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What is the Open Data initiative?

The Open Data initiative, or open data movement, is a philosophy that seeks to make data and information, especially that which is possessed and generated by public administrations, available to everyone without technical or legal restrictions.

The goal of the Open Data philosophy is to make data available for reuse by citizens, businesses, and organizations, benefiting all parties involved and promoting transparency, efficiency, and equal opportunities.

Having equal access to data from public administrations promotes aspects such as:

  • Ensuring transparency in public administrations due to access to data from official sources.
  • Promoting efficiency and equal opportunities by facilitating the development of services that meet various needs.
  • Providing equal access to data for everyone.

The Open Data philosophy is rapidly spreading. The development of Information and Communication Technologies is accelerating data publication and dissemination, thanks to the reduction in costs and time involved.

Requirements for open data

To achieve the goals of the Open Data philosophy, open data must meet the following requirements:

  • Free access: The data should be:
    • completely accessible,
    • preferably available via the internet,
    • without cost,
    • in a machine-readable format to facilitate automatic processing.
  • Use and distribution: The data should be provided without restrictions for free use, redistribution, or mixing.
  • Reuse: The terms of use should allow for modifications and derivative works.
  • Absence of technological restrictions: The data should be published in open formats without economic impositions for their use.
  • Attribution: The use license may include attributing the origin of the data as long as it accompanies the data and is easily obtainable.
  • Integrity: When altering the original data, the resulting data should be differentiated from the original, either by name or version.
  • Absence of discrimination against individuals or groups: The terms of use should not exclude individuals or groups of people.
  • Absence of restrictions on use: The terms of use should not exclude any type of activity in data usage.
  • Distribution of the license: All individuals to whom the data has been redistributed should enjoy the rights granted by the original license.
  • The license must not be specific to a package: If the data is offered as part of a package, any part of the package should enjoy the rights granted to the original package.
  • The license must not limit the distribution of works: Any package that includes open data should not have its distribution license limited by the license of the data used.

PSI - Public Sector Information Reuse

The main objective of the Open Data initiative is to promote the reuse of Public Sector Information (PSI).

Meeting this objective involves making public sector information:

  • available,
  • in raw form,
  • in widely-used open formats,
  • facilitating access,
  • and allowing for reuse.

Public administrations generate a wide variety of information that is potentially reusable, including social, economic, geographic, and statistical information. Due to its completeness, reliability, and quality, this information is suitable for reuse.

The reuse and redistribution of data should result in a double benefit:

  • Benefit for the agents generating and publishing the information.
  • Benefit for the data consumers who have their needs met through the published data.

Open data worldwide and in Spain

Countries around the world are progressively joining the Open Data initiative. The Open Data initiative began in 2009 with the data.gov project in the United States and has since spread to other countries. More and more governments and countries are announcing their transparency and open government initiatives by publishing their data catalogs.

Currently, numerous Open Data projects have been launched in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, and Spain, in addition to the United States.

In the following link, you can access the catalog of the CTIC Foundation (Information and Communication Technology Center), which includes all Open Data initiatives worldwide:

http://datos.fundacionctic.org/sandbox/catalog/faceted/

The website of the European Open Data Catalog (http://www.europeandataportal.eu/) allows for searching open data from 34 European countries.