Public administrations faced with the reuse of public information

Public administrations have a fundamental role in the infomediary sector, that is, in the business of data reuse. On the one hand, on the supply side, thanks to their role as publishers of open data, an original source of free information that can be used to create valuable products and services; and on the other hand, on the demand side, since administrations can also reuse this information and even be customers of the infomediaries.

This is the starting point of the new report from the National Observatory of Telecommunications and the Information Society (ONTSI), entitled "Public Administrations and the Reuse of Public Information". This report analyzes the weight and the way in which the administration interacts with the infomediary sector, becoming one of its main clients.

Specifically, the report determines that almost 50% of the infomediary companies have the public administrations as clients. The services most demanded by public bodies are consultancy and specific studies, data processing and the generation of visualization tools.

In order to produce the report, representatives of various bodies at all levels of administration were interviewed in depth: all the Ministries, 6 Autonomous Communities and 10 City Councils. All those interviewed agreed on the need to promote collaboration between the public and private spheres to improve the publication of information and the creation of valuable services. From the point of view of reuse, these collaborations boost economic activity and have an impact on three areas:

• Impact on users: They have a greater knowledge of public activity, improve their perception of administrations and can benefit from more personalized and higher quality services. In addition, they can take advantage of public information to create new businesses.
• Internal impact on the administrations themselves: The benefits are multiple, from the improvement of management and administrative processes, to cost savings or boosting the skills of public workers.
• Political impact: Greater knowledge of the environment allows for more informed decisions, in accordance with the reality and needs of citizens.

In this sense, the report contains a series of examples of good practices, which clearly show this impact, and which are included in the infographic below.

The report also includes an analysis of the challenges to be overcome by the administrations and a series of recommendations to obtain greater value and promote such public-private partnerships.

You can download the full report at the end of the article. Accompanying this report, the ONTSI has also published the study "From the Infomediary Sector to the Daya Economy. Characterization of the Infomediate Sector. Edition 2020", focused on the evolution of the market and business models based on data and information.