supporting an open and competitive digital economy.
4. Proactive data production policies, encouraging the use of data as a factor of production by collecting data in various sectors and avoiding data gaps.

As we have seen, data policies have become a strategic issue for many countries, not only helping to reinforce their goals and priorities as a nation, but also sending signals about what their priorities and interests are on the international stage. Striking the right balance between data protection and fostering innovation is one of the key challenges. Before addressing their own policies, countries are advised to invest time in analysing and understanding the various existing approaches, including their strengths and weaknesses, and then take the most appropriate specific steps in designing their own strategies.

Content prepared by Carlos Iglesias, Open data Researcher and consultant, World Wide Web Foundation. The contents and views expressed in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author.

The Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) approved at the end of 2023 two model ordinances that address progress in two key areas: transparency and data governance. Both documents will not only improve the quality of processes, but also facilitate access, management and re-use of data. In this post, we will analyse the second ordinance drafted within the FEMP's Network of Entities for Transparency and Citizen Participation in its quest to define common reference models. In particular, the ordinance on data governance.

The usefulness and good work of the Model Ordinance on Data Governance in Local Entities has been highlighted by the Multisectoral Association of Information (ASEDIE), which awarded it the prize in the category 'Promoting data literacy' at its 15th ASEDIE International Conference.

Under this premise, the document addresses all elements related to the collection, management and exploitation of data in order to approach them as a commongood, i.e. ensuring their openness, accessibility and re-use. This is a relevant objective for local administrations, as it enables them to improve their functioning, service delivery and decision-making. Data governance is the framework that guides and guarantees this process and this ordinance proposes a flexible regulatory framework that different administrations can adapt according to their specific needs.

What is data governance?

 Data Governance comprehensively addresses all aspects related to the collection, management and exploitation of data, as well as its openness and re-use by society as a whole on an equal basis. Itcan therefore bedefined as an organisational function responsible for being accountable for the effective, efficient and acceptable use of databy the organisation, which is necessary to deliver the business strategy. This is described in the specifications UNE 0077:2023 on Data Governance and UNE 78:2023 on Data Management, which include standardised processes to guide organisations in the establishment of approved and validated mechanisms that provide organisational support to aspects related to the opening and publication of data, for subsequent use by citizens and other institutions.

How was the FEMP Data Governance Ordinance developed?

In order to develop the Model Ordinance on Data Governance in the Local Entity, a multidisciplinary working group was set up in 2022, which included workers from the Public Administrations, private companies, representatives of the infomediary sector, the Data Office, universities, etc. This team set out two main objectives that would mark the content of the document:

• Develop guidelines for municipalities and other public authorities defining the strategy to be followed in order to implement an open data project.
• Create a reference model of datasets common to all public administrations to facilitate the re-use of information.

With these two challenges in mind, in early 2023 the FEMP working group started to establish aspects, structure, contents and work plan. During the following months, work was carried out to draft, elaborate and reach consensus on a single draft.

In addition, a participatory process was organised on the Idea Zaragoza platform to nurture the document with contributions from experts from all over the country and FEMP partners.

The result of all the work was based on the Open Data Charter (ODC), the recommendations issued by the Spanish Government's Data Office and the existing European and national regulations on this matter.

New features and structure of the Data Governance Ordinance

The FEMP's Model Ordinance on Data Governance is in line with the context in which it has been presented, i.e. it recognises relevant aspects of the current moment we are living in. One of the document's salient features is the premise of guaranteeing and enhancing the rights of both natural and legal persons and respecting the General Data Protection Regulation. The regulation places particular emphasis on the proportionality of anonymisation to ensure the privacy of individuals.

Another novel aspect of the standard is that it brings the vision of high-value data defined by the European Commission from the perspective of local government. In addition, the Model Ordinance recognises a single regime for access and re-use of public information, in accordance with Law 19/2013 of 9 December on transparency, access to public information and good governance, and Law 37/2007 on the re-use of public sector information.

Beyond ensuring the legal and regulatory framework, the FEMP Ordinance also addresses the data associated with artificial intelligence, a cutting-edge technological synergy that every day offers great innovative solutions. For an artificial intelligence to function properly, it is necessary to have quality data to help train it. In relation to this point, the ordinance defines quality requirements (Article 18) and metrics for their assessment that are adapted to each specific context and address issues such as accuracy, portability or confidentiality, among others.  The document establishes guarantees that the use of the data will be carried out in a way that respects the rights of individuals.

All these new aspects are part of the FEMP's Model Ordinance on Data Governance for Local Entities, which is organised in the following structure:

1. General provisions: This first section presents data as the main digital asset of Public Administrations as a strategic asset, and the object, principles and right of citizenship.
2. Planning, organisation and tools for data governance: Here the organisation and competencies for data governance are defined. In addition, the importance of maintaining an inventory of datasets and information sources is stressed (Article 9).
3. The data: This chapter recognises the publication requirements and security standards, the importance of the use of reference vocabularies, and the categories of datasets whose openness should be prioritised, namely the 80 typologies referred to by FEMP as most relevant.
4. Life cycle: This section highlights, on the one hand, the collection, opening, storage and use of data; and, on the other hand, the limits, deletion and destruction of data when these actions are required.  when these actions are required.
5. Access, publication and re-use: The fifth chapter deals with issues related to the exploitation of data such as the use of specific licences, exclusive rights, payment for re-use or prior request for access to certain datasets.
6. Liability and guarantees: The last point describes the sanctioning and disciplinary regime and the civil and criminal liabilities of the re-user.

In short, the publication of the Ordinance on Data Governance in Local Entities provides local administrations with a flexible regulation and defines administrative structures that seek to improve management, reuse and the promotion of a data-driven society.

You can access the full document here: Standard Ordinance on Data Governance in the Local Entity

At the end of 2023, as reported by datos.gob.es, the ISTAC made public more than 500 semantic assets, including 404 classifications or 100 concept schemes.  

All these resources are available in the Open Data Catalog of the Canary Islands, an environment in which there is room for both semantic and statistical resources and which, therefore, may involve an extra difficulty for a user looking only for semantic assets.  

To facilitate the reuse of these datasets with information so relevant to society, the Canary Islands Statistics Institute, with the collaboration of the Directorate General for the Digital Transformation of Public Services of the Canary Islands Government, published the Bank of Semantic Assets. 

In this portal, the user can perform searches more easily by providing a keyword, identifier, name of the dataset or institution that prepares and maintains it. 

The Bank of semantic assets of the Canary Islands Statistics Institute is an application that serves to explore the structural resources used by the ISTAC. In this way it is possible to reuse the semantic assets with which the ISTAC works, since it makes direct use of the eDatos APIs, the infrastructure that supports the Canary Islands statistics institute.  

The number of resources to be consulted increases enormously with respect to the data available in the Catalog, since, on the one hand, it includes the DSD (Data Structures Definitions), with which the final data tables are built; and, on the other hand, because it includes not only the schemes and classifications, but also each of the codes, concepts and elements that compose them.  

This tool is the equivalent of the aforementioned Fusion Metadata Registry used by SDMX, Eurostat or the United Nations; but with a much more practical and accessible approach without losing advanced functionalities. SDMX is the data and metadata sharing standard on which the aforementioned organizations are based. The use of this standard in applications such as ISTAC's makes it possible to homogenize in a simple way all the resources associated with the statistical data to be published. 

The publication of data under the SDMX standard is a more laborious process, as it requires the generation of not only the data but also the publication keys, but in the long run it allows the creation of templates or statistical operations that can be compared with data from another country or region. 

The application recently launched by the ISTAC allows you to navigate through all the structural resources of the ISTAC, including families of classifications or concepts, in an interconnected way, so it operates as a network. 

Functionalities of the Semantic Asset Bank  

The main advantage of this new tool over the aforementioned registries is its ease of use. Which, in this case, is directly measured by how easy it is to find a specific resource.   

Thanks to the advanced search, specific resources can be filtered by ID, name, description and maintainer; to which is added the option of including only the results of interest, discriminating both by version and by whether they are recommended by the ISTAC or not.  

In addition, it is designed to be a large interconnected bank, so that, entering a concept, classifications are recommended, or that in a DSD all the representations of the dimensions and attributes are linked. 

These features not only differentiate the Semantic Asset Bank from other similar tools, but also represent a step forward in terms of interoperability and transparency by not only offering semantic resources but also their relationships with each other.  

The new ISTAC resource complies with the provisions both at national level with the National Interoperability Scheme (Article 10, semantic assets), and at European level with the European Interoperability Framework (Article 3.4, semantic interoperability). Both documents defend the need and value of using common resources for the exchange of information, a maxim that is being implemented transversally in the Government of the Canary Islands. 

Training Pill  

To disseminate this new search engine for semantic assets, the ISTAC has published a short video explaining the Bank and its features, as well as providing the necessary information about SDMX. In this video it is possible to know, in a simple way and in just a few minutes how to use and get the most out of the new Semantic Assets Bank of the ISTAC through simple and complex searches and how to organize the data to respond to a previous analysis. 

In summary, with the Semantic Asset Bank, the Canary Islands Statistics Institute has taken a significant step towards facilitating the reuse of its semantic assets. This tool, which brings together tens of thousands of structural resources, allows easy access to an interconnected network that complies with national and European interoperability standards. 

The Open Government Guide for Public Employees is a manual to guide the staff of public administrations at all levels (local, regional and state) on the concept and conditions necessary to achieve an "inclusive open government in a digital environment". Specifically, the document seeks for the administration to assume open government as a cross-cutting element of society, fostering its connection with the Sustainable Development Goals. 

 It is a comprehensive, practical and well-structured guide that facilitates the understanding and implementation of the principles of open government, providing examples and best practices that foster the development of the necessary skills to facilitate the long-term sustainability of open government.

What is open government?

The guide adopts the most widely accepted definition of open government, based on three axes: 

• Transparency and access to information (vision axis): Refers to open access to public information to facilitate greater accountability.
• Citizen participation (voice axis): It offers the possibility for citizens to be heard and intervene to improve decision-making and co-creation processes in public policies.
• Collaboration (value axis): Focuses on cooperation within the administration or externally, with citizens or civil society organizations, through innovation to generate greater co-production in the design and implementation of public services.

This manual defines these axes and breaks them down into their most relevant elements for better understanding and application. According to the guide, the basic elements of open administration are:

• An integrity that cuts across all public action.
• Data are "the raw material of governments and public administrations" and, for this reason, must be made available to "any actor", respecting the limits established by law.  The use of information and communication technologies (digital) is conceived as a "space for the expansion of public action", without neglecting the digital divide.
• The citizenry is placed at the center of open administration, because it is not only the object of public action, but also "must enjoy a leading role in all the dynamics of transparency, participation and collaboration".
• Sustainability of government initiatives.

Adapted from a visual of the Open Government Guide for Public Employees. Source: https://funcionpublica.hacienda.gob.es/Secretaria-de-Estado-de-Funcion-Publica/Actualidad/ultimas-noticias/Noticias/2023/04/2023_04_11.html

Benefits of Open Government

With all this, a number of benefits are achieved:

• Increased institutional quality and legitimacy

• Increased trust in institutions

• More targeted policies to serve citizens

• More equitable access to policy formulation

How can I use the guide?

The guide is very useful because, in order to explain some concepts, it poses challenges so that civil servants themselves can reflect on them and even put them into practice. The authors also propose cases that provide an overview of open government in the world and its evolution, both in terms of the concepts related to it and the laws, regulations, relevant plans and areas of application (including Law 19/2023 on transparency, the Digital Spain 2025 agenda, the Digital Rights Charter and the General Data Protection Regulation, known as RGPD). As an example, the cases he mentions include the Elkar-EKIN Social Inclusion Plan of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and Frena La Curva, an initiative launched by members of the Directorate General of Citizen Participation and the LAAAB of the Government of Aragon during COVID-19.

The guide also includes a self-diagnostic test on accountability, fostering collaboration, bibliographical references and proposals for improvement.

 In addition, it offers diagrams and summaries to explain and schematize each concept, as well as specific guidelines to put them into practice. For example, it includes the question "Where are the limits on access to public information? To answer this question, the guide cites the cases in which access can be given to information that refers to a person's ideology, beliefs, religious or union affiliation (p. 26). With adaptation to specific contexts, the manual could very well serve as a basis for organizing training workshops for civil servants because of the number of relevant issues it addresses and its organization.

The authors are right to also include warnings and constructive criticisms of the situation of open government in institutions. Although they do not point out directly, they talk about:

• Black boxes: they are criticized for being closed systems. It is stated that black boxes should be opened and made transparent and that "the representation of sectors traditionally excluded from public decisions should be increased".
• Administrative language: This is a challenge for real transparency, since, according to a study mentioned in the guide, out of 760 official texts, 78% of them were not clear. Among the most difficult to understand are applications for scholarships, grants and subsidies, and employment-related procedures.
• The existence of a lack of transparency in some municipalities, according to another study mentioned in the guide. The global open government index, elaborated by the World Justice Project, places Spain in 24th place, behind countries such as Estonia (14th), Chile (18th), Costa Rica (19th) or Uruguay (21st) and ahead of Italy (28th), Greece (36th) or Romania (51st), among 102 countries. Open Knowledge Foundation has stopped updating its Global Open Data Index, specifically on open data.

In short, public administration is conceived as a step towards an open state, with the incorporation of the values of openness in all branches of government, including the legislative and judicial branches, in addition to government.

Additional issues to consider

For those who want to follow the path to open government, there are a number of issues to consider: 

• The guide can be adapted to different spheres and scales of public. But public administration is not homogeneous, nor do the people in it have the same responsibilities, motivations, knowledge or attitudes to open government. A review of citizen use of open data in the Basque administration concluded that one obstacle to transparency is the lack of acceptance or collaboration in some sectors of the administration itself. A step forward, therefore, could be to conduct internal campaigns to disseminate the advantages for the administration of integrating citizen perspectives and to generate those spaces to integrate their contributions.

• Although the black box model is disappearing from the public administration, which is subject to great scrutiny, it has returned in the form of closed and opaque algorithmic systems applied to public administration. There are many studies in the scientific literature -for example, this one- that warn that erroneous opaque box systems may be operating in public administration without anyone noticing until harmful results are generated. This is an issue that needs to be reviewed.
•  In order to adapt it to specific contexts, it should be possible to define more concretely what participation, collaboration and co-creation are. As the guide indicates, they imply not only transparency, but also the implementation of collaborative or innovative initiatives. But it is also necessary to ask a series of additional questions: what is a collaborative or innovation initiative, what methodologies exist, how is it organized and how is its success measured?
• The guide highlights the need to include citizens in open government. When talking about inclusion and participation, organized civil society and academia are mentioned above all, for example, in the Open Government Forum. But there is room for improvement to encourage individual participation and collaboration, especially for people with little access to technology. The guide mentions gender, territorial, age and disability digital divides, but does not explore them. However, when access to many public services, aid and assistance has been platformized (especially after the COVID-19 pandemic), such digital divides affect many people, especially the elderly, low-income and women. Since a generalist guide cannot address all relevant issues in detail, this would merit a separate guide.

Public institutions are increasingly turning to algorithmic decision-making for effective, fast and inclusive decision making. Therefore, it is also increasingly relevant to train the administration itself in open government in a digitized, digitized and platformized environment. This guide is a great first step for those who want to approach the subject.

Content prepared by Miren Gutiérrez, PhD and researcher at the University of Deusto, expert in data activism, data justice, data literacy and gender disinformation. The contents and views reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author.

The regulatory approach in the European Union has taken a major turn since the first regulation on the reuse of public sector information was promoted in 2003. Specifically, as a consequence of the European Data Strategy approved in 2020, the regulatory approach is being expanded from at least two points of view:   

• on the one hand, governance models are being promoted that take into account the need to integrate, from the design and by default, respect for other legally relevant rights and interests, such as the protection of personal data, intellectual property or commercial secrecy, as has happened in particular through the Data Governance Regulation;   

• on the other hand, extending the subjective scope of the rules to go beyond the public sector, so that obligations specifically aimed at private entities are also beginning to be contemplated, as shown by the approval in November 2023 of the Regulation on harmonized rules for fair access to and use of data (known as the Data Act). 

In this new approach, data spaces take on a singular role, both in terms of the importance of the sectors they deal with (health, mobility, environment, energy...) and, above all, because of the important role they are called upon to play in facilitating the availability of large amounts of data, specifically in overcoming the technical and legal obstacles that hinder their sharing. In this regard, in Spain we already have a legal provision in this regard, which has materialized with the creation of a specific section in the Public Sector Procurement Platform.  

The Strategy itself envisages the creation of "a common European data space for public administrations, in order to improve transparency and accountability of public spending and the quality of spending, fight corruption at both national and EU level, and address compliance needs, as well as support the effective implementation of EU legislation and encourage innovative applications". At the same time, however, it is recognized that "data concerning public procurement are disseminated through various systems in the Member States, are available in different formats and are not user-friendly", concluding the need, in many cases, to "improve the quality of the data". 

Why a data space in the field of public procurement?  

Within the activity carried out by public entities, public procurement stands out, whose relevance in the economy of the EU as a whole reaches almost 14% of GDP, so it is a strategic pole to boost a more innovative, competitive and efficient economy. However, as expressly recognized in the Commission's Communication Public Procurement: A Data Space to improve public spending, boost data-driven policy making and improve access to tenders for SMEs published in March 2023, although there is a large amount of data on public procurement, however "at the moment its usefulness for taxpayers, public decision-makers and public purchasers is scarce".  

The regulation on public procurement approved in 2014 incorporated a strong commitment to the use of electronic media in the dissemination of information related to the call for tenders and the awarding of procedures, although this regulation suffers from some important limitations: 

• refers only to contracts that exceed certain minimum thresholds set at European level, which limits the measure to 20% of public procurement in the EU, so that it is up to the States themselves to promote their own transparency measures for the rest of the cases;  

• does not affect the contractual execution phase, so that it does not apply to such relevant issues as the price finally paid, the execution periods actually consumed or, among other issues, possible breaches by the contractor and, if applicable, the measures adopted by the public entities in this respect;  

• although it refers to the use of electronic media when complying with the obligation of transparency, it does not, however, contemplate the need for it to be articulated on the basis of open formats that allow the automated reuse of the information. 

Certainly, since the adoption of the 2014 regulation, significant progress has been made in facilitating the standardization of the data collection process, notably by imposing the use of electronic forms for the above-mentioned thresholds as of October 25, 2023. However, a more ambitious approach was needed to "fully leverage the power of procurement data". To this end, this new initiative envisages not only measures aimed at decisively increasing the quantity and quality of data available, but also the creation of an EU-wide platform to address the current dispersion, as well as the combination with a set of tools based on advanced technologies, notably artificial intelligence. 

The advantages of this approach are obvious from several points of view:   

• on the one hand, it could provide public entities with more accurate information for planning and decision-making;   

• on the other hand, it would also facilitate the control and supervision functions of the competent authorities and society in general;   

• and, above all, it would give a decisive boost to the effective access of companies and, in particular, of SMEs to information on current or future procedures in which they could compete. 

What are the main challenges to be faced from a legal point of view?  

The Communication on the European Public Procurement Data Space is an important initiative of great interest in that it outlines the way forward, setting out the potential benefits of its implementation, emphasizing the possibilities offered by such an ambitious approach and identifying the main conditions that would make it feasible. All this is based on the analysis of relevant use cases, the identification of the key players in this process and the establishment of a precise timetable with a time horizon up to 2025.  

The promotion of a specific European data space in the field of public procurement is undoubtedly an initiative that could potentially have an enormous impact both on the contractual activity of public entities and also on companies and, in general, on society as a whole. But for this to be possible, major challenges would also have to be addressed from a legal perspective: 

Firstly, there are currently no plans to extend the publication obligation to contracts below the thresholds set at European level, which would mean that most tenders would remain outside the scope of the area. This limitation poses an additional consequence, as it means leaving it up to the Member States to establish additional active publication obligations on the basis of which to collect and, if necessary, integrate the data, which could pose a major difficulty in ensuring the integration of multiple and heterogeneous data sources, particularly from the perspective of interoperability. In this respect, the Commission intends to create a harmonized set of data which, if they were to be mandatory for all public entities at European level, would not only allow data to be collected by electronic means, but also to be translated into a common language that facilitates their automated processing. 

Secondly, although the Communication urges States to "endeavor to collect data at both the pre-award and post-award stages", it nevertheless makes contract completion notices voluntary. If they were mandatory, it would be possible to "achieve a much more detailed understanding of the entire public procurement cycle", as well as to encourage corrective action in legally questionable situations, both as regards the legal position of the companies that were not awarded the contracts and of the authorities responsible for carrying out audit functions. 

Another of the main challenges for the optimal functioning of the European data space is the reliability of the data published, since errors can often slip in when filling in the forms or, even, this task can be perceived as a routine activity that is sometimes carried out without paying due attention to its execution, as has been demonstrated by administrative practice in relation to the CPVs. Although it must be recognized that there are currently advanced tools that could help to correct this type of dysfunction, the truth is that it is essential to go beyond the mere digitization of management processes and make a firm commitment to automated processing models that are based on data and not on documents, as is still common in many areas of the public sector. Based on these premises, it would be possible to move forward decisively from the interoperability requirements referred to above and implement the analytical tools based on emerging technologies referred to in the Communication. 

The necessary adaptation of European public procurement regulations  

Given the relevance of the objectives proposed and the enormous difficulty involved in the challenges indicated above, it seems justified that such an ambitious initiative with such a significant potential impact should be articulated on the basis of a solid regulatory foundation. It is essential to go beyond recommendations, establishing clear and precise legal obligations for the Member States and, in general, for public entities, when managing and disseminating information on their contractual activity, as has been proposed, for example, in the health data space.  

In short, almost ten years after the approval of the package of directives on public procurement, perhaps the time has come to update them with a more ambitious approach that, based on the requirements and possibilities of technological innovation, will allow us to really make the most of the huge amount of data generated in this area. Moreover, why not configure public procurement data as high-value data under the regulation on open data and reuse of public sector information? 

The concept of High-Value data (High-Value datasets) was introduced by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union 4 years ago, in Directive (EU) 2019/1024. In it, they were defined as a series of datasets with a high potential to generate "benefits for society, the environment and the economy". Therefore, member states were to push for their openness for free, in machine-readable formats, via APIs, in the form of bulk download and comprehensively described by metadata. 

Initially, the directive proposed in its annex six thematic categories to be considered as high value: geospatial, earth observation and environmental, meteorological, statistical, business records and transport network data. These categories were subsequently detailed in an implementing regulation published in December 2022. In addition, to facilitate their openness, a document with guidelines on how to use DCAT-AP for publication was published in June 2023. 

New categories of data to be considered of high value  

These initial categories were always open to extension. In this sense, the European Commission has just published the report "Identification of data themes for the extensions of public sector High-Value Datasets" which includes seven new categories to be considered as high-value data  

•  Climate loss: This refers to data related to approaches and actions needed to avoid, minimize and address damages associated with climate change. Examples of datasets in this category are economic and non-economic losses from extreme weather events or slow-onset changes such as sea level rise or desertification. It also includes data related to early warning systems for natural disasters, the impact of mitigation measures, or research data on the attribution of extreme events to climate change. 

• Energy: This category includes comprehensive statistics on the production, transport, trade and final consumption of primary and secondary energy sources, both renewable and non-renewable. Examples of data sets to consider are price and consumption indicators or information on energy security.   

• Finance: This is information on the situation of private companies and public administrations, which can be used to assess business performance or economic sustainability, as well as to define spending and investment strategies. It includes datasets on company registers, financial statements, mergers and acquisitions, as well as annual financial reports.  

• Government and public administration: This theme includes data that public services and companies collect to inform and improve the governance and administration of a specific territorial unit, be it a state, a region or a municipality. It includes data relating to government (e.g. minutes of meetings), citizens (census or registration in public services) and government infrastructures. These data are then reused to inform policy development, deliver public services, optimize resources and budget allocation, and provide actionable and transparent information to citizens and businesses. 

• Health: This concept identifies data sets covering the physical and mental well-being of the population, referring to both objective and subjective aspects of people's health. It also includes key indicators on the functioning of health care systems and occupational safety. Examples include data relating to Covid-19, health equity or the list of services provided by health centers.  

• Justice and legal affairs: Identifies datasets to strengthen the responsiveness, accountability and interoperability of EU justice systems, covering areas such as the application of justice, the legal system or public security, i.e. that which ensures the protection of citizens. The data sets on justice and legal matters include documentation of national or international jurisprudence, decisions of courts and prosecutors general, as well as legal acts and their content. 

• Linguistic data: Refers to written or spoken expressions that are at the basis of artificial intelligence, natural language processing and the development of related services. The Commission provides a fairly broad definition of this category of data, all of which are grouped under the term "multimodal linguistic data". They may include repositories of text collections, corpora of spoken languages, audio resources, or video recordings.  

To make this selection, the authors of the report conducted desk research as well as consultations with public administrations, data experts and private companies through a series of workshops and surveys. In addition to this assessment, the study team mapped and analyzed the regulatory ecosystem around each category, as well as policy initiatives related to their harmonization and sharing, especially in relation to the creation of European Common Data Spaces. 

Potential for SMEs and digital platforms   

In addition to defining these categories, the study also provides a high-level estimate of the impact of the new categories on small and medium-sized companies, as well as on large digital platforms. One of the conclusions of the study is that the cost-benefit ratio of data openness is similar across all new topics, with those relating to the categories "Finance" and "Government and public administration" standing out in particular. 

Based on the publicly available datasets, an estimate was also made of the current degree of maturity of the data belonging to the new categories, according to their territorial coverage and their degree of openness (taking into account whether they were open in machine-readable formats, with adequate metadata, etc.). To maximize the overall cost-benefit ratio, the study suggests selecting a different approach for each thematic category: based on their level of maturity, it is recommended to indicate a higher or lower number of mandatory criteria for publication, thus ensuring to avoid overlaps between new topics and existing high-value data.  

You can read the full study at this link. 

Navarra has been the chosen venue to bring together, for the first time, representatives of the Data Offices of the autonomous communities around the centrality of data in public management. The meeting, promoted by the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA) and the Government of Navarra, was aimed at sharing the advances in the world of data at the regional level, as well as the assumption of commitments to lay the foundations for a digital future linked to data and its transformative power.  

Focus on the transformative power of data  

The Councilor for University, Innovation and Digital Transformation of the Government of Navarra, Juan Cruz Cigudosa García, was in charge of opening the conference, emphasizing the need to strengthen the response to social challenges and stimulate innovation and economic development through data, highlighting the unavoidable commitment to innovation through the use of disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, always under an ethical prism and respect for European values and principles. In this last line of action, the launching of an Ethics Committee for the Navarra Data Office was announced. This committee, framed in the Digital Spain Strategy and the Navarra Digital Strategy 2030, is aligned with the active policies and the national and international leadership of SEDIA, reflected in its charter of digital rights.   

Next, the Chief Data Officer of the Government of Spain, Alberto Palomo, highlighted the strategy that had been designed at European level in relation to data and its sovereign management. He also pointed out the transformative power of data, a key element in the digital transformation and in the entry of technologies such as artificial intelligence. He also reported on the recent statement published as a result of the current Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which was signed at the beginning of November during the Gaia-X Summit meeting under the name "The Trinity of Trusted Cloud, Data and AI as Gateway to EU's competitiveness". This document is a declaration that shows the commitment of the participants in this meeting to boost data spaces in Europe through strategic autonomy in the cloud, data and artificial intelligence. It agrees, among other points, to expand and improve coordination in the development of European cloud and data initiatives, advocating interoperability as a backbone element and advocating the development of Artificial Intelligence based on high quality data and with solid governance. It also highlights the need to homogenize data sources to better model relationships, optimize processes and innovate and create new business models.   

The day continued as a communication forum, in which, as an example, direct experiences of the participants could be shared, thus creating a space for reflection and dialogue. The day was structured through three thematic blocks, about the who, the how and the what for, with each block being contextualized, before the specific presentations, by SEDIA's Data Office and grounded in practice by the Government of Navarra. 

1. The first thematic block was "The data ecosystem: who". It addressed some of the strategies around data from the Generalitat de Catalunya and from the Basque Government.  

2. This was followed by presentations in a second block entitled "Governance model, ethics and culture: how". The governments of Aragon, Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Valencia and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces made presentations of their success stories in this area.  

3. In a final block entitled "Citizen service, innovation and data spaces: what for", presentations were given by Andalusia, the National Institute of Statistics, Castilla-la Mancha and the General Secretariat of Digital Administration, and Red.es, the latter presenting the services offered to the autonomous communities from the datos.gob.es platform. 

Seven key principles to drive the data economy forward  

 The meeting culminated with the presentation of seven principles to advance the joint formulation of strategies and policies related to data management and the digital future. These are:  

• Establish effective data governance by setting policies, standards and procedures for the effective management, exploitation and sharing of data, while implementing controls and evaluations to ensure compliance.  

• Perform an ethical treatment of data, assessing the lawfulness and legitimacy of all data practices, seeking to minimize any adverse impact on individuals and society. 

• Prioritize reliable administrative processing centered on data, prioritizing the transition from document to data, capable of enabling and catalyzing the use of advanced technologies and tools for descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics (BI, big data, machine learning, deep learning), generative algorithms (LLM, GPT) and process automation (RPA).  

• Deployment of sovereign data sharing as a resource whose value increases with its dissemination, establishing who can access what data and under what conditions of use, security and trust.  

• Encourage the open dissemination of information, promoting its effective reuse and publication in accordance with FAIR principles, i.e., ensuring that data is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.  

• Designing and analyzing public policies based on evidence, in order to make informed decisions that lead to effective services and public innovation.   

• Fostering data culture, promoting the creation of new profiles, positions and responsibilities related to working with data, without neglecting the training and transmission of knowledge around data. 

The success of the participation, the interventions and reflections raised show the consensus on advancing towards the achievement of a data-oriented Administration, capable of taking advantage, through the use of innovative technological means, of the potential of data, enabling the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies focused on the citizen, generating a data-oriented, sustainable, inclusive and social value-generating economy.   

The Forum has thus become a meeting point and a place to generate synergies between the different public administrations. Interoperability between the various public sector agencies and between the different levels of government in the processing and exchange of information boosts territorial cohesion and enables the effective use of available technologies in the quest to satisfy the common good.

Since 24 September last year, the Regulation (EU) 2022/868 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2022, on European Data Governance (Data Governance Regulation) has been applicable throughout the European Union. Since it is a Regulation, its provisions are directly effective without the need for transposing State legislation, as is the case with directives. However, with regard to the application of its regulation to Public Administrations, the Spanish legislator has considered it appropriate to make some amendments to the Law 37/2007, of 16 November 2007, on the re-use of public sector information. Specifically:

• A specific sanctioning regime has been incorporated within the scope of the General State Administration for cases of non-compliance with its provisions by re-users, as will be explained in detail below;
• Specific criteria have been established on the calculation of the fees that may be charged by public administrations and public sector entities that are not of an industrial or commercial nature;
• And finally, some singularities have been established in relation to the administrative procedure for requesting re-use, in particular a maximum period of two months is established for notifying the corresponding resolution -which may be extended to a maximum of thirty days due to the length or complexity of the request-, after which the request will be deemed to have been rejected.

What is the scope of this new regulation?

As is the case with the Directive (EU) 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on open data and the reuse of public sector informationthis Regulation applies to data generated in the course of the "public service remit" in order to facilitate its re-use. However, the former did not contemplate the re-use of those data protected by the concurrence of certain legal assets, such as confidentiality, trade secrets, the intellectual property or, singularly, the protection of personal data.

You can see a summary of the regulations in this infographic.

Indeed, one of the main objectives of the Regulation is to facilitate the re-use of this type of data held by administrations and other public sector entities for research, innovation and statistical purposes, by providing for enhanced safeguards for this purpose. It is therefore a matter of establishing the legal conditions that allow access to the data and their further use without affecting other rights and legal interests of third parties. Consequently, the Regulation does not establish new obligations for public bodies to allow access to and re-use of information, which remains a competence reserved for Member States. It simply incorporates a number of novel mechanisms aimed at making access to information compatible, as far as possible, with respect for the confidentiality requirements mentioned above. In fact, it is expressly warned that, in the event of a conflict with the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (GDPR), the latter shall in any case prevail (GDPR), the latter shall in any case prevail.

Apart from the regulation referring to the public sector, to which we will refer below, the Regulation incorporates specific provisions for certain types of services which, although they could also be provided by public entities in some cases, will normally be assumed by private entities. Specifically, intermediation services and the altruistic transfer of data are regulated, establishing a specific legal regime for both cases. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation will be in charge of overseeing this process in Spain

As regards, in particular, the impact of the Regulation on the public sector, its provisions do not apply to public undertakings , i.e. those in which there is a dominant influence of a public sector body, to broadcasting activities and, inter alia, to cultural and educational establishments. Nor to data which, although generated in the performance of a public service mission, are protected for reasons of public security, defence or national security.

Under what conditions can information be re-used?

In general, the conditions under which re-use is authorised must preserve the protected nature of the information. For this reason, as a general rule, access will be to data that are anonymised or, where appropriate, aggregated, modified or subject to prior processing to meet this requirement. In this respect, public bodies are authorised to charge fees which, among other criteria, are to be calculated on the basis of the costs necessary for the anonymisation of personal data or the adaptation of data subject to confidentiality.

It is also expressly foreseen that access and re-use take place in a secure environment controlled by the public body itself, be it a physical or virtual environment.  In this way, direct supervision can be carried out, which could consist not only in verifying the activity of the re-user, but also in prohibiting the results of processing operations that jeopardise the rights and interests of third parties whose integrity must be guaranteed. Precisely, the cost for the maintenance of these spaces is included among the criteria that can be taken into account when calculating the corresponding fee that can be charged by the public body.

In the case of personal data, the Regulation does not add a new legal basis to legitimise the re-use of personal data other than those already established by the general rules on re-use. Public bodies are therefore encouraged to provide assistance to re-usersin such cases to help them obtain permission from stakeholders. However, this is a support measure that can in no way place disproportionate burdens on the agencies. In this respect, the possibility to re-use pseudonymised data should be covered by some of the cases provided for in the GDPR. Furthermore, as an additional guarantee, the purpose for which the data are intended to be re-used must be compatible with the purpose for which the data were originally intended justified the processing of the data by the public body in the exercise of its main activity, and appropriate safeguards must be adopted.

A practical example of great interest concerns the re-use of health data for biomedical research purposes reuse of health data for biomedical research purposes, which the Spanish legislator which has been established by the Spanish legislator under the provisions of the latter precept. Specifically, the 17th additional provision of Organic Law 3/2018, of 5 December, on the Protection of Personal Data and the Guarantee of Digital Rightsallows the reuse of pseudonymised data in this area when certain specific guarantees are established, which could be reinforced with the use of the aforementioned secure environments in the case of the use of particularly incisive technologies, such as artificial intelligence. This is without prejudice to compliance with other obligations which must be taken into account depending on the conditions of the data processing, in particular the carrying out of impact assessments.

What instruments are foreseen to ensure effective implementation?

From an organisational perspective, States need to ensure thatinformation is easily accessible through a single point. In the case of Spain, this point is available through the platform enabled through the platform datos.gob.esplatform, although there may also be other access points for specific sectors and different territorial levels, in which case they must be linked. Re-users may contact this point in order to make enquiries and requests, which shall be forwarded to thethese will be forwarded to the competent body or entity for processing and response.

The following must also be designated and notified to the notify to the European Commission one or more specialised entities with the appropriate technical and human resources, which could be some of the existing ones, that perform the function of assisting public bodies in granting or refusing re-use. However, if foreseen by European or national regulations, these bodies could assume decision-making functions and not only mere assistance. In any case, it is foreseen that the administrations and, where appropriate, the entities of the institutional public sector, according to the ‑‑according to the terminology of article 2 of Law 27/2007‑‑who make this designation and communicate it to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformationwhich, for its part, will be responsible for the corresponding notification at European level.

Finally, as indicated at the beginning, the following have been classified as specific infringements for the scope of the General Administration of the State certain conducts of re-users which are punishable by fines ranging from 10,001 to 100,000 euros. Specifically, it concerns conduct that, either deliberately or negligently, involves a breach of the main guarantees provided for in European legislation: in particular, failure to comply with the conditions for access to data or to secure areas, re-identification or failure to report security problems.

In short, as pointed out in the European Data Strategyif the European Union wants to play a leading role in the data economy , it is essential, among other measures, to improve governance structures and increase repositories of quality data , which are often affected by significant legal obstacles. With the Data Governance Regulation an important step has been taken at the regulatory level, but it now remains to be seen whether public bodies are able to take a proactive stance to facilitate the implementation of its measures, which ultimately imply important challenges in the digital transformation of their document management.

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

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

The Canary Islands Statistics Institute (ISTAC) has added  more than 500 semantic assets and more than 2100 statistical cubes to its catalogue.

This vast amount of information represents decades of work by the ISTAC in standardisation and adaptation to leading international standards, enabling better sharing of data and metadata between national and international information producers and consumers.

The increase in datasets not only quantitatively improves the directory at datos.canarias.es and datos.gob.es, but also broadens the uses it offers due to the type of information added.

New semantic assets

Semantic resources, unlike statistical resources, do not present measurable numerical data , such as unemployment data or GDP, but provide homogeneity and reproducibility.

These assets represent a step forward in interoperability, as provided for both at national level with the National Interoperability Scheme ( Article 10, semantic assets) and at European level with the European Interoperability Framework (Article 3.4, semantic interoperability). Both documents outline the need and value of using common resources for information exchange, a maxim that is being pursued at implementing in a transversal way in the Canary Islands Government. These semantic assets are already being used in the forms of the electronic headquarters and it is expected that in the future they will be the semantic assets used by the entire Canary Islands Government.

Specifically in this data load there are 4 types of semantic assets:

• Classifications (408 loaded): Lists of codes that are used to represent the concepts associated with variables or categories that are part of standardised datasets, such as the National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE), country classifications such as M49, or gender and age classifications.
• Concept outlines (115 uploaded): Concepts are the definitions of the variables into which the data are disaggregated and which are finally represented by one or more classifications. They can be cross-sectional such as "Age", "Place of birth" and "Business activity" or specific to each statistical operation such as "Type of household chores" or "Consumer confidence index".
• Topic outlines (2 uploaded): They incorporate lists of topics that may correspond to the thematic classification of statistical operations or to the INSPIRE topic register.
• Schemes of organisations (6 uploaded): This includes outlines of entities such as organisational units, universities, maintaining agencies or data providers.

All these types of resources are part of the international SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange) standard, which is used for the exchange of statistical data and metadata. The SDMX provides a common format and structure to facilitate interoperability between different organisations producing, publishing and using statistical data.

The Canary Islands Statistics Institute (ISTAC) has added  more than 500 semantic assets and more than 2100 statistical cubes to its catalogue.

This vast amount of information represents decades of work by the ISTAC in standardisation and adaptation to leading international standards, enabling better sharing of data and metadata between national and international information producers and consumers.

The increase in datasets not only quantitatively improves the directory at datos.canarias.es and datos.gob.es, but also broadens the uses it offers due to the type of information added.

New semantic assets

Semantic resources, unlike statistical resources, do not present measurable numerical data , such as unemployment data or GDP, but provide homogeneity and reproducibility.

These assets represent a step forward in interoperability, as provided for both at national level with the National Interoperability Scheme ( Article 10, semantic assets) and at European level with the European Interoperability Framework (Article 3.4, semantic interoperability). Both documents outline the need and value of using common resources for information exchange, a maxim that is being pursued at implementing in a transversal way in the Canary Islands Government. These semantic assets are already being used in the forms of the electronic headquarters and it is expected that in the future they will be the semantic assets used by the entire Canary Islands Government.

Specifically in this data load there are 4 types of semantic assets:

• Classifications (408 loaded): Lists of codes that are used to represent the concepts associated with variables or categories that are part of standardised datasets, such as the National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE), country classifications such as M49, or gender and age classifications.
• Concept outlines (115 uploaded): Concepts are the definitions of the variables into which the data are disaggregated and which are finally represented by one or more classifications. They can be cross-sectional such as "Age", "Place of birth" and "Business activity" or specific to each statistical operation such as "Type of household chores" or "Consumer confidence index".
• Topic outlines (2 uploaded): They incorporate lists of topics that may correspond to the thematic classification of statistical operations or to the INSPIRE topic register.
• Schemes of organisations (6 uploaded): This includes outlines of entities such as organisational units, universities, maintaining agencies or data providers.

All these types of resources are part of the international SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange) standard, which is used for the exchange of statistical data and metadata. The SDMX provides a common format and structure to facilitate interoperability between different organisations producing, publishing and using statistical data.

Public administrations (PAs) have the obligation to publish their open datasets in reusable formats, as dictated by European Directive 2019/1024 which amends Law 37/2007 of November 16, regarding the reuse of public sector information. This regulation, aligned with the European Union's Data Strategy, stipulates that PAs must have their own catalogs of open data to promote the use and reuse of public information.

One of these catalogs is the Canary Islands Open Data Portal, which contains over 7,450 open, free, and reusable datasets from up to 15 organizations within the autonomous community. The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food Sovereignty (CAGPSA) of the Government of the Canary Islands is part of this list. As part of its Open Government initiative, CAGPSA has strongly promoted the opening of its data.

Through a process of analysis, refinement, and normalization of the data, CAGPSA has successfully published over 20 datasets on the portal, thus ensuring the quality of information reuse by any interested party.

Analysis, data normalization, and data opening protocol for the Government of the Canary Islands

To achieve this milestone in data management, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food Sovereignty of the Government of the Canary Islands has developed and implemented a data opening protocol, which includes tasks such as:

• Inventory creation and prioritization of data sources for publication.
• Analysis, refinement, and normalization of prioritized datasets.
• Requesting the upload of datasets to the Canary Islands Open Data Portal.
• Addressing requests related to the published datasets.
• Updating published datasets.

Data normalization has been a key factor for the Ministry, taking into account international semantic assets (including United Nations classifications and various agencies or Eurostat) and applying guidelines defined in international standards such as SDMX or those set by datos.gob.es, to ensure the quality of the published data.

CAGPSA has not only put efforts into data normalization and publication but has also provided support to the ministry's personnel in the management and maintenance of the data, offering training and awareness sessions. Furthermore, they have created a manual for data reuse, outlining guidelines based on European and national directives regarding open data and the reuse of public sector information. This manual helps address concerns of the ministry's staff regarding the publication of personal or commercial data.

As a result of this work, the Ministry has actively collaborated with the Canary Islands Open Data Portal in publishing datasets and defining the data opening protocol established for the entire Government of the Canary Islands.

Commitment to Quality and Information Reuse

CAGPSA has been particularly recognized for the publication of the Agricultural Transformation Societies (SAT) dataset, which ranked among the top 3 datasets by the Multisectorial Information Association (ASEDIE) in 2021. This initiative has been praised by the association on multiple occasions for its focus on data quality and management.

Their efforts in data normalization, support to the ministry's staff, collaboration with the open data portal, and the extensive array of datasets, position CAGPSA as a reference in this field within the Canary Islands autonomous community.

At datos.gob.es, we applaud these kinds of examples and highlight the good practices in data opening by public administrations. The initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food Sovereignty of the Government of the Canary Islands is a significant step that brings us closer to the advantages that open data and its reuse offer to the citizens. The Ministry's commitment to data openness contributes to the European and national goal of achieving a data-driven administration.