The European Data Portal Thinkathon during the INSPIRE 2018 Conference
Publication Date/Time
2018-10-10T09:00:00+00:00
INSPIRE, Open Data, Copernicus ... Let's Get Together!
Between September 18 and September 20th, the INSPIRE 2018 conference
took place in Antwerp Belgium. The motto of this year's edition was
"INSPIRE users: Make it work together!"

Following this motto, the European Data Portal facilitated a
thinkathon on Wednesday September 19th. The thinkathon - an
interactive workshop format - created a new 'space' for the conference
participants to 'make it work together'. The idea of a _thinkathon_ is
inspired by the hackathon format: It is a chance for people to come
together in a thinking session for creative problem solving. The EDP
team decided to 'challenge' the INSPIRE community to a brainstorming
exercise - a "thinkathon". The EDP thinkathon dealt with the obstacles
that the community is still encountering when working with INSPIRE,
Copernicus and open government data - and how to overcome them.

The session started with an introduction to the methodology of the
thinkathon, followed by a short series of lightning talks. In the
talks, the vision and goals of INSPIRE, Copernicus and Open Data were
presented. The talks emphasised the important role that data users
play in the data value creation process and how civic engagement
within the reuse communities needs to be enhanced to trigger and
foster this process.

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/20181010-inspire-1a.png]

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/20181010-inspire-1b.png]

 

The talks were followed by a brainstorming session using the
"speedboat" creativity technique. Participants were invited to gather
around their field of interest (INSPIRE, Copernicus, open data) and
think whether the set-out goals are being reached, and if not, what is
holding the community back. During the group work, each group
identified a series of "anchors' that hold the 'data speedboats' from
running at full speed. In the second part of the thinkathon, the
groups focused on prioritising the "anchors" according to their weight
or urgency and explored ways in which these limitations can be
overcome. The results were presented in plenum and discussed with the
other participants.

Open Data is seen as an essential resource
[https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/policies/building-european-data-economy]
for economic growth, job creation and societal progress. that -- when
used to its fullest extent, can yield benefits for businesses,
citizens and society in general. Its potential is highlighted by the
plethora of applications developed in numerous fields - from eHealth,
food security, environment and resource efficiency to energy,
intelligent transport systems and smart cities. Various studies were
conducted to assess and capture this potential. Studies such as the
Creating Value through Open Data Report
[/sites/default/files/edp_creating_value_through_open_data_0.pdf]
elaborated by the European Data portal underline the benefits that
Open Data has for the political, economic and societal development of
countries.

Against this backdrop a pertinent question arises: What is holding the
Open Data community back from fully capturing this potential? The Open
Data session of the EDP hackathon focused on this question and the
main challenges that Open Data reusers are still confronted with. The
group emphasised the advancements made so far with regards to the
legal, technical and semantical aspects of dealing with data, as well
as the limitations that they still see affecting their 'daily work
with data'. As main concerns, the participants highlighted the lack of
alignment around common taxonomies and the legal aspects of licencing
and attribution. While some participants stressed the hurdles that
they faced due to the lack of inclusive governance structures, others
focused on the lack of an 'experimental spirit' within the public
sector as main point of concern. A culture of "trial & error" is still
missing in many European countries, and data reusers are lacking
enabling frameworks that allow them to engage in experiments together
with the public sector. The entire group agreed however on the need to
enable a better dialogue between all stakeholders and the urgency of
creating cross-functional project teams. The group discussed how these
aspects could be embedded into the modelling of new instruments to
foster more effective cross-sectoral partnerships. Such collaboration
would enable knowledge dissemination and best practices exchange
_across_ sectors, rather than strengthening knowledge dissemination
_within_ a sector. In addition to the initial agenda of the session,
the recent launch of the Google dataset search service has in the Open
Data ecosystem and its implications for national and pan-European Open
Data platforms were discussed. All in all, a lively session that
highlighted the richness that different vantage points brings to the
table.

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/20181010-inspire-2a.png]

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/20181010-inspire-2b.png]

 

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/20181010-inspire-2c.png]

 [https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/20181010-inspire-2d.png]

 

The purpose of INSPIRE is to support environmental protection policy
by improving the availability and accessibility of relevant geodata.
Geographic information is perceived to be the key for good governance
and informed decision making, so it needs to be readily and
transparently available. The group discussed possible approaches for
"lifting the anchors" of the INSPIRE "speed boat". They started out by
establishing that they felt INSPIRE is indeed a worthwhile effort.
They are optimistic that it will eventually succeed - despite the many
anchors/issues. One idea on how to tackle the identified problems was
to "Stop the boat and start the discussion" (having taken our
thinkathon's maritime metaphor to heart): There is a desire to reflect
and possibly adjust the process before tackling the provision of the
remaining data themes. It was clear that this group wants to be
involved in helping INSPIRE succeed. Another possible solution the
group discussed was that a "broker" is needed to combine the available
datasets to produce harmonized datasets for Europe. These European
datasets would be easier to use that the individual countries'
datasets or services, thus showcasing the value of INSPIRE data. It is
expected that during the act of combining the datasets feedback can be
given to the individual member states and valuable lessons can be
learned and shared. One other factor for slowing down progress was
seen that the regulations, which have been compiled in the past by
expert groups, are lacking flexibility for today's challenges and
taking advantage of new technological developments. An idea to remedy
this is to focus on some of the datasets from the data themes listed
in Annex I of the INSPIRE Directive first: Using an agile approach for
a step by step implementation with the opportunity to learn and
improve the processes.

Copernicus is the most ambitious Earth observation programme headed by
the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Copernicus' goal is to provide global, continuous, autonomous, high
quality, and wide range Earth observation capacity, or - as ESA states
[https://m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Overview3]
"Copernicus will help shape the future of our planet for the benefit
of all." The Copernicus group was most popular in terms of the number
of participants who joined it. This came as a bit of a surprise as the
conference's main topic was INSPIRE. It shows however, that the
participants were eager to look beyond the end of their noses. Some of
them are already involved in both INSPIRE and Copernicus. 'Bridging
communities' was the main topic of discussion in this group. Exchange
and collaboration were seen as the key to success: It was commonly
agreed upon that INSPIRE should evolve to better fit the needs of
Copernicus and that the INSPIRE community could profit from the input
of the technical Earth Observation experts.

The main take-aways of the three sessions were:

 	* It was heartening to see how the participants want to be involved
in making INSPIRE a success. The aspiration is to implement and
provide the INSPIRE data themes in a way that is fit-for-purpose and
efficient.
 	* Technical and semantical barriers are only one part of the 'bigger
picture' and should be considered together with, and nor separate from
the legal, organisational and governance aspects
 	* Despite the specificities of each community of practice, the
barriers are similar and cut across the three data communities. Such
obstacles can be alleviated more efficiently if frameworks are in
place that foster collaboration the exchange _across_ communities
rather than _within_ communities
 	* Value creation can be enhanced by enabling cross-functional
competence teams of practitioners from the public, private, research
and civil society sphere. At the same time, value creation through
data can only be derived from the reuse. Triggering the reuse within
the community should be a built-in element of the data publication
process.

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/20181010-inspire-3.png]
 

Overall, the EDP thinkathon proved to be a great exercise that
triggered the audience to a creative and critical thinking session.
With this format, the EDP provided the space for the conference
participants stemming mainly from the INSPIRE field to look outside of
their 'community bubble' and discuss the challenges encountered by
their community of practice in regard to the experiences of other
communities.
