What's new in the open data ecosystem (winter 2020-2021)

The open data ecosystem has been very active over the last few months. The year 2020 has ended with two important developments. The first, the Open Data Maturity Report published by the European Data Portal, where Spain has increased its overall position by 5% and remains among the leaders in the European sector.  The second is the new National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, which includes a series of actions related to open data.

But there are many more new developments that have taken place in recent months. In this article we tell you about some examples, both at national, local and regional level.

State initiatives related to open data

In addition to the publication of the Artificial Intelligence Strategy, in recent weeks the Plan for the Digitalization of Public Administrations 2021-2025 has also been presented, which will mobilize public investment of at least 2,600 million euros over the next three years. Among its points, the plan highlights "the importance of evolving the model of access to public and private information to promote high value-added services". To this end, it will build on the work carried out by the Aporta Initiative in the field of open data.

In addition to these strategic actions, it should be noted that some state agencies have taken advantage of the winter season to launch new projects linked to open data:

• The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda has published its mobility study with Big Data that characterizes mobility at national, autonomous community, provincial and local levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data generated in the study has been made available to citizens in open data format and has been used to develop a series of indicators.
• The Ministry of Tourism has launched 'Dataestur', a platform that collects basic data on tourism in Spain and from which you can access the various sources of tourism statistics from public and private organizations.

Local open data initiatives

During these last months, several municipalities and institutions have carried out initiatives related to open data, such as:

• The open data portal of the Government of Aragon launched a new chatbot service that makes it easier for citizens to access the information available in Aragon Open Data. Thanks to this, Aragonese people can be better informed and make use of the data in a more accessible way.
• The Community of Murcia creates 'Education in Open Government', a new educational program to bring concepts such as accountability and citizen participation closer to students.
• The City Council of Santiago de Compostela has developed and built new smart surface collectors for the characterization of organic solid waste, through the use of IoT technologies and algorithms trained with open data. This action allows it to advance on its path towards becoming a smart city.
• The Government of the Canary Islands launched its new open data portal, which has more than 7,500 data. Thanks to this, this portal has managed to become the single access point with the most public information data registered in all of Spain.
• The Community of Madrid has announced a new open data strategy to promote and strengthen the transparency of the administration and promote economic development based on knowledge, information and data.
• The Ronda City Council launches "Geoportal Ronda" a new spatial open data tool through which you can now consult all the geographic and urban information of the municipality.
• The City Council of Malaga has received recognition at the IDC Awards thanks to a municipal project that values open data and its uses to improve the quality of life of citizens. Specifically, the Consistory has been third in the category of 'Economic development and citizen engagement'.
• The Vigo City Council has also been awarded in the category 'Planning and administration' thanks to the Smart City VCI+ platform, which centralizes and structures the city's data to create a scorecard that allows a more efficient local management. The platform includes an open data portal so that citizens can consult municipal data in different formats and use them in professional and private environments.

International developments

Acabamos el repaso incluyendo algunos ejemplos de proyectos internacionales ligados con la materia:

We finish the review by including some examples of international projects related to the subject:

• The European Union is driving the EO4AGRI project, which seeks to use earth observation data from the Copernicus program to digitize the agricultural sector and adapt the CAP to the new times.
• The European Commission has launched a public consultation to gather feedback on public sector interoperability initiatives in the EU. The information gathered will feed into the evaluation of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF). The deadline for participation is April 27.
• An international expedition has created a dataset that collects information on the physical and biological dynamics of the Arctic to help better understand climate change. For the time being, this data will be used exclusively until January 1, 2023, when it will be published openly.
• China has unveiled a public data platform that makes it possible to check emission levels in real time to see which factories and institutions pollute the most.
• Argentina's Ministry of Tourism and Sports has launched an open data portal using Andino, a platform on top of CKAN.

These are just a few examples that can be found in the world of open data, but there are many more. If you know of any other interesting new developments that are of interest, you can mention them in the comments or send us an email to dinamización@datos.gob.es.