Noticia
The YouTube channel of datos.gob.es (@datosgob) has been revamped with the aim of improving the user experience. Thanks to an updated design and the addition of new playlists, the channel facilitates access to content related to data and innovative technologies in a more intuitive and efficient way.
What can you find on the datos.gob.es YouTube channel?
Through various lists, the videos are grouped into thematic categories, making it easier to locate topics of interest and contributing to a more user-friendly navigation. Below, we present each of the lists that you can find on the channel:
1. Learn about data
This playlist is oriented towards educational content related to the world of data and related technologies. Here you can find videos that explain in a simple way basic concepts, current trends, technical specifications and other interesting topics. The aim of this section is to provide content accessible to all, regardless of their level of knowledge in the area of data.
For example, you will find videos with explanations on the impact of open data on society, illustrated through concrete use cases, or good practices for facing a data analytics project. You will also be able to access content related to the UNE Data Specifications, which are normative and informative resources for implementing common data governance, management and quality processes.
With this list, the aim is to provide education to the audience and increase awareness of the potential of data.
Access the "Learn about data" list
2. Get to know datos.gob.es
The second playlist, "Conoce datos.gob.es", focuses on providing specific information about the portal and its functions. Here you will find videos explaining technical, administrative or navigation aspects related to the use of the datos.gob.es platform.
With these videos, public bodies can, for example, find out how to create a user account and be able to automatically publish open datasets on the portal. On the other hand, for those who want to reuse the data, there are short videos showing how to use the API of datos.gob.es, the SPARQL point or the widget, among others.
It is a list designed for those who need practical guidance to use the portal efficiently.
Access the list "Get to know datos.gob.es
3. Interviews
The channel also includes a playlist featuring conversations in question-and-answer format with leading professionals in various data-related areas. These videos are an opportunity to listen to specialists and hear their opinions on topics such as digitisation, artificial intelligence or the use of data in different sectors.
Among the interviewees, we find representatives from the public sector, who explain their data openness strategies, the functionalities available in their open data platforms or the challenges they have faced in making various datasetsavailable to the public. Interviews with private companies with data sharing initiatives (such as Microsoft, Meta or Google) have also been published, communities of data reusers (such as R Ladies or R Hispano) or foundations and associations linked to data use and innovation (such as ASEDIE or the COTEC Foundation).
This list is aimed at those who want to learn more about publishing and using data through testimonials, experiences and examples.
4. Reports
This list presents interviews with authors of guides, reports and studies produced within the framework of the Aporta Initiative and included in the "Documentation" section of datos.gob.es. In these videos, interviewees answer specific questions related to the content of their reports, allowing viewers to understand the highlights of each document.
Available videos explain guidelines such as "Synthetic data:". What are they and what are they used for?" or "Introduction to data anonymisation: techniques and case studies", among other reports.
This approach makes it easier to understand the topics covered and allows the audience to discover which reports they can dig into to learn more about the issues they are interested in.
5. Data science exercises
On the datos.gob.es portal you can find a series of exercises that make use of the open data available on the platform itself or other similar catalogs. They address and describe the steps necessary to obtain the data, perform the relevant transformations and analysis, and draw conclusions, so that users can replicate the exercise in a simple way using free tools. All the material generated is available for reuse in the GitHub repository of datos.gob.es.
The “Data Science Exercises” playlist offers videos in which the author of each exercise exposes the contents that users will find in the exercise. These videos are designed to provide practical and straightforward guidance for performing interactive visualisations, building an expert assistant or performing predictive analytics, among others.
It is an excellent choice for users who want to learn and practice data science, applying concepts in real scenarios in an effective way.
Access the list "Data science exercises"
6. Podcasts
Another new feature is the incorporation of a playlist with clips from the podcasts produced by datos.gob.es and available on the SoundCloud platform.
These videos present selected excerpts from podcasts in which speakers talk about a variety of topics, always related to data and its impact on society. The podcasts are accompanied by related images, offering a complementary visual experience.
Thanks to these clips, users will be able to discover what high-value data is or where to locate data with a geographic component.
This is an alternative for those who want to discover highlights before listening to a full podcast.
Access the "Pódcast clip" list
7. Desafíos Aporta
The Aporta Challenges are competitions aimed at identifying and recognising new ideas and prototypes that improve efficiency in a specific sector of activity through solutions based on the use of open data.
There are four playlists linked to the Aporta Challenges, one for each edition held so far. For easy identification, each video has the logo of the corresponding edition on the cover.
These lists include guides on how to participate, interviews with participants or videos summarising the development of each competition.
Access the list "Desafíos Aporta"
8. Encuentros Aporta
Finally, the channel also has several playlists that collect the materials generated in each of the Encuentros Aporta, conferences focused on different topics of interest related to data.
Following a structure similar to that of "Desafíos Aporta", each list includes videos of different nature, such as summaries, full papers and interviews with participants from each available edition (the first two editions were not recorded). To make it easier to find, each video also carries the logo of the corresponding edition on its cover, allowing viewers to quickly identify the content of each encounter.
Access the list "Encuentros Aporta"
With these new features on the datos.gob.es YouTube channel, the portal demonstrates its commitment to improving the user experience, offering accessible and enriching content. Those interested in the world of data now have a revamped platform at their disposal, where they can learn, inform themselves and delve into key topics in a simple and orderly manner.
Documentación
By analysing data, we can discover meaningful patterns and gain insights that lead to informed decision making. But good data analysis needs to be methodical and follow a series of steps in an orderly fashion. In this video (in Spanish) we give you some tips on the steps to follow:
The importance of pre-analysis work
The first step is to be clear about the final objective. It should be concrete, clear and straightforward and identify a problem to be solved. One way to set the objective is to shape a concrete question to be answered, such as how many traffic accidents there are or how air quality will evolve.
It is also important to know the prior state of the issue. It is likely that other people and organisations have asked the same questions before. It is therefore important to find out what previous projects exist on the chosen topic. On platforms such as data.europa.eu or datos.gob.es you have sections where use cases such as applications and companies are collected. It is also advisable to examine the proposals submitted to hackathons, challenges and competitions, both national and international, as well as to closely follow the activity of companies and start-ups focused on the field of study.
To be able to cover so many fronts, it is advisable to have a multidisciplinary team with different points of view, including data scientists, engineers, business analysts, communicators, etc. Soft skills, such as critical thinking, effective communication and industry knowledge, are as important as technical skills for success.
Where to locate the data?
With the end goal clear, it will be easier to determine what data we need to answer the initial question. It is most common to combine different sources of information, public and/or private, to enrich the analysis and reach an appropriate level of depth.
In addition to the multitude of existing national data catalogues, you can also search specialised repositories in specific fields such as environment, health and welfare or economics.
The analysis process
Once the data is available, it is time to start the analysis, following the workflow below:
- Phase 1: Import and cleaning. Before the analysis, the data must be cleaned in order to achieve a homogeneous structure, free of errors and in the right format. For this purpose, it is recommended to perform an Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA). This will result in clean, error-free and homogeneous data.
- Phase 2: Export and modelling. Depending on the question to be answered, we will determine the type of analysis to be carried out: descriptive analysis (what has happened?), diagnostic (why has it happened?), predictive (what is going to happen?) or prescriptive (what should I do to make it happen again -or not?).
- Phase 3: Communicate. Once the data has been analysed, we will have obtained new knowledge, which we must communicate to our target audience in a way that is easy to understand. This can be done using data storytelling techniques, visualisations, web or mobile applications, services or commercial products, depending on the initial objectives.
In order to carry out these 3 phases, we have different tools at our disposal. You can see some examples in the report "Data processing and visualisation tools".
From datos.gob.es we encourage you to practice with the data in our catalogue and put different analyses into practice. You can share the results of your analyses with us through the e-mail box dinamizacion@datos.god.es.
Documentación
Open data publishers in the National Catalog hosted in datos.gob.es have at their disposal several internal functionalities to easily manage their datasets and everything related to them.
To bring these possibilities closer to the registered users, from datos.gob.es we have prepared a series of videos detailing the steps to follow in order to develop different actions on the platform.
It should be noted that these videos are aimed at data publishers. Soon we will also publish videos focused on the tools available for data reuse, which will be very useful for developers, companies, organizations or individuals who want to extract the maximum possible value from the datasets accessible from this platform.
Video 1: Backoffice functionalities for registered users
The first video explains the functionalities that registered users can use to interact with the platform. Specifically, it addresses the following topics:
- How to access the organization's data catalog and create, manage, locate or filter existing datasets.
- How to use the broken links feature to find out if any datasets are inaccessible.
- What interactive statistics the dashboard provides and how to download them in various formats, such as CSV or JSON.
- How to disseminate data-driven initiatives, applications or success stories through the platform.
- How to handle requests for data or comments.
- How to adjust the user profile.
Video 2: How to manually upload datasets to datos.gob.es?
The publishers of datos.gob.es can upload their datasets in two different ways:
- Manual: The user must complete for each dataset, individually, a form detailing its metadata.
- Automatic (federated): Registration and updating is done periodically from an RDF file with the metadata available through a URL on the publisher's website. This is a batch process that allows managing the upload of several sets at once.
This video focuses on the first way, including information on:
- What steps to follow to create new datasets manually.
- Which metadata are mandatory to include and which are recommended, so that users can more easily locate the information they are interested in.
- How to modify the metadata.
- How to add distributions - that is, downloadable files in a particular format or level of disaggregation - to the new dataset. It also indicates what the mandatory metadata of the distributions are and how they can be modified.
- How the organization's datasets and their distributions are removed.
Video 3: How to perform an automatic dataset upload to datos.gob.es?
This video focuses on the second way to publish datasets in datos.gob.es, through data federation sources. Thanks to the video you will learn:
- What is a federation source
- How to create, query, filter and sort the data sources of an organization.
- How to consult through a dashboard, the details of the last execution or the history of tasks of a federation source.
- How to edit and update a federation source.
- How to execute a federation manually from the dashboard.
- How to delete or clean up federation tasks already performed.
- How to view the status of the last federation.
- How to delete a data source from an organization, both keeping and deleting the previously imported datasets too.
Video 4: What is the purpose of the widget of the datos.gob.es catalog?
A Widget is a piece of code in HTML language that contains functionalities that can be embedded and executed in web pages in a simple way. Thanks to the Widget that we provide you with, you will be able to include in any website, a catalog with the reference to all the datasets that you have registered in datos.gob.es.
This video explains:
- What is the widget, showing examples of use.
- How to generate the HTML code associated with the widget
- How to embed the data catalog view in any publisher's portal.
To learn more about these and other aspects, you also have at your disposal several user guides in this link.
Documentación
In Spain there are a large number of local, regional and state data initiatives. In order to harmonise this ecosystem, datos.gob.es is a single access point, so that re-users can easily find the information they require in a single space. In addition, datos.gob.es links to the European Data Portal (EDP), which means that the Spanish initiatives included in the catalogue are more visible at an international level.
A series of simple steps must be followed to appear in the datos.gob.es catalogue. The first one is to request a user account, through this form. User accounts are reserved only for open data publishing bodies or entities; they are not necessary to access or download datasets from the catalogue. The following video (in Spanish) explains what you have to do to get your user account:
Once registered, the publishing user can register his / her datasets in two different ways:
- Manual: This involves registering each dataset individually, completing a form for each dataset where its metadata are detailed manually.
- Automatic (federated): The data registration and update are done periodically from a RDF file that include the metadata available through a url on the publisher website. It is no longer necessary to work individually with each dataset, but the process can automatically cover several datasets.
datos.gob.es also performs a comprehensive analysis to ensure that the metadata meets quality standards. Among other actions, metadata is checked for validity, broken links are analysed and distributions are checked.
The following infographic shows the process in a simple way. Click on the lateral arrows to change the slide. You can download the complete infographic at the end of the article.
If you have any questions or comments, you can contact datos.gob.es support team.
Noticia
The National Library of Spain has started, with the support of Red.es, their first massive digitization project focused on magnetic audio and video media. The institution plans to digitize more than 650,000 minutes of images and audio, including 4,800 cassettes, 859 cartridges and more than 5,000 VHS and BETA videos, which have reached the BNE through the Legal Deposit Law.
These documents represent a high value as a reflection of the cultural industry of their time. Thanks to these videos and cassettes, we can know music and audiovisual trends since the 70s (in the case of cassettes and cartridges) or 80s (in the case of videos) until 2000.
The fundamental objective of this project is preservation, due to the high risk of physical deterioration. In addition, many of these format have become obsolete because there are a little number of reader devices, not only in the market, but also in the safekeeping institutions.
Initially, all contents will not be accessible through the network, although their public availability will be consider, respecting the current legislation. Therefore, all international recommendations that guarantee not only digital preservation but also the possibility of reusing contents in the future will be followed when digitizing contents, just like other mass digitization projects started by the National Library of Spain.
The possibilities of reusing audiovisual contents
When we talk about open data and reusing, we usually think about text documents or numerical data sets, but audiovisual contests also have a high reuse potential. The reuse of images and audios is common in audiovisual industry, especially to add value to news or programs. Specifically, more than 40% of the daily information on the news programs include archival footage.
But, beyond historical and informative value, these contents can also be reused to create new products or services. For example, Vistory app combines videos from The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision with current photos. Users can see exactly where a video was recorded and, using augmented reality technology, capture exactly the same image. This creates a database that allows citizens to see how different places have changed over time.
However, not all videos and audios that are preserved can be reused, due to contractual or intellectual property rights, and their use cannot be free as long as these rights are valid according to the current legislation. As an example, the BBC has recently published its sound effects file, allowing its reuse free of charge for education and research, but not for commercial purposes.
In short, audiovisual contents with obsolete format can have a second life. For this, it is necessary to carry out a high quality digitalization according to the international recommendations of each type of material, and include digital preservation measures that guarantee the durability of the new digital format. In this way, future generations could have a greater knowledge of their past. But also, in some circumstances, we could take advantage of these materials to create new contents or products that add value to society.