Ranking of most visited datasets in datos.gob.es

Last week we talked about the activities planning for the Open Gov Week, which takes place around the world from May 7 - 11. One of the objectives of this initiative is to promote and publicize data opening through training, awareness and education actions.

Open data allows citizens to be involved in democratic life, facilitating access to public information, but also use those data to create valuable services for society. But what data are the most interesting, according to citizen’s opinion?

During the first quarter of 2018, the datasets included in datos.gob.es portal exceeded 65,000 visits. The sets that received more visits were:

First of all we focus on the three most outstanding:

1. In the first place, we can find Unemployment register by municipalities. This data set shows a breakdown of unemployment registered by the different municipalities, segmented by sex, age group and economic activity.
2. General database of local entities ranks second. This dataset allows citizens to check public organizations, such as councils, municipalities, counties, foundations, commercial companies or non-profit institutions, among others. Through this database, citizens can found information about organizations skills and activities or funding.
3. In the third place, we can find Register of mayors, that is, a database with information about all the mayors and city councillor of Spanish municipalities. This registry includes information regarding their position and their political party.

It is not surprising that these 3 datasets occupy the highest positions, as they are aligned with the main concerns of Spanish citizens. According to the latest CIS study (Center for Sociological Research), corresponding to the month of March 2018, the main concern for 65.9% of citizens is unemployment, followed by corruption (34.5%) and politicians (26.0%).

Given that these datasets have a high updating frequency and they can be segmented by different variables, they are a good option to help users to elaborate their own value judgments about these issues. In addition, to make access to this information even easier, different organizations, companies or citizens have used these datasets - and others related - to create simple and intuitive applications and visualization tools, such as Unemployment map, Where do my taxes go? o Local government budgets.

In addition to these datasets, top 10 is complemented by a series of datasets that we could divide into two categories:

• Those datasets that solve everyday citizens' doubts, such as the CNMC Mobile Numbering Query Service, which allows knowing the current operator of a specific mobile number, ONCE kiosks, which indicate the location of the different spaces for ticket sale, or the Price of fuel in Spanish gas stations.
• Those datasets that respond to the needs of specific professional groups. These datasets are the most common to be reused to generate professional applications. This is the case of the Geographic Information System of Agricultural Parcels of Castilla-La Mancha (SIGPAC), used to create applications to analyze how an agricultural operation evolves. We can also include in this category CartoCiudad - very useful for transport sector - or the Official Bulletin of the Mercantile Registry (BORME), where legal acts that affect the companies are published.

All these datasets are updated periodically, thanks to the involvement of the different agencies in charge of their publication, which ensure their quality.

In summary, the top 10 datasets include very diverse topics although it could be said that the sectors of activity most interested for the reusers are economy and politics, followed by activities such as agriculture, fishing or transport. All these datasets seek to help citizens to know their environment better, so that they can make decisions and act accordingly.