Strategy to open Europe's data

Eurostat Dissemination Working Group

Luxembourg 25.10.2012

Szymon Lewandowski

Legal/Policy officer - "Data Value Chain" Unit

European Commission, DG CONNECT

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EUROPEAN COMMISSION

The Communication Networks, Content & Technology Directorate General

Directorate Media and Data

G1: Converging Media and Content G2: Creativity

G3: Data Value Chain

G4: Inclusion, Skills and Youth G5: Administration and Finance

As from July 1st 2012 2

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Open (public data): why does it matter for Europe?

1. 1. Untapped business and economic opportunities: data is the new gold; possible direct and indirect gains of €140bln across the EU27

2. 2. Better governance and citizen empowerment: open data increases transparency, citizen participation and administrative efficiency and accountability

3. 3. Addressing societal challenges: data can enhance sustainability of health care systems; essential for tackling environmental challenges

4. 4. Accelerating scientific progress: e-science essential for meeting the challenges of the 21st century in scientific discovery and learning.

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Commission Open Data Policy in EU context

A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth

A vision to achieve high levels of employment, a low carbon economy, productivity and social cohesion, to be implemented through concrete actions at EU and national levels.

One of the seven flagship initiatives of Europe 2020, set out to define the key enabling role that the use of ICTs will have to play if Europe wants to succeed in its ambitions for 2020. The overall aim […] is to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market […]

Action 3: Open up public data resources for re-use

"The Commission is invited to make rapid progress in key areas of the digital economy to ensure the creation of the Digital Single Market by 2015, including […] the availability of public sector Information."

Conclusions of the European Council (4 February 2011)

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Open Data Strategy: 3 complementary strands

i. Communication on Open Data

ii. Revision of the Public Sector Information (PSI)

Directive & update of Commission decision on re-use of

its own information

iii. Financing and support measures: support from FP7,

Connecting Europe Facility and Horizon 2020 (2014-

2020)

Virtuous cycle of data

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Main elements of the data cycle (1) Creation of "data value chain friendly" policy environment: - Fostering of (Open) Data policy

- Adoption of the revised Directive on the re-use of Public

Sector Information (PSI) and the Commission decision on re-use of its own information

- Implementation of PSI policy across Europe by ensuring compliance and the development of soft law instruments (e.g. guidelines on licensing and charging)

- Stakeholder involvement and engagement

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Revision of the Commission re-use decision

Since 2006 public Commission information is open,

free and re-usable without constraints

Since 2011:

+ Inclusion of the research data produced by the JRC under

the re-use regime

+ Measures to improve the implementation of the Decision

+ A provision on the move towards machine-readable

formats

The Commission invites other EU institutions to

adopt a similar re-use policy

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PSI Directive: current rules & current problems

A minimal set of rules on fair competition, transparency

and practical requirements but no right to re-use public

data Lack of information about available data, about

terms of re-use, complicated licensing procedures; data

available in formats hindering re-use

A very permissive charging ceiling instances of

prohibitive charging

Since 2003 much improvement but "PSI culture" still in the

making

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Revision of the Directive – main proposed changes

Creation of a genuine right to re-use public data: all public data not

specifically excluded from re-use is to be re-usable

Charging rules are amended:

• Tariff ceiling lowered to marginal costs

• In exceptional cases possibility to recover costs and claim a reasonable

return on investment if duly justified

• Burden of proving compliance with charging rules shifts to public bodies

Independent supervision (at MS level) of application of the rules is

required

Limited extension of scope application of the minimal set of rules

of the 2003 Directive with additional safeguards

How to re-use government data?

• Combination of different types of data (e.g. geo, traffic and tourism)

• EU-wide applications and services

•Capitalise on the size of the internal market

• Apps

• Systems that facilitate decision making by companies

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Main elements of the data cycle (2) Multilingual (Open) Data infrastructure - Development of European Digital Service Infrastructure and

fostering new services in relation to

- Open Data portals at local, regional and national and European level

- "Multilingual access to online services"

- Leading by best practice examples …

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… the European data portals

• European Commission data portal (2012)

• Pan-European open data portal (2013)

• Multilingual access point to data from across the EU, to be funded through CEF (Connecting Facility for Europe)

• Benefits

• Scale

• Interoperability of datasets

• Easy to find across languages

• Similar basic use conditions

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https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/open-data/

https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/open-data

2012-2020: EU wide Open Data Infrastructures

CEF: Access to digital resources

of European Heritage “Europeana”

Sustainable model for financing the EU public digital

library Europeana

2013:prototype of a pan-European Open Data Portal

2014-2020: progressive

implementation of the CEF Open Data

Infrastructure

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Financing and support measures for open data infrastructures

• Hackatons and competitions to foster setting up of data portals and applications: prizes, FP7 and CIP funding

• Pan-European data portal: single access point to datasets from across the EU, expected launch 2013 (building upon FP7 funded R&D work)

• Support for inception phase (2012-2013): CIP calls

• Progressive implementation of Open Data Infrastructure (2014-2020): Connecting Europe Facility

CEF* digital service infrastructure for data

• “Core service platform”

• Distributed system

• Query and visualization tools

• Open source

• Governance model involving the data providers

• “Generic services”

• Aggregation of datasets

• Interoperability of datasets

• Interface to open data infrastructures in third countries

• Data repositories and long-term preservation services *expected total funds for ICT/Digital: €9.2 billion

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Main elements of the data cycle (3)

Supporting Research and innovation which fosters the intelligent use, management and reuse of complex and large amount of data

for - better decision making - efficiency - knowledge management - extraction of embedded intelligence and data insights. including - R&D in Multilingual data and content analytics - Innovation in Data driven intelligence and knowledge

management in data intensive sectors

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Financing and support measures of R&D enhancing new data-handling technologies:

• 2011-2013: ~ € 100 million

• one of priority areas envisaged for ICT in Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

• Support of community building and exchange

• Initiation of European Data Forum and roadmapping to foster the growth of the data economy

• Period from 2014 until 2020

• 40% budgetary increase (Commission proposal)

• Administrative simplification: simpler funding rules;

Open, light and fast schemes

• Higher integration between R&D and innovation

• "Data" will have even more importance

Outlook - Horizon 2020

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Conclusion

• ‘Big data’ has the future: OGD is part of it

• Applications and services + re-use

• Open data strategy: towards a better use of publicly funded data in Europe

• European digital service infrastructure for data will help unleashing the potential

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Thank you!

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E-mail: CNECT-G3@ec.europa.eu