About the Digital Agenda Assembly and Open Data licenses

Note: This article is a translation of what I wrote in Spanish for my personal blog. You can see the original post in Spanish: "La Asamblea de la Agenda Digital Europea y las licencias Open Data".

On June 16th I was lucky to be one of the 1300 participants in Brussels at the 1st Digital Agenda Assembly, the first high-level event organized by the European Commission about the Digital Agenda for Europe. The main objective was to evaluate the development of objectives and actions of the Europe's Digital Agenda, which as you know is one of the 7 strategic actions of the Europe 2020 strategy, aimed to put Europe on the path of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. That's nothing.

by Jose M. Alonso

I was also honoured to be a speaker at the seminar held in the plenary room: "Open data and re-use of public sector information", where I talked about Euroalert and our experience building a business powered by open data that provides information services about public procurement for European PYMEs. At Euroalert's blog you can find more information about the presentation, that was live streamed, and the pictures taken Jose M. Alonso.

The two days were pretty intense and lots of discussions took place, many as a follow-up to the May Share PSI seminar, either in person or via twitter (see hashtag #daa11psi and stats). You can find a great summary at the Open Data@CTIC blog. I'm going to focus on two important details and one announcement that I'd like to share with you.

The first one is the speech about the State of the Digital Union, as vice president Neelie Kroes called her speech at the first plenary session. I recommend you to have a look at it, because in these times of illiterate politicians when it comes to technology, this remarkable woman is an inspiration. I never imagined I would recommend here the speech of a politician. I hope she will achieve all these ambitious goals.

The second one is a tweet from Michele Barbera, quoting Federico Morando, which did not have a big impact, though it represents an important topic I've been discussing with members of the open data community and which I find extremely important for the development a pan-european market for data re-use.

Many of us believe that if the future revision of the PSI directive endorse a simple license, applicable by default to datasets released by governments, a critic roadblock would be removed, especially for companies that operate with pan-European vision. From the point of view of a company like Euroalert, that creates value from data aggregated from multiple sources and countries, a unique EU license would contribute with legal certainty to operations in the single digital market

It seems to me that the pursuit of interoperability for the growing number of data licenses is becoming a grail that threatens to appear as one of the greatest barriers to data re-use.The idea implemented in the draft of the Spanish PSI Royal Decree, which includes as an Annex a very simple license to be applicable by default, in my opinion would be ideal to be copied into the new directive. Maybe with a EU logo or seal recognizable to all operators... but I am not qualified to judge which one is the best license to be included and endorsed by the directive.

Moreover, thanks to the long networking sessions (great success) of the DAA,  I was finally able to spend some time with Chris Taggart figuring out how Euroalert and Open Corporates  can exchange data and information for the benefit of our users and the Open Data community at large. Soon we will be releasing more details of what we hope will be a small contribution to the European single market.

The truth is that I came back very happy to belong to such an active and motivated community which is luring more and more members everyday and that step by step is becoming mainstream. Too bad that in this June full of events I have missed the great OKCon2011 in Berlín. You can not be everywhere.

Road Blocks to a Pan European Market for PSI Reuse, a long summary

Note: This article is a translation with a few add-ons of what I wrote in Spanish for my personal blog. You can see the original post in Spanish: "Obstáculos para el desarrollo de un mercado pan-europeo de reutilización, un largo resumen".

Source: ePSIplatform

On Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th I participated in Brussels at the workshop "Removing Road Blocks to a Pan European Market for PSI Reuse" held by the Share PSI initiative. It was superbly organized by W3C y ETSI for the European Commission, and gathered a good number of members of the European open data community: governments, businesses and civil society organizations.

The European Commission will use the output of the SharePSI workshop at the 1st Digital Agenda Assembly event: "Beyond raw data: public sector information, done well". Ultimately the contributions, like those obtained through the public consultation on Open Data held at the end of 2010, will help to make the reform of the PSI directive richer and more effective.

In my opinion, compared to other seminars, the level of the discussion was very high in most of the sessions, though there are a few topics that are recurrent in this type of events (pricing, licensing, return of investment and privacy). Clearly, this shows that we are not being able to resolve the issues satisfactorily. In a few occasions it was also clear that not everyone is at the same level of discussion, but it is entirely normal because the open data community is growing at a rapid pace and many new people are joining the discussion.

I think the seminar was very intense and productive and this was largely due to the excellent work done by the program committee and especially by Margot Dor (ETSI) and Thomas Roessler (W3C) to create the workshop programme from the large number of position papers sent from all over Europe.

As you know I usually attend this type of events, and this time one of the things that caught my attention was, the presence of representatives of large companies in the discussion. It was rare until now that Adobe, IBM or Orange were interested in the Open Data movement. And I strongly believe that this is a good thing, because their software and their position in the IT services in governments can provide solutions that will drive the development of a more effective Open Data.

I guess that their presence has much to do with W3C and ETSI. I hope they are here to stay and contribute much to the debate and the solutions, though for now they are still far from the more advanced group. However, I also believe that it is the responsibility of those of us who have been long time in the debate, to bring them to the vision of what is the main objective of the Big Idea, Open Data, but well done.

I will also highlight the number of national government representatives that I could identify in the room (at least from Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland). And New Zealand representation in the person of Laurence Millar, who described us the situation in his country, which is enviable in many respects, such as the very active community of developers they have.

I found very interesting the discussion on the pricing of the meteorological datasets and the apparent long-running dispute which has been brought now to the open data ring by the Association of Private Meteorological Services (PRIMET). I think it's for good that this happened and that these discussions come to enrich the open data debate. There were also several new use cases like the very interesting FearSquare, presented by Andrew Garbett or the impressive Arcticweb that Erin Lynch showed us, that called my attention

On the other hand, it was a pleasure to hear entrepreneurs like François Bancilhon speaking about his work at Data Publica or like Chris Taggart on his excellent Open Corporates, which I have been following for a while. The risks that people like them are taking contribute greatly to push the boundaries of what can be done, although for sure they may have to face problems, because they are disrupting the established situation. My most sincere admiration, respect and support to go ahead.

On my side, I presented the work that Euroalert is doing to develop our 10ders Information Services platform, which aggregates data on procurement notices across the EU. You can find the slides and the summary of the intervention at Euroalert Blog. I also was the moderator of the second half of the session on Use Cases, where we heard the complains of the Federation of European Publishers about the difficulties they face in competing with they still call the culture of free. I was surprised by their approach in the context of Open Data, which I believe is completely misleading again. I hope they will take a more positive position in the future. I was also lucky to have one of the best quotes of the event, made ​​by Hervé Rannou, from ITEMS International, who presented the lessons learned in the Open Data project of the City of Marseille: "The use of the data is infrastructure, like roads"

On June 16th we will see at the 1st Europe Digital Agenda Assembly the most interesting outcomes and conclusions that the European Commission has harvested from this Workshop. I hope it will be useful to take firm steps forward to enable a more favourable environment for market growth based on the development of new information services. In short, for companies powered by opendata as I like to call them. I also hope that among all of them Euroalert will be a remarkable Open Data company, both because of the success of its value proposition and for our contribution to the development of this environment.

To finish this long post, though the occasion deserved it, I will leave some resources that you will find useful to dive into what was said in the workshop. I have used them review what was said in the last two sessions, which I could not attend. I highly recommend to read the excellent work done in collaborative note-taking which reflects faithfully the discussions. You can also check out the tweet archive created by the University of Lincoln, the slides used by speakers, the list of twitter accounts of attendees, the position papers submitted or the snaps of event.

Lessons about Open Data at the Open Government Data Camp in London

Note: This article is a translation with a few add-ons of what I wrote in Spanish for my personal blog. You can see the original post in Spanish: "Grandes lecciones sobre open data en el Open Government Data Camp en menos de 24 horas".

After changing my agenda, last week I was finally able to attend the second day of the Open Government Data Camp held in London. In addition, invited by the Open Knowledge Foundation I was privileged to be present at the press conference which announced the release as raw data of the database containing all the UK Government expending over 25,000 pounds (about 29,000 Euros).

The event where the announcement of the release was made was presented and explained by Minister Francis Maude escorted by Professor Nigel Sadbolt, Tom Steinberg, Rufus Pollock ... and Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web and advisor to the British Government. It is highly recommended to watch the video of David Cameron as a lesson on Open Government. This video was the opening of the event, so we must assume that the Prime Minister "wanted to be" there.

Despite being "only" an official announcement, there were a few things that caught my attention and I'd like to share, just in case we can be inspired in Spain, and perhaps in other countries:

• It was not a typical press conference, at least as we know them in Spain. I mean, it was not a long speech of the minister, followed by questions from reporters. Instead, it was organized as very short presentations about many important points around the matter of the announcement, both political and operational and even technological.
• There were presentations from all the organizations that had been involved in the project and not just from the government. Representatives from mySociety, the Transparency Board and the OKF, made their points. But there was also an important space reserved for independent software developers such as Chris Taggart, who had been working in a demo of the possibilities of the data released.
• The wide technological culture that exhibit the members of government, including the Prime Minister. Comparisons are odious, so I will not make any. This is an exercise for you.
  
• The commitment of UK Government to transparency and open data is remarkable. "We know this will be a very uncomfortable process within the government departments" said Maude. In fact, uncomfortable news began to circulate during the event, such us the payments to Nick Clegg's wife's law firm or the rents paid to Prince Charles from the Ministry of Justice. But the commitment is as firm as defined by the words of Francis Maude “It is our ambition to make the UK the most transparent and accountable Government in the world"

I noticed that in the UK the work done for years by activists of all kinds: journalists, associations, developers, companies and even civil servants and politicians has already achieved a great success: the message of openness and transparency is firmly installed at the highest political levels, of all signs. I think a good summary are these words said by Rufus Pollock, founder of OKF, half jokingly half seriously:

"It's very encouraging to see that UK government is becoming more radical than me in terms of open data and transparency"

Thanks to the OKFN for the great work organizing the Open Government Data Camp and in particular to Jonathan and Rufus himself for pursuing my attendance at the event. I hope that all the networking and interaction and the envy and inspiration that gives the speed at which things are developing there, allows us to COPY in Spain and create a true Open Data community. I believe we have the grounds, but we need a little more action, less complacency ... and some more reusable raw data.

About OGDCamp sessions, I'll write another post as this is becoming a bit heavier than I'd like to :) I recommend you check out the hashtags #openuk and #ogdcamp and conclusions of the working groups.

PS: On my way back to Valladolid, I read at the airport that the Government of Spain had released the draft Royal Decree implementing Law 37/2007 of 16 November, on reuse of public sector information and launched a public consultation on it. Personally I prefer the approach of less regulation and more publishing of open data as raw data, but still congratulations on the move. As soon as I can read it in detail I will try to make my contribution.