Workshop on raising citizen awarenness on Open Data


The  workshop "Raising awareness and engaging citizens in re-using PSI" was held within the SHARE PSI 2.0 conference in Timisoara, Romania on March 17, 2015.  The workshop was co-chaired by Daniel Pop, West University of Timisoara and Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean.  The workhop touched upon ways to enhance citizen participation and engagement in reusing open governmental data.  





Several experiences to boost opendata uptake by citizens and entreprises were presented and discussed, resulting in a set of proposed "ways":





Way #1:
Give them a "home"


An open
data portal has to offer the ability to citizens / users to create and maintain
a profile





Way #2:
Make them customers / Create an Open Data marketplace


When a
citizen cannot find the dataset he is looking 
for, he can put a request that is channeled to the appropriate
administration





Way #3:
Make them opendata publishers


Allow for
upload of datasets by users





Way #4:
Allow working on datasets / make them curators


A dataset
can be processed by a user and then republished as a new version.  Datasets can be visualised, extended, linked
by users





Way #5:
Give them incentives


- Measure
and publish popularity of the users, based on their activity.


- Give
incentives for data usage / utilisation (e.g. free tickets to community events,
free parking, to most prominent users)


-
Organisation of competitions / datathons with prizes for the best applications


-
Organisation of data journalism competitions 
for users





Way #6:
Involve them upfront


Organise
meetings of interest groups (e.g. finance, environment, etc) among interested
citizens and entreprises. Use questionnaires, for initial screening of ideas
and people.





Way #7:
Provide specific support for entreprises


Companies
have different viewpoint than citizens: they need data quality, availabiliity,
support, etc.  So, provide something like
that for companies and utilisation will be higher.





Way #8:
Promote the creation of journalism teams


People
might want to “tell a story” acting like data journalists within the local
communities, but they might not have the skills needed


So, make
small groups among citizens to work around open data, generating small or
larger stories.





Way #9:
Provide training


Citizens
without the proper knowledge cannot take advantage of incentives targeting more
advanced people.































































So, invest
in training citizens on basic digital skills (make a web site, work with a
dataset, write a story, etc)





A slideset of the main outcomes can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/ways-to-boost-utilisation-of-open-data-by-citizens while a full description will be available in the SHARE PSI 2.0 project open database of best practices. 










The workshop panel. From left to right: 


André Lapa, AMA, Portugal (rapporteur)


Noël Van Herreweghe, CORVe, Belgium


Chris Harding, The Open Group, UK


Jan Kučera, University of Economics, Prague


Daniel Pop, West University of Timişoara, Romania (co-chair)


Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean, Greece (co-chair)


Peter Winstanley, Scottish Government, UK


Robert Ulrich, KIT, Germany


Petya Bozhkova, Balkan Services, Bulgaria


Szymon Lewandowski, DG Connect, European Commission

A taxonomy of critical success factors for Open Data

This is a simple two-tier taxonomy of factors that are critical for the success of open data initiatives at local, national and international level.  It has been developed through a series  of workshops analysing and classifying international open data best practices and initiatives. It can be used as a guidance support for public servants, the overall planning of open data initiatives or classification of best practice scenarios or examples.




This is based on work done by:

























A. Factors critical for open data
publication by administrations



































































































































































Categories


Factors


1 Legislation,
regulation and licenses


Having in
place a (national) legal framework for open data publication


Enforce publishing and curating of data on
administrations (maybe even through penalties)


Provide information
about data protection and privacy legislation and how open data can be
published in compliance with this legislation


Develop a (national) guide on legal
Intellectual Property Right (IPR) issues allowing organizations to pick the
correct licensing form


2 Strategy and
political support


Develop a
strategy for open data publication at an (inter)national level


Ensure that (top) management within
governmental agencies supports publishing data


Generate
support of policy-makers for data publication


Organize focus groups with heads of
departments and open data policy implementers to give both proponents and
opponents of open data an auditorium


Introduce incentives
schemes for public servants (e.g. explain why a data provider would release
data, explain what kind of value is created for the data provider)


Create consensus between open data publication
and the organizational framework for publishing data


3 Management support and publication
processes within governmental agencies


Define clear
process steps for publishing data


Determine which type of data is important to
address societal issues and focus on the publication of these data


Start with
the publication of data which is interesting for users so that the users see
the benefit of open data


Determine which data and metadata will and
will not be published


Determine
which standards and vocabularies will be used for data publication


Determine which personnel has the key
responsibilities for publishing open data


Determine
where datasets will be published


Release only data which is of high quality


4 Training of and support for civil servants


Create a
virtual competence center which assists in answering questions and helping
out with administrative data publication processes


Provide training on open data publication
within governmental agencies (e.g. training on how datasets can be
anonymized)


Develop
information campaigns in which questions about open data publication are
discussed


Develop information campaigns in which success
stories of internal and external open data use are discussed


5 Evaluation of the open data initiative


Develop
metrics and success indicators for data publication by government departments


Evaluate the realization of metrics and
success indicators as an integral part of the open data initiative


6 Sustainability of
the open data initiative


Identify the
need for data


Create a strategy for maintaining published
datasets


Ensure data
provision continuity, including timely and automatic updates of data


Be transparent towards open data users about
the conditions under which data publication takes place


7 Collaboration


Arrange
meetings with open data users to find out what their needs are and how the
data from the governmental agency are used


Organize internal meetings to discuss the data
publication processes and to evaluate them


Organize inter-organizational
collaboration about and management of open data initiatives


Ensure agile and  open cooperation with various other
organizations (administration, universities, CSO, Open Knowledge Foundation)


Organize inter-organizational
collaboration (e.g. network meetings) to learn from the open data initiatives
of other governmental agencies


8 Open data platforms, tools and services


Integrate the open data platform into existing
Content Management Systems (CMS) to kick-start the progress


Have one
central portal which combines data from many different governmental
organizations (federal level)


Implement advanced data search functionalities


Use
complementary toolsets for performing additional curation tasks (cleaning,
linking, visualizing, analyzing)








Use a “web 2.0” approach for open data,
allowing citizens to post, rate, work with datasets and web services


Integrate
frameworks for assessing data quality and usability of data and platform,
providing continuous feedback to developers and administrations


Provide a forum to discuss what can be learned
from open data use


Develop a
clear User Interface (logical symbols, clear setup of the web page, simple
design)


9 Accessibility, interoperability and
standards


Use standards for data, metadata, licenses,
URIs and exchange protocols


Use cloud
infrastructures able to gather, manage and publish open data, interoperable
with other sources within the country or region


Integrate metadata schemas and federated
controlled vocabularies for properly categorizing information


Provide
various types of metadata, in line with metadata standards (e.g. CERIF, CKAN,
DC, EGMS, DCAT)


Provide Application Programming Interfaces
(API’s) for open data provision in the form of service feeds (from open data
to open services)


Enable multilinguality
of metadata and data, allowing for the reuse and integration of data from
different countries/languages









































B. 



B. Factors critical for open data
use by citizens, entreprises and administrations





































































Categories


Factors


10 Legislation, regulation and licenses


Provide
information on the meanings and implications of licenses


Provide information about privacy legislation
and how open data can be used in compliance with this legislation


11 Success stories


Provide
readily available examples of open data use (e.g. apps) to non-experts


Develop stories of successful open data use


Involve
community key players to propagate success stories


12 Incentives for open data use





Provide incentive schemes to  engage citizens in open data usage


Stimulate
the development of specialized, open-data driven startup incubators


Stimulate the development of business models
to allow enterprises to develop add-on services on top of open data
platforms, at a cost


Support
issue-oriented community building through participatory events


Align events, competitions and hackathons
with, for example, university curricula, awards, festivals and “direct
marketing”


13 Training of and support for open data
users


Ensure
agile, dynamic, and professional support services and training for potential
open data users 


Organize events and ensure community building
where the potential benefits of open data are communicated to users (e.g. by
building scenarios for usage)


14 Feedback and sustainability


Provide
mechanisms for governmental agencies to know how their data have been reused


Provide mechanisms for governmental agencies
to know what can be learned from the reuse of their data


Provide
mechanisms for governmental agencies to know how the publication of their
data can be improved based on feedback that they received from open data
users


15 Research and education


Develop university and continuous education
curricula on open data


Develop and
maintain research areas roadmaps on open data, in order to consolidate
research efforts and address open issues









Open Data Day - Data Journalism

On 28th February 2015, I had the pleasure to take part in the Athens Open Data Day, organised in Innovathens Centre by the Greek Open Source society.  My talk targeted Data Journalism, in an effort to provide some useful hints and tips towards journalists and researchers.



Main topics of my talk included:



- The data journalism handbook 



- The ENGAGE platform on (numeric) open data



- The NOMAD platform on (textual) open data



- A mention  of the Freakonomics book - a "must read" for future data journalists



- An example of data journalism, "The Greek Debt Structure" by Wall Street Journal



- Another example that we developed in Uni Aegean : the productivity of Greek Tax Offices






Talking on data journalism @Innovathens