HOMER Project “Harmonising Open Data in the Mediterranean

through Better Access and Re-use of Public Sector Information”

Massimo Fustini

Barbara Santi

Regione Emilia-Romagna

The Project Topic:

The theme is Open Data policy, aiming to make available and exploitable Public Sector Information.

The benefits:

transparency: publishing data of common interests enables citizens to be better informed and participate in the decision making process of their governments.

economic value: PSI can be aggregated and enriched directly by private companies to offer new digital services generating economic returns

EU is witnessing the spreading of several OD initiatives, mostly in Northern Europe, but MED?

Mediterranean is less advanced and Open Data Good Practices are fragmented

HOMER purpose to:

stimulate Open Data policies in Med area, through the adoption of tailored ICT/legal and political standards towards the MED cultural and economic framework

The Mediterranean situation and HOMER Relevance for MED

HOMER is a project funded under the European Territorial Cooperation Programme MED 2007-2013

The Programme aims to support a sustainable growth and employment in the MED area, through a transnational cooperation approach

HOMER overall Budget: 3,666,437.50 EUR

Implementation starting date Implementation end date

4 April 2012 31 March 2015

Main Features of the Project

Overall goal:

to contribute to unlock the full potential of the Public Sector Information in the Mediterranean space

Specific objectives:

to aggregate and capitalise all the relevant MED Open Data initiatives;

to set up an effective strategy to harmonise Open data policy and portals across the MED area; to ensure that the Open Data strategy is transferable and re-usable by a

large number of public administrations in the MED area; to set up the basis for a transnational digital market in the Mediterranean

area, setting up MED PSI Federation thus promoting interoperable and multilingual solutions;

HOMER Objectives

HOMER Contribution and expected IMPACT

Harmonise both from a legal point of view and technical aspects the OD portals in MED;

Federation effect: ease of finding data for final users (citizens or business – not only for geek);

Stimulate the re-use federated data: more re-use opportunity founded on similar shared data;

Discovering new opportunities to develop useful applications for citizens and government with data and linked data and enhance economic growth and creation of job opportunities;

Create awareness about Open Data policy: as example, initiate harmonising the Montenegrin legislation and licencing with EU policies on PSI Directive;

7 Regional Governments: Piedmont, Veneto, Sardinia, Emilia Romagna, Andalucía, Crete, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur;

5 Public agencies and public service providers: Sewerage Board of Limassol, Geodetic Institute of Slovenia, the Local Council Association of Malta, GFOSS, SARGA;

6 ICT agencies and ICT academic experts: CSI-Piemonte, FING, Institut de la Méditerranée, Mediterranean University of Montenegro, University of Crete, FUNDITEC;

7 Associated partner: Ministry of ICT of Montenegro, Ministry of Sustainable Development of Montenegro, Presidency of Council of Ministry in Italy, Ministry of Internal Affairs in Greece, Ministry of Environment of Slovenia, CRIGE PACA, Consejeria de Agricultura Y Pesca de la Junta de Andalucia

The partnership

Events and Milestones

Two milestones

Milestone1: launch of open data portals in Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Montenegro, Slovenia and opening of specific thematic datasets;

Milestone 2: the setting up of the MED PSI Federation;

Next Major Events

25 – 28 June 2013: Marseille European OD week, HOMER conferences and workshops, http://opendataweek.org;

June 2014: The final ceremony presenting the results of the pilots and the federation potential in Turin;

Pilot B: PARTICIPATION oF CITIZENS IN THE DEFINITION OF PROJECTS & POLICIES THROUGH

THE CO-ELABORATION OF NEW SOLUTIONS Institut de la Méditerranée

“Open data could also open new possibilities for citizens to participate to the public sphere. Pilot project B has been proposed and conceived as a way to investigate and experiment on how the great majority of people, thanks to open data, can

bring their contribution to improve quality of life in their territory”

With the aim of:

Raising awareness on open data opportunities for citizens;

Enhancing citizens’ creativity and taking advantage of it for creating innovative initiatives;

Stimulating the re-use of HOMER datasets in the Mediterranean;

Creating new applications, tools and services;

Pilot A: HACK4MED! Regione Veneto

“event in which computer programmers and others in the field of software development, like graphic designers, interface designers and project managers,

collaborate intensively on software-related projects”

With aim of:

Stimulate the re-use of HOMER datasets in the Mediterranean by private companies;

Encourage the development of web and mobile apps;

Emphasize the model of collaborative construction;

Final Award Ceremony in Turin (June 2014)

HOMER Project

Hack4Med

Open Minds Use Open Data

Spain Italy France Slovenia Malta Greece Cyprus Montenegro

24 hours of Hackathon – 36 re-use open data project

24 hours of Hackathon – 36 re-use open data project

HOMER Project

HOMER project contributions and expected impact of the actions carried out in the participant regions

Project end: March 2015 Status of implementation of Open Data initiatives: two groups Some common factor s for the first group of countries:

- Longer presence in EU; - Open Data portals available already since the project beginning (2012); - EU Directive regarding PSI already included in Regional or National law; - Open data portals available and big amount of datasets available on several

topics; - Funds available for OD initiatives before HOMER (but, after HOMER?); - Slow evolution of OD initiatives compared with countries in second block;

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

The second group:

-Not present in EU since long time (or not present yet – Montenegro); -Open Data portals not available at the project beginning (2012); -EU Directive regarding PSI not yet included in Regional or National law (or in the process of doing it); -Few datasets available; -No funds available for OD initiatives before HOMER; -Fast evolution of OD initiatives compared with countries in first block;

Thanks to HOMER, now:

-All partners have their own OD portals; -All partners have a directive on place (or in the process of doing so); -All partners OD portals are inside the federation; -All partners have few staff trained about OD (with tech and legal expertise);

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

OUR COMMON TECHNICAL OBSTACLES

- Lack of specialized skills and expertise to manage open databases in PA staff

(often work done by civil servants, stage);

- Difficulty to keep the data updated due to portals not user friendly for non-experts (to update the data you need a technicians that it is not the person in charge of collecting the data – duplication of costs);

- Most public data are still collected and managed in non-digital form and not machine readable formats.

COMMON LEGAL & GOVERNANCE OBSTACLES

- Protection of private and personal data is perceived as the main legal obstacle to the participation in Open Data initiatives. But is it true? If yes, how can we overcome this?

- Different laws and regulations (at regional and national level) are the factors that slow down the implementation of Open Data. Differences among regions and countries. Who is supposed to provide a unique guide? EC?

- In countries where no internal protocol has been set up, it is up to the discretion of each Department Head to decide which information can be opened, and so the results differ greatly.

- OD are perceived mainly as an exercise of transparency from administrations toward the citizens. There is no concrete evidence about economic benefits of Open Data to boost local economy (OD = economic growth =more votes?)

OUR FEEDBACK FROM THE USERS

Thanks to Pilot activities the usability of OD have been evaluated: - OD for creating services needs a high technical skill (OD not for all); - Very poor quality of datasets: not updated or missing some relevant data; - Very different formats among similar topic data and even from the same

source (Excel, CSV, JPG?); - Utilising OD for APPs or APIs development is time consuming and the results

at the end are poor; - Better to have few data but high quality, rather than lot of data; - Language: HOMER uses EUROVOC to search metadata but the data are in

each partners language. This is an obstacle for developers. - Animators are needed to support citizens in data utilisation. It is very difficult

for a citizens not experts to use OD without a support.

WHERE TO GO NEXT? HOMER wants to proceed and evolve, but not alone. The direction about where to move in OD can be provided by EC? - Do we have to move to Big Data or Linked OD? If yes, how? - Do we have to evolve to a real Federation of Data and not a Federation of OD

portals? - Do we have to move from Regional OD portals to National ones? Or maybe

EU OD portal directly? - Can we overcome the language barrier on data? How? - Do we have to concentrate only in animation and hackathons? Reduce the

opening but strengthen the reuse? - How to link regional activities (HOMER) with national initiatives and EU ones?

Or, do we have to stop our efforts at all on Open Data?

THANK YOU

FOR YOUR ATTENTION!

Massimo Fustini

Barbara Santi

Regione Emilia-Romagna

homer@regione.emilia-romagna.it