Description
Public bodies, academic institutions and even private sector companies store great amounts of open data; sometimes these data follow different standards which fragment, slow down and hinder the impact of this resource. In order to make open data most effective and, therefore, useful they should be presented in structured and standardized formats to support interoperability, traceability and effective re-use. This is the premise that the fourth principle of the Open Data Charter claims, in which there is an acknowledged need for a common language to make open data become a force for change and socioeconomic growth.
To achieve this global goal, it is vital that all stakeholders of open data community work together at all levels -international, national and local- in order to first evangelize about how important harmonized standards are and, consequently, create standards that remove barriers among different datasets. In fact, during last International Open Data Conference, hold in Canada, a facilitated workshop demonstrated the importance of standards, inviting participants to share the gaps in this area and share their knowledge about open data standards.
Moreover, during the international meeting, the project Joined Up Data Alliance was also launched; a global association that brings together several groups in order to foster user-centred design and creation of open data standards to ensure that different data communities can work together across geographic, sectoral and administrative boundaries.
This last is the work area of Open Contracting Data Standard, whose primary objective is the creation of an standard to regulate the disclosure of open contracting information. Nowadays, it is estimated that public bodies spend amounts to over US$9.5 trillion each year through contracts worldwide. Most of those data are not accessible and, therefore, it is not possible to re-use them.
Creating a schema for open contracting data does not only guarantee that information can be compared with other data regardless their typology, but also public bodies can describe different types of contracts through simple extensions and the community has the opportunity to use this standards as the basis for building tools that analyse this information.
Despite the efforts and progress made so far on the opening up of public sector information, collecting and accessing data from different sources usually becomes a long and difficult process, lacking general guidelines that facilitate access to open data in a suitable standard format for treatment in several uses and applications. For this reason, the work of organizations such as Open Data Standard Contracting or the group of SEMIC (Semantic Interoperability Community ), which works on improving the semantic interoperability of eGovernment systems in Europe, stimulates the joining of synergies and the building of a common language for global open data.
Those open data stakeholders who want to collaborate with SEMIT in its standardization process, can join this community through the website and help erase semantic obstacles in the provision of cross-border and cross-sector digital public services.