Open Data, Open Society

Research project on public data openness in EU local administrations. [07jun10]

The project -- managed by Italian expert Marco Fioretti -- has three main phases. The first part will produce a report that discusses the role of fully accessible and reusable digital raw data in a truly open society, based on examples both from the European Union and the rest of the world. The second part of the project consists of an online survey to be launched this summer on the L.E.M website, to find out how many EU municipalities and regions are already making their raw data and procedures available in open formats and under open licenses. The final result will be another report, that analyzes the results of the survey and provides some guidelines and best practices for improving full access to public digital data.

Along with any comments or feedback, the author is primarily looking for real world stories of local businesses that:

- (worldwide) started and are sustainable just because the public data they need was made available by some public administration
- (preferably, but not only in the EU) cannot start at all, or have higher, unnecessary expenses, just because they need public data that are not publicly available at no cost.

Click here for more details.