The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food Sovereignty of the Government of the Canary Islands advocates for open data.

Public administrations (PAs) have the obligation to publish their open datasets in reusable formats, as dictated by European Directive 2019/1024 which amends Law 37/2007 of November 16, regarding the reuse of public sector information. This regulation, aligned with the European Union's Data Strategy, stipulates that PAs must have their own catalogs of open data to promote the use and reuse of public information.

One of these catalogs is the Canary Islands Open Data Portal, which contains over 7,450 open, free, and reusable datasets from up to 15 organizations within the autonomous community. The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food Sovereignty (CAGPSA) of the Government of the Canary Islands is part of this list. As part of its Open Government initiative, CAGPSA has strongly promoted the opening of its data.

Through a process of analysis, refinement, and normalization of the data, CAGPSA has successfully published over 20 datasets on the portal, thus ensuring the quality of information reuse by any interested party.

Analysis, data normalization, and data opening protocol for the Government of the Canary Islands

To achieve this milestone in data management, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food Sovereignty of the Government of the Canary Islands has developed and implemented a data opening protocol, which includes tasks such as:

• Inventory creation and prioritization of data sources for publication.
• Analysis, refinement, and normalization of prioritized datasets.
• Requesting the upload of datasets to the Canary Islands Open Data Portal.
• Addressing requests related to the published datasets.
• Updating published datasets.

Data normalization has been a key factor for the Ministry, taking into account international semantic assets (including United Nations classifications and various agencies or Eurostat) and applying guidelines defined in international standards such as SDMX or those set by datos.gob.es, to ensure the quality of the published data.

CAGPSA has not only put efforts into data normalization and publication but has also provided support to the ministry's personnel in the management and maintenance of the data, offering training and awareness sessions. Furthermore, they have created a manual for data reuse, outlining guidelines based on European and national directives regarding open data and the reuse of public sector information. This manual helps address concerns of the ministry's staff regarding the publication of personal or commercial data.

As a result of this work, the Ministry has actively collaborated with the Canary Islands Open Data Portal in publishing datasets and defining the data opening protocol established for the entire Government of the Canary Islands.

Commitment to Quality and Information Reuse

CAGPSA has been particularly recognized for the publication of the Agricultural Transformation Societies (SAT) dataset, which ranked among the top 3 datasets by the Multisectorial Information Association (ASEDIE) in 2021. This initiative has been praised by the association on multiple occasions for its focus on data quality and management.

Their efforts in data normalization, support to the ministry's staff, collaboration with the open data portal, and the extensive array of datasets, position CAGPSA as a reference in this field within the Canary Islands autonomous community.

At datos.gob.es, we applaud these kinds of examples and highlight the good practices in data opening by public administrations. The initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food Sovereignty of the Government of the Canary Islands is a significant step that brings us closer to the advantages that open data and its reuse offer to the citizens. The Ministry's commitment to data openness contributes to the European and national goal of achieving a data-driven administration.