Assessing open data developments across Europe: Discover the Open Data
Maturity Report 2022
Publication Date/Time
2022-12-14T08:30:00+00:00
Country
Europe
data.europa.eu launches the eight annual Open Data Maturity report
THE OPEN DATA MATURITY REPORT 

Today, data.europa.eu publishes its eighth ‘Open Data Maturity (ODM)
Report’
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/data.europa.eu_landscaping_insight_report_n8_2022_2.pdf].
This is an assessment that began in 2015 to measure the level of
maturity of countries in the European Union (EU) and their progress in
promoting open data publication and reuse. 

While remaining mainly an EU exercise, throughout the years the
assessment evolved into an overview of the efforts and priorities of
30+ countries. In 2022, the ODM self-assessment was completed by 35
countries: the 27 EU Member States, the 3 European Free Trade
Association
[https://www.efta.int/about-efta/european-free-trade-association]
(EFTA) countries (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland), 4 candidate countries
(Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Ukraine), and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Since 2018, the ODM assessment measures maturity along four dimensions
(Figure 1): 

 	* POLICY – this dimension sheds light on the open data policies
and strategies in place in the European countries;
 	* IMPACT – this dimension analyses the willingness, preparedness,
and ability of European countries to measure both the reuse of and
impact created by open data;
 	* PORTAL – this dimension focuses on the features, use and
sustainability of countries´ national open data portals;
 	* QUALITY – this dimension examined the measures adopted by portal
managers to ensure the systematic harvesting of metadata from sources
across the country.

This year, all four dimensions were streamlined to better include
regional and local realities and specific types of open data (e.g.,
high-value datasets
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/datastories/high-value-datasets-overview-through-visualisation]).
In particular, the impact dimension was re-structured, among others,
to better distinguish between measuring the reuse of open data and the
impact created through this reuse. 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Picture1_4.png]
 _FIGURE 1 - Open data maturity dimensions_ 

Based on these dimensions, the ODM assessment gives an overall score
to participating countries and clusters them into four different
groups, from the most mature to the least: trend-setters,
fast-trackers, followers, and beginners. Moreover, the report
highlights trends and best practices from countries´ responses. 

OVERALL SCORES OF 2022 PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES

Overall, the average ODM score of the EU27 for 2022 is 79%: EU Member
States perform as well as last year in the portal (83%) and quality
dimension (77%), but lagging slightly behind in the policy and
experiencing the largest decrease in the impact area (Figure 2). 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Figure2.png]
_FIGURE __2__ – __The Open Data Maturity scores of the EU27 (EU28
until 2022)_

While continuing to be the most mature measurement of the assessment
(86%), the policy dimension decreased by 1% compared to last year due
to the change of content or scope of some questions. For example,
among the questions on policy implementation, more attention was given
to support mechanisms for data publishing, with specific questions on
geospatial, real-time/dynamic, and citizen-generated data. In this
latter regard, only 33% of EU Member States have measures that
incentivise the publication of and access to citizen-generated data.
Moreover, the decrease in policy seems to be in line with the common
challenge reported for Member States, namely the difficulty of
enabling a coherent open data governance across various levels of
government and institutions. 

The re-restructuring of this year’s impact indicators is the main
reason behind the 7% drop in the overall impact score (71%). However,
this result should not so much be seen as a decrease in maturity
level, but rather as a more accurate picture of how difficult it still
is for countries to assess the impact of open data. More specifically,
it seems that EU Member States are doing progress in monitoring the
reuse of open data (e.g., via interviews with reusers and feedback
mechanisms), but only few have data (e.g., in the form of a study) on
the impact that this reuse creates. For instance, only 8 out of the 27
EU Member States stated that they held data on the impact of open data
on the environment and connected issues.

This is also in line with what was reported by the speakers of the
data.europa academy webinar ´Measuring open data impact in Europe
[https://data.europa.eu/en/academy/measuring-open-data-impact-europe]`.
The webinar focused in fact on the existing frameworks for open data
impact assessment, highlighting the absence so far of a common
European  methodology. Guest speakers from the French
[https://www.figma.com/proto/i13T7CtN4Jy9FRVnc7msOG/Pr%C3%A9sentation-datagouv?page-id=104%3A28856&node-id=104%3A28912&viewport=849%2C564%2C0.08&scaling=min-zoom]
and Polish
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/course/Presentation_measuring%20open%20data%20impact%20in%20Europe_JoannaMalczewska_Poland_0.pdf]
national open data teams presented real-life examples of how they
measure open data impact, sharing their knowledge but also their
challenges. 

Like the EU27, EFTA and candidate countries also seem to mostly
struggle with the impact dimension (Figure 3). While similar reasons
as the one mentioned above also apply to this group of countries, it
is worth mentioning that states such as Albania or Bosnia and
Herzegovina are still at the beginning of their open data journey.
Hence, priorities for them are rather creating the right policy
environment and developing a functioning open data portal. 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Figure3.png]
_FIGURE __3__ - 2022 score per dimension for EFTA, candidate
countries, and Bosnia and Herzegovina_

BEST PRACTICES ACROSS COUNTRIES AND DIMENSIONS

Despite the effects that the war is having on the development of open
data in the country, Ukraine continued its development in the open
data field, passing from a POLICY DIMENSION’S score of 98% in 2021
to a full 100% score in 2022. A highlight of Ukraine’s policy
answers is its new open data strategy
[https://data.gov.ua/uploads/files/2022-06-15-102752.7196282150222.pdf],
which entered into force in June 2022. The strategy aims to enable a
better decision-making process for citizens, politicians and civil
servants based on open access to information; increase the
transparency of the government's activities by ensuring confidence in
its decisions and fighting corruption; and introduce innovative
products and services based on open data.

Another country that shows an impressive progress is Czech Republic,
which improved its overall score by 14 percentage points between 2021
and 2022. In particular, Czech Republic is among the top performers in
the IMPACT DIMENSION (100%). Besides a more comprehensive impact
assessment methodology, Czech Republic reports a project called
´National Environmental Reporting Platform’
[https://nerp.cenia.cz/] that until 2023 will focus on available
sources of environmental open data and analyse their impact on the
social, political and legislative requirements caused by the climate
and environmental changes.

France is the only EU Member State that obtained a maximum score
(100%) for the PORTAL DIMENSION, improving their score of 2 percentage
points compared to 2021. As with last year, the French national portal
team puts a substantial amount of effort in the improvement of the
services of the portal, which is reflected in their maturity score.
For example, they highlight the key datasets published on the national
portal by offering editorial content, where they publish a monthly
article [https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/posts/suivi-des-sorties-mai-2020]
to showcase the most important publications (datasets or reuses)
during the last month. Moreover, they offer a newsletter
[https://infolettres.etalab.gouv.fr/subscribe/r1aq92xnj] and a blog
[https://www.etalab.gouv.fr] to make popular publications more
visible, draft articles [https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/posts] about new
datasets, and inform portal users through notifications when new
datasets are available on the portal. Furthermore, the national portal
is active on social media (e.g., Twitter
[https://twitter.com/datagouvfr]) and events are regularly organised
to promote the visibility of the portal, including hackathons
[https://www.hackathon-renovaction.fr/program/hackathon]. These
initiatives have facilitated communication and collaboration between
the different stakeholders interested and working with open data,
including members of academia, private companies, public sector
institutions, and data providers. 

This year, France and Ukraine (93%) had the highest score in the
QUALITY DIMENSION. Examples of best practices from these countries are
the extensive list of guidelines and tools for data providers on how
to publish open and metadata, as well as regular activities to
incentivise data publication (France), and close monitoring of
improvements to open data quality and linked data (Ukraine). However,
next to France and Ukraine there are other high performing countries
in this dimension such as Slovenia and Norway, both scoring 92%.
Slovenia deserves particular attention regarding their work around
open data quality. All Slovenian ministries and public (sectoral)
bodies are required to publish and maintain data. Additionally, the
published data or datasets must align with certain principles of open
data
[https://podatki.gov.si/posredovanje-podatkov/principi-odprtih-podatkov]
and be approved by the Sectoral Editor in the various public bodies
before being verified by the Chief Editor. Moreover, following the
data and datasets publication, the editors are required to maintain
data and ensure that they are up to date. This approach is defined in
the Governmental decision on Editorial Policy
[http://vrs-3.vlada.si/MANDAT13/vladnagradiva.nsf/71d4985ffda5de89c12572c3003716c4/384a4d9329d25d8fc1257c4400332ab0?OpenDocument]. 
For Norway, D-CAT
[https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/semantic-interoperability-community-semic/solution/dcat-application-profile-data-portals-europe/release/11]
compliance is very important. The national open data portal does not
allow registrations where mandatory classes are missing. For optional
classes, metadata quality is measured and displayed for each
individual dataset.  

OUTLOOK

In conclusion, the Open Data Maturity report 2022
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/data.europa.eu_landscaping_insight_report_n8_2022_2.pdf],
the numerous best practices from participating countries, as well as
the publication of the completed questionnaires and final results aim
to inspire the national open data teams, as well as anybody fostering
open data availability and reuse. This includes providing
recommendations to prepare for the implementation of the high-value
datasets (as part of the Open Data and Public Sector Information
Directive
[https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/legislation-open-data])
and the Data Governance Act
[https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/data-governance-act].
Looking ahead, cross-border collaboration is also stimulated further
with key activities of our data.europa academy, research, and data
publication to come in 2023. In particular, keep an eye out for the
next ODM data stories on open data impact and open data fast-learners
and don´t forget to register to the related webinars as of January
2023.
