The European Data Portal celebrates its 5th anniversary
Publication Date/Time
2020-11-25T08:00:00+00:00
The European Data Portal is celebrating 5 years of increasing the
impact of open data across Europe
Join us in celebrating five years of open data on the European Data
Portal [https://www.europeandataportal.eu] (EDP)! Thank you to the
open data publishers, re-users, enthusiasts, and to all our viewers
and subscribers for following us on social media and exploring our
news pieces, articles, events, blogs, webinars and reports. We invite
you to continue sharing your valuable experiences, insights, and
opinions with us going forward. 

EVOLUTION OF THE EDP

Five years ago, the EDP beta version was launched. The beta version
started with 240,000 datasets and the accompanying metadata translated
into 3 languages. As of November 2020, the EDP attracts on average
45,000 visitors a month from across the world and contains over one
million datasets from 81 catalogues in 36 countries. The metadata is
translated to all official EU languages, enabling multilingual keyword
search and ease of access for users. 

In addition, the portal offers 16 e-Learning modules
[/en/training/elearning] in six languages that covers open data basics
such as licensing or data formats and guidance on how to harness the
value of open data. Moreover, EDP‘s collection of use cases has
grown to offer over 700 examples [/en/using-data/use-cases] on how
open data is re-used in practice. In our collection, we showcase
inspiring open data applications in different sectors, such as health,
the environment, agriculture, regions and cities, and population and
society. 

Furthermore, the EDP supports you with:

 	* An active social media presence with almost 13,000 followers on
twitter (@EU_Dataportal);
 	* An open data news feed [/en/news-events/news] that promotes
national and local initiatives and updates on what institutions are
doing around open data;
 	* An  open data events page
[https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/news-events/events] showing open
data events around the world; 
 	* Fortnightly Data Talks
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf_3QAqbX58&list=PLz7C9CUkkWwzvb7bMwqZYd0StQNbJK2pr]
in collaboration with the Support Centre for Data Sharing
[http://www.eudatasharing.eu] (SCDS); 
 	* A Country Insights page [/en/impact-studies/country-insights/] to
showcase news, events, use cases, datasets and blog posts at a
national level; 
 	* Multiple reports [/en/impact-studies/studies] on the effect of
open data publication and re-use, such as the Economic Impact of Open
Data Report [/en/impact-studies/open-data-impact];
 	* 18 analytical reports
[https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/impact-studies/studies?source=EDP]
about hot topics in open data; and
 	* The annual survey of the Member States’ Open Data Maturity
[/en/impact-studies/open-data-maturity], its dashboard and report.

EDP VERSION 3.1

Following the EDP’s version 3 launch on 6 March 2020
[/en/news/european-data-portal-releases-new-version-website], the EDP
Consortium released version 3.1 of the website on 31 August 2020. The
new and updated features include:

 	* FILTERING DATASETS BY QUALITY – Users can use the Metadata
Quality Assurance (MQA) score of datasets to filter when they search
for data. A new scoring facet in the search results page streamlines
and speeds-up searching through large sets of results. 
 	* THE METADATA QUALITY ASSURANCE (MQA) [/mqa/]’S PERFORMANCE
“HISTORY” – The MQA now stores the catalogues’ performance
over time and makes it available under the “Show History” button
in each of the quality dimension cards. This is useful to benchmark
performance and identify issues that may have affected a catalogue.
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/edp-5a.png] 
 	* MQA ASSESSMENTS ARE NOW ALSO PUBLISHED USING THE DATA QUALITY
VOCABULARY [https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dqv/] (DQV) STANDARD – A new
button was introduced on the dataset details page offering a download
of the DQV file. In 2021 this information will be also made available
interactively.
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/edp-5b.png] 
 	* BETTER MQA DOCUMENTATION – The usability of the MQA is improved
by adding a better explanation of the indicators. 
 	* SUPPORT TO DCAT-AP 2.0 – Under the bonnet, the EDP is now
prepared to support the new DCAT-AP 2.0 standard. 

FUTURE OF EDP

The EDP is still growing, and the Consortium is constantly
collaborating with national governments and open data portals to
continue harvesting data and researching topics around open data, for
example on COVID-19 and health data, environmental data and geodata. 

Furthermore, we continue to share knowledge and experiences on open
data re-use through news pieces, articles, webinars (Data Talks),
reports, and at events. For example, our analytical report on
Characterising Dataset Search on the European Data Portal
[/en/highlights/analytical-report-18-characterising-dataset-search-european-data-portal]
published at the end of October 2020, and the Data Talk session this
afternoon (Wednesday 25 November) titled “Microsoft – Closing the
data divide
[https://ecwacs.webex.com/ecwacs/j.php?RGID=r2166746d6ac977f00fa550e12b2b3b9c]”
with Jeremy Rollison, a Senior Director for EU Government Affairs at
Microsoft, to discuss the technology giant’s open data initiatives.

To continue improving, we invite you to keep sharing your experiences,
thoughts, and opinions on open data with the EDP via mail
[/en/feedback/form?type=4], Twitter
[http://twitter.com/EU_DataPortal], Facebook
[http://www.facebook.com/EuropeanDataPortal] or LinkedIn
[https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8428984]. Once again, thank you for
your support and let’s continue to harness the potential of open
data!
