2013 Ano Internacional da Estatística www.statistics2013.org «Statistics and Open Data Department of Methodology and Information Systems «João Poças (joao.pocas@ine.pt) Lisbon, November, 5 th 2013»1
Agenda 1. Open Data overview 2. Open Data in Europe 3. Statistics Portugal case 4. Conclusions»2
1. Open Data overview»3
Concept Open data is a philosophy and a practice that requires that certain data is free to all, with no technical or legal limitations.»4
In the public sector, having access to data from the administration: Transparency: data come directly from official sources; Concept Efficiency: citizens and organizations can create services in a more accurate fashion in collaboration with the administration; Equal opportunities: access is the same for everyone.»5
1. Open Data Overview Why is it so important? What can be done with data?»6
Concept Open data makes it possible to build applications that use the released information as a source. The types of applications that can be build with released data are very diverse and respond to very different goals and purposes. The applications can also have purely business purposes, such as the case of automatic updates of information from official services that can be fed into GPS navigators in vehicles.»7
1. Open Data Overview How should data be released?»8
Concept W3C recommends releasing data in reusable formats. Any format is welcome but the better structured and enriched the data, the easier it will be to reuse them and build applications that can process them automatically. Most suitable formats are XML-based, JSon or RDF which can easily be used by any application. Non-proprietary formats (ex: CSV instead of XLS)»9
2. Open Data in Europe»10
European initiatives Public Dataset Catalogs Concept (http://datos.fundacionctic.org/sandbox/catalog/faceted/)»11
Concept European initiatives European Union Open Data Portal (http://open-data.europa.eu/en/data»12
2. Open Data in Europe European Guidelines»13
The European Commission considers that public data must be able to be reused by the general public and enterprises (Directive Open Data 2003/98/EC in Europe of the European Parliament and of the Council - Reuse of Public Sector Information (RPSI)). On 26th June 2013, the European Parliament approved Directive 2013/37/EU which amended Directive 2003/98/EC on the reuse of information in the public sector. Member states have 2 years to convey the measure into their judicial framework.»14
2. Open Data in Europe National Statistics Institutes»15
Open Data in Europe Official statistics in most countries offer open data for years now. But in different formats: from PDF to XLS and CSV, in interactive databases like px-web, oecd.stat, genesis-online etc., with visualization tools and various search facilities.»16
Open Data in Europe Official statistics are in front of the open data initiatives. Most of the data sets in the open data portals of governments come from the national statistical institutes.»17
Open Data in Europe Open Data Index an initiative of the Open Knowledge Foundation based on contributions from open data advocates and experts around the world.»18
Open Data in Europe Open Data Index provides the first major snapshot of the state of open government data around the world, ranking countries based on a detailed assessment of the availability of key datasets.»19
3. Statistics Portugal (INE) case Where are we? Where to move on?»20
Statistics Portugal (INE) The mission of Statistics Portugal is to produce and disseminate, in an effective, efficient and independent manner, high-quality official statistical information relevant for the whole society.»21
3. Statistics Portugal (INE) Where are we? Since 2007, free access to and re-use of data is a keystone of INE's dissemination policy. By promoting the widest possible use of statistical data, it helps to establish official statistics as the preferred source of data on society and economy, and it enables citizens and businesses to make use of the data which they have provided and paid for. As a general principle, statistics can be downloaded from the INE website and they can be re-used for any purpose, including commercial purposes, so long as INE is mentioned as the source of the data. No charge is made for data and, organisations which are reusing data, are not required to sign any licence agreement.»22
3. Statistics Portugal (INE) Where are we? Through the website, INE makes it possible to view and extract a large amount of data using the the Database Explorer (bddxplorer) which focuses on displaying the data in a user customisable way with Tables and Graphs. Users may also download tables associated with any pressrelease and also download tables associated with any available publication (XLS, CSV). The combination of freely accessible data and lack of restrictions on re-use of data means that INE is already in line with the principles of the open data movement and with the European Commission's initiatives to open up access to public sector information (PSI) in the EU.»23
Statistics Portugal (INE) Dados.gov A portal that publishes and aggregates the information produced by the public administration in open formats that can be read and reused by any citizen.»24
3. Statistics Portugal (INE) Where to move on? (under discussion) As much information as possible should be available as open data More geographical data, especially small area data, should be provided Microdata should be available (especially for research purposes) Metadata should be easily available and easily usable Better technical interfaces are needed Solve how to find the information issue»25
4. Conclusions»26
4. Conclusions We clearly see a shift in the way people are consuming statistics; users are becoming more and more demanding. Making data available in machine-understandable formats using open standards and metadata enables external users to easily pick up the data and integrate it into their own specific visualization tools for further dissemination. This enhances the visibility of the data and allows INE to reach a much broader audience with tools specifically targeted for such audiences.»27
4. Conclusions People will make their own decisions on what they want to use our data for, and how they want to present it. As a data producer we will not always be able to respond to this increasing demand for visualization of statistical data. Therefore, we believe we will have to focus more on supplying timely data in formats that can be easily re-used.»28
Thank you Statistics and Open Data Statistics Portugal, João Poças (joao.pocas@ine.pt) Lisbon, November, 5th 2013»29