EU open data: fuelling digital innovation

The European Big Data Value Forum (EBDVF) is the flagship event organised annually by the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) to bring together the whole European data-driven AI research and innovation community to share knowledge, collaborate and celebrate achievements in the field.  This year, the EBDVF took place in Prague (Czech Republic) between the 21st and 23rd of November. Under the theme ‘At the heart of the Ecosystem for Data and AI’, the programme involved several keynote speeches, presentations, and co-creative workshops on ‘Data Spaces’, ‘Industrial and Trustworthy AI’, ‘Technology, Platforms and Impact’, or ‘Data, AI and the new society’.

Inmaculada Farfan Velasco (project manager at the EU Publications Office) was also among the speakers, delivering a keynote speech on ‘EU open data: fuelling digital innovation’. In a world characterised by an increasing supply and demand of data, governments and businesses need to re-evaluate their strategies and business models to make the most out of this ‘data explosion’. Going towards a ‘data-use culture’ is also fundamental for citizens, who can make better decisions based on the free access to information. Open data, as ‘data sharing at its peak’, is key to enable this bigger picture and can bring several benefits to both the public and private sectors, including enabling economic growth and job creation or increasing transparency and accountability of public and private entities.

The power of the ‘butterfly effect of open data’ lies in the infinite forms which this data can re-invent itself in. A clear proof of this effect is given by the innovative applications developed every year by researchers and developers participating in the EU Datathon organised by the EU Publications Office. For example, one of the winners of the EU Datathon 2020, Geofluxus, tackled the challenge of the European Green Deal by developing a visualisation tool that uses different kinds of EU open data (e.g. customs, trade etc.) to help local governments and enterprises in the Netherlands better monitor waste management. By serving as catalogue of metadata that is harvested by open data portals across Europe, data.europa.eu was key for the development of Geofluxus and many other data-driven examples.

To best support the wide community of data providers and reusers, data.europa.eu is constantly improving itself. From a new interface design to the re-allocation of its services into four areas:

1. Data access – Providing access to more than 1.5 million free open datasets and free public data documentation across Europe via a single platform;
2. Learning – Offering training courses and webinars to increase the understanding of open data, its benefits, its applications as well as targeting specific users´ needs. For example, this is done through our series of webinars for data providers, available on our knowledge hub, data.europa academy;
3. Research – Providing insightful publications on technical, legal, and policy aspects of open data, such as the yearly open data maturity assessment, whose 2022 edition will be published on 14 December.
4. Connect – Supporting data providers from EU institutions, EU Member States and European countries in publishing (meta)data and encouraging reuse among the broader community, including businesses and  citizens, for example through competitions like the EU Datathon.

Do you want to learn more about the data.europa.eu and its services? Read the news iece dedicated to its new features and the latest data story on the role of the portal to increase digital skills and data literacy.

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