Open Government Week 2022: towards greater transparency and good governance

The Open Government Week, organised by the Open Government Partnership in the framework of Open Gov Week, is taking place this year from 27 June to 1 July 2022. The aim of this initiative is to open up and bring public administrations closer to citizens, based on the Open Government principles mentioned above.In Spain, this initiative is promoted by the Directorate General for Public Governance, in collaboration with the Open Government Forum.

As usual, this year's Open Government Week will feature numerous events organised by public administrations throughout Spain. Due to health circumstances, some of these activities will still be held in a virtual or semi-presential format, along with other events that will be held exclusively in-person.

Online webinar on 29 June to learn about the Data Office and the Aporta Initiative

You can watch the presentations of the event here:

Among the types of activities that will take place during this week, we can find some of a diverse nature such as presentations of government plans and programmes, citizen consultations and participatory processes or open days, among others. Of all of them, we would like to highlight the event to be organised by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation so that citizens can learn more about the Data Office, and also find out more about the Aporta Initiative of datos.gob.es.

This event, which will be held via an online webinar on Wednesday 29 June, from 12:00 to 13:30, will consist of two parts: one dedicated to further information about the Data Office and the other aimed at disseminating the activity of the datos.gob.es portal.

Part One: Data Office

The Data Office, part of the Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, will be the protagonist of this first part of the online event. They will try to explain how they are addressing the main challenges that exist today in the data economy, defining the legal and political frameworks for data sharing and governance.

The European Union has established as one of the next priorities the promotion of the data economy, and one of the measures that our country has carried out to achieve this goal has been the creation of the Data Office. In this webinar you will be able to learn more about the functions of this body and how it can intervene to promote data sharing as a means to boost the data economy.

Specifically, the Data Office is focused on enabling data sharing through the deployment of data spaces. The data space is key to the development of the data economy, enabling its access, exchange and legitimate re-use, positioning data as a non-rivalrous resource, whose utility grows as its use becomes more widespread in a clear example of the network effect. Data spaces go beyond the bilateral exchange of information, constituting in their most advanced version authentic sharing networks where the value of data is realised.

Part Two: Aporta initiative/datos.gob.es

The second part, which will focus on the Aporta initiative, will be aimed at raising public awareness of the value of open data as a key element of open government and what actions are being taken to encourage its publication and use.

Open data is a key element in driving the data economy. Spain is at the top of the European open data maturity index. In this virtual event you will be able to discover what underlies the philosophy and practice of open data, and what services are offered from the datos.gob.es platform as a one-stop space for reusable data offered by the public sector, among other aspects.

You can follow the event through this link.

Other events of interest of the Open Government Week 2022

Although you can consult the full calendar of events that will take place during Open Government Week at this link, below is a small selection of events related to topics such as open data, transparency, open government and citizen science, among others.

• 30 June. "Reuse of public sector information beyond open data" (online), University of Valencia, PAGODA: this seminar will analyse, among other issues, how the dynamics of traditional Open Data environments raise questions about the purpose of data use, attribution and traceability of such uses.

• 27 June. Open Government for All (semi-presential), State Secretariat for Public Administration, Madrid: this event will address the project on Collaboration for Inclusive Communication in Open Government, the result of the agreement signed between the Third Sector Platform and the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration.

• 29 June. “Presentation of the Open Government Digital Portal of the Fuenlabrada City Council” (in-person), Auditorium of the CIFE - Avda. de las Provincias, 33, Fuenlabrada: description of the new sections of the portal: transparency, open data, participation, economic and infrastructure viewers, etc. Thanks to them, the city council will be able to be accountable more accurately to citizens and they will be able to access administrative information of municipal relevance in an easy and understandable way.

• 29 June. "Open government, transparency and public service in the face of the demographic challenge: citizen services aimed at all Madrid city councils" (online), General Directorate of Cadastre. Regional Cadastre Office of Madrid: this informative session will provide information on the multi-channel offer available to the General Directorate of Cadastre, enabling universal access to cadastral information and the provision of face-to-face information services.

In short, initiatives such as Open Government Week allow citizens to increase their knowledge of and participation in public administrations. Remember that this is just a small selection of events, but you can consult them all on this map.