Delivering benefits for all across Europe through open data

In an increasingly digital world providing access to data is vital for increased efficiency, greater innovation and improved transparency. Organizations across the public and private sectors therefore have to open their data and share it with citizens, customers, partners and other stakeholders. Data must be accessible and understandable to non-specialists, available through compelling data visualizations, maps and data stories.?

While it began in the public sector, where government regulations made data sharing compulsory, open data projects are now accelerating in the private sector, as companies see the benefits it brings.?

What is the current state of open data maturity and how does it vary between countries? What best practices can everyone learn from?

To find out, we've analyzed the latest Open Data Maturity Report 2022, published by the European Commission, combining it with the experiences of some of our 350+ customers.??

What can we learn from the Open Data Maturity report??

Running since 2015, the Open Data Maturity report provides a benchmark of open data development across Europe. It assesses the level of maturity against four dimensions :?

• Policy
• Impact
• Portal
• Quality

Based on this, countries are divided into four different groups: trend-setters, fast-trackers, followers, and beginners, from the most mature to the least.

The 2022 report has just been published, and our analysis draws four key conclusions:

• Current challenges to open data include insufficient resources and skills, a lack of coordination between different levels of government, slow development of data cultures and insufficiently robust legal, technical and financial frameworks for open data
• However, as with the pandemic, challenges such as the energy crisis and war in Ukraine are creating opportunities for open data to drive transparency and greater knowledge sharing.
• Maturity varies between countries, with France again leading the way, with an overall score of 97%. Countries in the beginners category include Greece, Latvia, Malta, Slovakia, Iceland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.
• Achieving more uniform open data maturity levels across Europe involves greater sharing of best practice, and learning from others to spark new initiatives and innovation.

?? Learn more about the study, and best practices by reading our in-depth blog.?

Recognizing pioneers in open data?

Over the past 12 years, we’ve helped clients from all over the world to open their data, benefiting from the combination of our knowledge and our all-in-one data experience platform.?

Many of our leading clients are based in France, which has been consistently ranked at the top of the Open Data Maturity Report, and we apply our experiences to deliver benefits for organizations in multiple sectors around the world.

We’ve worked with leaders in every sector, including:

Local government/municipalities

One of the earliest sectors to adopt open data, local government organizations are using open data to increase transparency, boost innovation and better engage citizens.

French towns and cities have been pioneers in opening and sharing their data, with Opendatasoft working with a wide range of municipalities, beginning with the City of Paris in 2014. Clients now also include the regions of Ile-de-France, Pays de la Loire and Auvergne, the departments of Mayenne and Pyrénées-Atlantiques, the metropolises of Aix-Marseille-Provence, Rennes, Lille and Clermont, and the cities of Dijon and Orléans.

The central Spanish province of Castilla y León has pioneered open data in the country, opening its portal in 2019. To encourage reuse of its data the province runs an annual competition, awarding prizes to the best projects built on its datasets.

Central government

By providing access to data on the activities of central government departments and agencies, open data projects increase trust in government, and deliver credible information that citizens and businesses can use in their everyday lives.?

URSSAF is a network of organizations across France that collect employee and employer social security contributions. This means it holds enormously valuable data around private sector employment, payrolls and hiring, which it shares on its open data portal through visualizations and dashboards.

The French Ministry of Finance launched its open data portal in 2019, making its diverse data available both to the general public and experts, such as journalists and analysts. Popular datasets include a drill-down map showing current fuel prices across the country.

Other central government organizations that have launched portals now include the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Sports, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health.

Energy

Achieving decarbonization requires radical transformation of the energy sector to ensure greater collaboration, new innovation and increased digitization. Data is the fuel for this, making open data a key part of the shift to net zero.

The largest electricity distribution system operator in France, Enedis was the first in Europe to publish energy data through an open data platform in 2015. Interactive dashboards allow users to drill down into data for their town or region and measure their progress towards net zero.

EDF was close behind Enedis, launching its open data portal in 2016.

UK Power Networks?serves 8.3m UK homes and businesses. Part of its broader digital strategy, its open data portal provides a wide range of stakeholders with quick and easy access to a wide range of datasets containing information on current network assets, and future plans. The last twelve months has also seen a range of other European energy companies launch open data portals, including E-REDES in Portugal and Northern Ireland Electricity Networks, Scottish Power Energy Networks, Electricity North West and Northern Power Grid in the UK.

Banking and finance

While banks and insurers are not traditionally seen as open data pioneers, making their data available can deliver benefits to themselves and the wider community.

The second-largest banking group in France, Groupe BPCE was the first to embrace open data, launching its portal in 2017. Use cases include sharing anonymised tourist payment data with local authorities to help plan their marketing strategies and posting job vacancies online through open data.

Transport and mobility

Opening transport data drives innovation, such as through new Mobility-as-a-Service applications. It also enables travelers, regulators and other stakeholders to monitor service levels and other KPIs.

Responsible for the Belgian railway network, Infrabel has taken a proactive approach to open data. This includes sharing punctuality information through an online dashboard, providing the location of level crossings to mapping companies and building a portal for job vacancies across the company.

Retail

Retailers rely on data to be competitive. Opening their data enables them to tap into new innovations and demonstrate greater transparency, particularly around sustainability.

Luxury group Kering is committed to transparency around its sustainability objectives. It therefore makes data on the environmental impacts of its operations easily accessible and available through data stories, its open data portal, and a mobile app.?

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