Balance of the Aporta initiative in 2023

We are in the last days of the year, those hours that we all take advantage of to mentally review what the previous 12 months have given us. At the Aporta Initiative we are no exception and we want to take advantage of the fact that we are just over 72 hours away from eating our grapes to take stock of what we have done and what is yet to come. 

2023 has been a great year for the entire community of data publishers and users. Artificial intelligence has been in the news on multiple occasions, gaining greater prominence not only at the business level: more and more citizens are beginning to understand the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. In this context, the quantity and quality of available data has become a pressing need, as a driver of increasingly intelligent applications that help us to make progress as a society. 

In this sense, Spain continues to do its homework and reap good results in international balances. In the last month we have known the results of two indexes that place Spain at the top of the openness and reuse of public information: the European Data Portal considers that Spain ranks fourth in terms of open data in the European Union, while the OECD ranks it fifth worldwide. To these must be added the Report on the State of the Digital Decade, whose scope is broader as it includes many other factors that influence digital transformation, and which also places Spain ahead of the average in digital infrastructures and capabilities. 

datos.gob.es consolidates its position as the meeting point for Spain's open data community   

1.700.000. That is the number of visits that datos.gob.es has received during the last year. A 21% more than in the same period of 2022. A figure that highlights the growing interest in open data in our country. This increase has also been reflected in social networks. The Twitter profile of the Aporta Initiative has consolidated its position as a channel for keeping up to date with news and trends related to data-driven innovation, attracting new users who have reported a growth of 6%, to close to 21,000 followers. Meanwhile, the growth of the community of data professionals around datos.gob.es has been reflected on LinkedIn, attracting 51% more users and reaching a total of 9,000. 

This growth is marked by the incessant activity in favor of data sharing, openness and reuse carried out by the Aporta Initiative and reflected in the datos.gob.es platform:  

•  The number of datasets in the National Data Catalog, hosted at datos.gob.es, has grown by 19%. As of today, users have at their disposal more than 76,000 datasets published by various organizations at national, regional and autonomous community level. Specifically, 77 new publishing organizations have been added. In addition, the datasets already published have been enriched, increasing by 85,000 the available distributions (i.e., the files in various formats in which the data are presented). To ensure its quality, the data.gob.es advisory team has handled more than 600 queries from 140 public institutions. In addition, audits have been carried out, as well as new surveys to promote the opening of new valuable data.   

• The platform has also continued to publish content prepared by various data experts, including aspects related to trends, regulation, success stories, best practices and technical specifications, among others. Specifically, more than 100 articles have been published, 40 examples of solutions and business models based on data (currently the catalog exceeds 500), as well as a multitude of new practical exercises, guides, reports and audiovisual content, such as infographics and videos. 

New data trends  

2024 looks set to be a very promising year in terms of data-related developments. In recent years we have seen great progress at the regulatory level, with various regulations that promote the opening and sharing of data. The most recent of these are the Data Governance Act (DGA), which became fully applicable in September, and the Data Act (DA), which was passed in November. This growing legal landscape means that during 2024 we face the challenge of achieving harmonized implementation to drive a European Digital Single Market.   

This year will also see a major focus on the drive to build data spaces and developments in high-value data. Regarding the latter, June is the deadline for making available to citizens the data sets considered of high value and detailed in the implementing regulation published a year ago, following a series of technical requirements that facilitate their reuse. In addition, the European Commission is already working on a prospection to see possible categories that could be included as high-value data in the future. 

In short, we are facing an exciting year, which will bring many new developments in the field of data, in order to promote not only the data economy but also to be the driving force behind advances that will have an impact on society as a whole.