European Commission to make public sector high-value datasets openly available
The latest initiative by the Commission recognizes the potential for re-use of high-value datasets held by the public sector
The EU continues to promote open data policies by making more Public Sector Information (PSI) available for public use. As a part of its current initiative, high-value datasets from a pre-defined list would be openly available to facilitate new information products, especially in Artificial Intelligence (AI). You can consult the high-value datasets implementing regulation and its annex published on the 21st of December here.
The EU’s public sector is heavily data-intensive, with open public data or PSI playing a significant role in the EU data economy. Allowing openly accessible data to be reused can drive economic growth, address societal challenges, promote evidence-based policymaking, and increase government transparency.
Another benefit of open data availability is that it becomes a critical asset for the development of new technologies such as AI. Therefore, making high-value datasets available for re-use will help the enhancement of innovation in new information and technologies. Under this initiative, these datasets will:
- use application programming interfaces to allow reusability for free
- be available in machine-readable formats
- be available for bulk download (where possible)
The European Commission consulted with all major stakeholders before the implementation of the initiative, including governments, companies, businesses, academics, and citizens with an interest in the EU data economy. The regulation aims to account re-use of six potential categories of high-value datasets, namely: Geospatial, Earth Observation and Environment, Meteorological, Statistics, Companies and Company ownerships and Mobility.
Access to reliable and accurate high-value datasets free from any technical, legal, or financial barriers leads to the high socio-economic and environmental benefits. The data.europa.eu portal has over 1,500,000 European public datasets available to users, which enable detailed analysis of singular events and historical records..
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