Role and challenges of open data standards

Although there are increasingly more available data nowadays, it is still very difficult to work with these data due, among other reasons, to the fact that they are generally published in different formats, following different data models that hinder their re-use and merge.

According to the principle 4.a of the International Open Data Charter, it is necessary to “Implement consistent, open standards related to data formats, interoperability, structure, and common identifiers when collecting and publishing data”.

A standardized data format is simply a set of guidelines that define how data should be collected and archived in a way that facilitates their comparison and interoperability among different datasets. Here are some examples of the standardized data formats that are currently available and support open data initiatives:

• The Web Map Service (WMS), to define distributed geospatial data or the Geographic Markup Language (GML) and the Keyhole Markup Language (KML) for the map description and record.
• The Statistics Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) for macroeconomic statistics.
• The Universal Business Language (UBL) or the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to exchange financing and business information.
• The Core Business and Public Organisation Vocabularies as simplified, reusable and extensible data model that represents the main characteristics of a legal or public entity.
• The specification family of LegalXML to represent parliamentary, legal and judicial documents.
• The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) for public transport data.
• Health Level Seven (HL7) is the standard for the clinic and health data at the administrative level.
• The Election Markup Language (ELM) as data standard for voting information sharing.

Nevertheless, the amount of standards is still quite small compared to the volume and variety of data that we should standardize. What should we do? Again, according to Principle 4.d of Open Data Charter, we should "Engage with domestic and international standards bodies and other standard setting initiatives to encourage increased interoperability between existing international standards, support the creation of common, global data standards where they do not already exist, and ensure that any new data standards we create are, to the greatest extent possible, interoperable with existing standards”.

Thus, more and more initiatives are emerging with the aim of promoting new standards that facilitate open data and satisfy the needs of all potential users inside and outside governments. For example:

• The Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) facilitates the sharing of data and documents corresponding to all stages of the public procurement process through the definition of a common data model. The standard was created to improve transparency in public procurement - which moves more than $ 10 trillion every year worldwide - and to facilitate the analysis and re-use of such data by as many people as possible.
• Open Ownership is the new project carried out by a number of leading organizations in the field of transparency to create a Global Beneficial Ownership Registry that will become a tool for governments to fight against corruption, fraud, organized crime and tax evasion. This record is being built on the basis of a new standard designed to support it.

Fortunately, a number of groups, such as the 3WC Web Data activity, the Interoperability Solution program of the European Commission, or the Joined-Up Data Standards alliance, continue working on the existing needs of open data standardization and developing new standards to provide a solution to them.