Launch of Open Data Engagement fund - blog by Emer Coleman, Chair of the Open Data Governance Board

As Chair of the Open Data Governance Board I am delighted to see the launch of the Open Governance Engagement Fund which was developed by the Board in conjunction with the Open Data Unit in the Department of Public Expenditure & Reform.   This is a terrific opportunity for those of you interested in Open Data and in the Open Data initiative to put on your ‘thinking caps’ and find innovative ways to make use of the datasets currently available on the Open Data portal. 

Since the onset of the Open Data initiative in 2014 significant progress has been made in promoting the use of Open Data.  The national portal data.gov.ie has been significantly enhanced since it was put in place in 2014 and currently links to some 4,500 datasets from 90 publishers.   It also now features a ‘Suggest a Dataset’ function where you can suggest datasets that you would like to see available on the portal.

Now that there are a significant number of datasets available for reuse, the Open Data Governance Board is concentrating on promoting the usage of the data and we see the launch of a competitive open data engagement fund as an innovative way to achieve this.  The fund is designed to provide support towards improving the availability and usage of data on the portal by supporting the organisation of events/seminars, sponsoring competitions, organisation of hackathons and the development of apps etc.

Applications can be made by any organisation or individual. This includes inter alia a public body, business, research body, educational body or civil society group.

I would encourage anyone interested in Open Data to apply by completing the application form and sending it on to opendata@per.gov.ie by Wednesday 16^th November, 2016.

Successful applicants will report on their activity for example via this portal blog post and, where applicable, will be required to have their project developed into a use case for promotion of the open data initiative or other promotional activity as determined by the ODGB.

Ireland rated as ‘a trendsetter’ in Open Data

I am also delighted to report that Ireland has ranked very highly in a recently published report by the European Portal on how European countries have developed their Open Data Maturity since 2015.  Ireland has in fact scored overall third place in terms of Open Data Maturity Assessment across the EU28+ countries assessed, which is a terrific achievement.   The measurement is built on two key indicators -Open Data Readiness and Portal Maturity,

The overall Open Data Maturity measure groups countries into different clusters: Beginners, Followers, Fast Trackers and Trend Setters. Spain (91.4% total) remains the most important Trend Setter in terms of Open Data Maturity, followed by France (85.8% total), Ireland (79.9% total), the Netherlands (78.7% total) and Austria (78.0% total).

The report, compiled by Capgemini Consulting on behalf of the Open Data portal concludes on a series of recommendations, providing countries with guidance to further improve Open Data maturity.  The full report is available here.

The Irish factsheet is available here