Open-data portals and filling data gaps that hold back the open
data’s potential
Publication Date/Time
2022-03-08T09:25:00+00:00
Country
Europe
The case of EU Datathon winner cleanSpot
Data.europa.eu runs its annual EU Datathon
[https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eudatathon] to bring together open-data
enthusiasts and application developers in a competition to show how
open data can solve real-world problems. In 2021, the Datathon was
divided along three “societal challenges”—long-term problems
facing society that need to be solved. These challenges were about
environmental sustainability and the European Green Deal; economic
equity and an economy that “works for people”; and how to better
digitalise Europe.

Speaking with one of the winners of the competition, however, it
becomes clear that gaps in open-data sets hold back applications that
can help solve problems that society faces. The issue here is the
inconsistent availability of data across jurisdictions. This reduces
the effectiveness of the developer’s solution and also slows the
application’s widespread adoption. 

GREEN OPEN DATA
As an example, cleanSpot [https://cleanspotapp.com/]—a second-prize
winner at the 2021 EU Datathon—helps residents recycle their
unwanted items in municipalities in Spain. Designed as a mobile app
for iOS and Android, it provides a map of recycling facilities in
someone’s neighbourhood. At the same time, it sends notices about
recycling spot incidents, provides notifications when mobile recycling
vehicles are in their neighbourhood, and sends tips about recycling
and energy savings.

In addition to providing information to residents, the cleanSpot app
looks to “gamify” some elements of re-purposing and recycling
unused items. In the app, users can calculate the amount of CO2 that
is saved when someone else takes their old item rather than buying
something new. In some municipalities, accumulation of points can lead
to discounts on municipal taxes, vouchers for local businesses, or
even cash payments. While some risks exist for gaming the app itself
(for example, if someone chooses to replace and recycle an appliance
earlier than they normally would with money saved), if implemented
correctly, it encourages residents to change their behaviour, hence
contributing to Europe’s green ambitions. 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/picture%201.png]
DATA REQUIREMENTS FOR THE APP
Ideally, the data required to share information with residents about
the location of facilities and pick-up vehicles would come from a
single dataspace, where the provider could collect the required
datasets for each municipality where it would want to offer its
service. However, in this case, the makers of cleanSpot need to
develop partnerships with each municipality with which they want to
work. In general, cleanSpot works with numerous cities in Spain, but
also with some private actors involved in recycling, such as Madre
Coraje [https://www.madrecoraje.org/], which provides containers to
collect resalable items.

When it’s available, the cleanSpot application uses open data
provided at the local level by municipalities that provides
longitudinal and latitudinal location data that can be translated into
the app. In case locations provide open data, it is relatively simple
to code the necessary requests to publicly available Application
Programming Interfaces (APIs). One of cleanSpot’s partners, the city
of Malaga on the southern coast of Spain, gives re-users access to
municipal data via a local open-data portal
[https://datosabiertos.malaga.eu/]. This way, anyone interested gets
easy to access to always up-to-date data.
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/picture%202.png]
However, some other municipalities that cleanSpot partners with
don’t provide such central access. This does not mean that those
municipalities are unhappy to share their data —simply that the
process to get to the data requires a lot of legwork. In some cases,
cleanSpot receives the data they need for their customers via an Excel
file by email. As data have to be imported manually into cleanSpot’s
systems, data updates become more cumbersome and time consuming.

THE VALUE OF OPEN-DATA PORTALS
Even though the absence of a single portal providing access to data is
not a primary obstacle to expansion, the example of cleanSpot shows
that any development of the application requires at least some
discussion and possible negotiation around access to data. It also
demonstrates that even if all stakeholders support data sharing and if
there are no data protection issues, the lack of infrastructure in
which the data can be easily gathered and shared can be a roadblock.

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