Sector público

Spain is the second country with the highest life expectancy in the world, only behind Japan. Spaniards live 83 years on average. This positive data is stained by a negative one: the low birth rate, which is leading us towards a population aging. This situation means that we need a more efficient health system to continue providing quality health services to citizens.

As in other sectors, the improvement of efficiency goes through the necessary digital transformation, in which data in general - and open data in particular - have a leading role. Open data can help us better understand the situation of patients and, together with technologies such as big data or artificial intelligence systems, facilitate early detection of diseases. In short, they can help improve both the management and the provision of services.

But in an area where patient privacy is essential, we have a series of doubts: What types of data can be opened? What does the legislation say about it?

The report "Open data and health: technological context, stakeholders and legal framework", prepared by Julián Valero, tries to shed some light on this situation. For this, the following objectives are set:

1. Knowing the conditions, limitations and restrictions imposed by current legal regulations.
2. Posing how the guarantees offered by the Law should be adapted to a new reality based on technological innovation.

The report begins by showing the current situation of the Spanish health system, gathering the challenges to be faced, but also the opportunities that come hand in hand with new technological trends, such as Internet of Things or the aforementioned Artificial Intelligence.

Once the context has been explained, the report focuses on the different stakeholders involved in the provision of health services, both public and private, and the main laws and regulations that affect each group. The novelties of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its impact on the opening of health data are also addressed.

The report ends with a series of conclusions and recommendations to promote public policies in the field of health that drive improvements in the provision of health services.

You can download the full report below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first phase of the Aporta Challenge 2017: The value of data for the Administration has come to an end. The competition "How to reuse open data to improve efficiency in public administration", promoted by the State Secretariat for the Information Society and Digital Agenda, the Public Body Red.es and the General Secretariat for Digital Administration, received a total of 45 ideas from working groups in the academic and business sectors as well as individuals. Ten of these have been selected and move on to the second stage. The jury, which evaluated the ideas presented taking into account their relevance, quality and usefulness, stressed the high quality of all the proposals received.

The ten proposals selected as finalists in this first phase are the following:

• QME -Aporta: NL guidance in datos.gob.es consultations
  Search engine based on natural language guidance that seeks to facilitate the discovery of the data provided by the public administrations and reuse thereof between them.
• Licitalio: Your tool for comparison of public contracts
  A web tool which, using datamining and clustering techniques, aims to improve access to public sector contracts in order to facilitate selection or and reuse of the best bids according to the needs of the administration concerned.
• Informal analysis of licenses
  Mechanism to characterize licenses, using natural language processing techniques, aiming to detect swiftly what administration resources are duly licensed for reuse and which of them have conditions of use needing to be readjusted.
• Anfitrión (Host)
  Client server system intended to act as an interpreter for the transformation of sets of data in different formats to JSON, easily reusable by businesses and other administrations.
• Light
  Mobile application that, by introducing gamification mechanisms, proposes to encourage people to contribute together with the administrations to enable a more sustainable environment, by rewarding habits and actions such as using the public transport service.
• PLAN Platform
  Project aimed at publication of announcements prior to the launch of national tenders to which all economic agents could subscribe, encouraging competition and transparency.
• Analysis of content for public communication
  Initiative to streamline the response of administrations to the general public by means of analysis of the channels of communication citizens-city council, and identification or the interest prior to the request for information.
• Open News
  System designed to recommend open public datasets related to content generated by digital means, in order to encourage active citizen participation and transparency in public administrations.
• Funding Analytics For Innovation Projects
  Proposed development of an analytical web tool based on open data R&D+i projects aimed at analyzing and visualizing subsidies granted and detecting trends in research that help public administrations to evaluate and create new business lines for companies.
• My turn
  Mobile application that, while showing the number of people waiting their turn at the offices associated with a service offered by the administration, would analyze and manage waiting times for the public and therefore improve the administration’s efficiency.

Now the second phase of the Aporta Challenge is beginning, in which those responsible for the winning ideas have a period of two and half months to develop their prototypes, which they will present to the jurors next October 23.

Prizes of 3,000, 2,000 and 1,000 euros will be presented to the top three prototypes, which will be announced during the Aporta 2017 Meeting on 24 October.

We encourage the open data community to attend this meeting (attendance free) which this year reaches its seventh edition.

The recent entry into force of Law 9/2017, of November 8, on Public Sector Contracts last March, has introduced a novelty of great relevance in the Spanish legal system regarding to the reuse of Public sector information. In effect, the aforementioned legal regulation has consolidated the role of the contractor's profile on the Internet as an essential instrument to facilitate access to information regarding the contractual activity of public authorities. Apart from other provisions aimed at reinforcing the content of publications and the accessibility of the information collected there, article 63 of the aforementioned Law requires that all information included in the contractor profile be published "in open and reusable formats". In addition, this content must necessarily be spread through the Public Sector Contracting Platform in the terms of article 347 - the management of this electronic instrument correspond to the General State Administration-.

This is a new advance in the process of transformation of the contractual management carried out by public authorities to be aligned with Open Government parameters. This approach has already started with Law 19/2013, of December 9, on transparency, access to public information and good governance, whose Article 8 requires the dissemination of "all contracts, indicating the purpose, duration, amount of the bidding and the awarding, the procedure used for its conclusion, the instruments to publicize it - if it takes place-, the number of bidders participating in the procedure and the identity of the successful bidder, as well as the amendments to the contract ", in addition to “the decisions of withdrawal and waiver of contracts”. However, this publication refers to a later phase of the contractual process, in such a way that, ultimately, its objective is the accountability related to their decisions and the circumstances in which it takes place.

As is well known, the reform in the area of ​​eGovernment in 2015, was an important step forward, since the use of electronic means in management can ultimately be a boost for increasing the efficiency of public information availability in accordance with the standards that facilitate its reuse.

In this regard, from October 2nd, 2016, all administrative acts must be recorded electronically, unless, by its nature, another more appropriate form could be required, which will undoubtedly be exceptional. This requirement is established not only for functions, but also for any document issued by the Public Administrations, which must also incorporate the minimum required metadata. In this sense, the necessary respect for the National Interoperability Framework already allowed us to affirm that, based on a systematic interpretation of all the aforementioned standards, the document management of Public Administrations should not only be carried out electronically, but also, in accordance with standards that allow the reuse of information.

What, then, is the scope of the new regulation on public procurement in this matter? On the one hand, it has been firmly established -and without, therefore, any interpretation required- that the dissemination of the information to be published in the contractor's profile must necessarily be in open and reusable formats. Consequently, this represents an advance with respect to 2 previous laws:

• The legislation on transparency, which only considers it as a mere preference.
• The legislation on the reuse of public sector information, which simply requires public authorities to ensure access to documents so that they can be reused.

On the other hand, the object of publication in the new contract legislation does not refer only to finalized procedures, as is the case of transparency regulation, but also to those that are being processed at that time or will be initiated in the future. It is, therefore, a measure that aims:

• Promote effective competition in the selection process of companies that aspire to be selected, so the obligation of dissemination in accordance with these requirements becomes an inexcusable obligation.
• Facilitate the audit and, in general, the control of the contracts carried out by the public sector, which undoubtedly is decisively promoted in the contractual field with initiatives and projects based on open and reusable data.

In short, after the presentation of the main novelties of the new legislation on public procurement, a question remains to be answered, what would undoubtedly be the main issue to be raised from the point of view of its practical application: What would happen if a call for bids was published in the contractor's profile without complying with the legal requirements regarding open and reusable data?

Certainly, it could not be said that the legal requirement specifically contemplated in the legislation on public procurement has been ignored (Article 39.1.c of the Law on Public Sector Contracts), since there has been publicized. However, we could find a violation of the general regulation on common administrative procedure (Article 48.2 of Law 39/2015), because the announcement of bidding would lack the essential formal requirements to achieve its purpose; even if there are undeniable publicizing through the legally required instrument, that is, the profile of the contracting party.

In any case, we will have to wait to know the courts’ interpretation of contractual remedies on the scope of the new legal regulation.

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

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

The public sector is not only a large supplier of open data but also one of the largest users and beneficiaries of the opening of government data. The report ‘The value of open data for the Government’ that we published on Datos.gob.es outlines a large number of examples of how the government could see benefits in various areas and rely on the data for feedback and to reflect, cooperate, understand, optimise, and learn.

The creation of an open database in Japan to improve support for victims of the devastating earthquake in 2011, the early warning system to detect trends in diseases or epidemics launched by the Korean government, the portal for the quality of teaching in public schools in Brazil that drew on data from the Ministry of Education, the buildings in France in order to optimise supply, and the large global database of companies presented by Open Corporates are excellent examples of how to make public administration more agile and efficient by making good use of data.

The report highlights how the use of open data improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the government itself through better planning of available resources, collaboration between different departmental areas, scrutiny of the correct use of resources, improvements in the interoperability of data and processes, as well as the adoption of standards that facilitate the sharing and storage of data.

It also emphasises that the use of such open data drives public innovation by contributing to the identification of patterns that help decision-making, to more active development and implementation of public policies, and the improvement of data quality thanks to public feedback.

The document compiles concrete examples, such as the improvement in the management of public health services in Malawi due to the study of the in the various districts, the reduction in levels of infant mortality in Mexico due to the greater availability of information, and the significant improvement in quality seen in the database of addresses in Denmark due to the openness of the information.

Another advantage and benefit of open data for the government itself, as detailed in this report, is the promotion of transparency and innovation.  ‘Monitoring of government's decisions and actions can be better performed, facilitating understanding of public policies and helping citizens to rebuild trust in their governments,’ notes the report.

Examples of the potential of open data in government include the Philippines’ open and participatory budgeting, the scrutiny of contracts in Slovakia due to their publication online, the project to publish all the information regarding public spending by local governments in Austria, and the transparency portal in Brazil.

The attached Report can be downloaded in PDF, Word, and ODT format.

Annually the Multisectorial Information Association (ASEDIE) publishes a report analyzing in detail the national infomediary market. This fifth edition evaluates 636 Spanish companies whose activity is based on the re-use of public and/or private information to develop value-added products for third parties or citizens in general in the following sub-sectors: culture, directory services, economic and financial, publishing, market research, geographic information, meteorological, or tourism. The list has grown this year adding two new sectors: Infomediation technology and technical consulting.

According to the data provided in this last study, as in previous years most of the infomediary companies are located in Madrid (38%) and Catalonia (19%) In addition, the geographic information (24%), market research (23%), and the economic and financial (22%) industries are the most representative areas.

Regarding the total revenues for the year 2015, they increased to €1,705 billion; which means an average turnover of 2.68 million euros per company. An increase in 2015 close to 2% in comparison with the previous year.

In relation to the jobs created, according to the ASEDIE report, the infomediary sector employed 19,362 workers in 2015, a positive variation of 4.3% compared to the previous edition; with the largest growth was recorded in the economic and financial sector, with 219 employees more than in 2014, a similar number to the geographic information industry, with new 215 more employees.

Finally, at the closing of 2016 the total subscribed capital was 366 million euros, 20.7% lower than the previous year, after three consecutive years of growth.

Through this report, ASEDIE provides a detailed view of a growing sector at national level, which, thanks to its horizontal nature, is especially relevant in improving business management and the impact of the opportunities generated, both economically as politically and socially.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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