Open Government Datain Europe: The State of Play

Jonathan GrayThe Open Knowledge Foundation

ICT2010, Brussels28th September 2010

From books to bits...

Digital technologies have thepotential to radically transformthe way that knowledge isdisseminated in our society.

But we still have a long way to go …

- the shadow of the print press- datasets are to illustrate reports- publishing without reuse in mind- culture of asking permission- vast information silos- non-machine readable formats- broken links, vanishing content

Where are we going?

An ecosystem of open data:

- small pieces, loosely joined- easy to reuse, easy to recombine- lots of contributors / maintainers- distributed, decentralised- divide and conquer- innovation / unexpected reuse- iterative, versioned, 'wiki'-like- learning from open source

From legal uncertainty...

… to legal clarity.

Open data: free for anyone to reuse orredistribute for any purpose

Why do we care?

Open government data has social andeconomic value...

Two metaphors:

PipesSoil

New ways of representing data...

New ways of delivering data...

New ways of combining data...

Unexpected reuse...

Where are we now?

Official Open Government Data Initiatives

Official Data Catalogues: National

Official Data Catalogues: Local

Official Open Government Data Initiatives

Community Open Government Data Initiatives

What next?

LOD2 WP9: PublicData.eu

- Pan-European data catalogue - Showcasing applications - Building user communities

London, 18-19th November 2010opengovernmentdata.org/camp2010

New technologiesNew applicationsNew servicesNew users

Towards a Europeanopen data ecosystem...

jonathan.gray@okfn.orghttp://twitter.com/jwyg

http://identi.ca/jwyg

Image creditsWork with schools by New York Public LibraryImages by Otto Neurath and the Isotype Institute from FulltablePierre Vivant's Traffic Light Tree by William WarbyThe Green Light by Ted PercivalLego Bricks by bdeshamPlumbing bits by cmurtaughMount Fear East London by Abigail ReynoldsCompost 06/08/2007 by suavehouse113

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