Ireland Continued Excellence in the 2024 Open Data Maturity Report

Authors: Derilinx

Ireland Continued Excellence in the 2024 Open Data Maturity Report

Ireland continues to excel in the Open Data Maturity Report, securing a top spot in the 2024 edition.

Discover how Ireland’s comprehensive policies, robust portal, high-quality data, and impactful reuse cases contribute to its impressive ranking.

General overview

The Open Data Maturity Report evaluates European countries’ progress in open data, assessing performance across four dimensions: policy, portal, quality, and impact. In 2024, 34 countries participated, highlighting best practices, areas of growth, and comparative rankings.

The following figure shows the top 10 ODM scores for 2024 (click on the image to see full list):

Overall maturity scores for the top 10 ranked countries in 2024, from highest scoring to lowest scoring. 

Highlights from the full results include the following points:

• A total of 18 countries increased their ODM scores year-on-year; one country maintained the same overall score as in 2023, while 15 countries experienced a decline in their maturity scores.
• Maturity scores remain concentrated at the higher end of the scale, with most countries achieving scores above 73%.
• The Member States sustained their average maturity score at 83%, unchanged from 2023.
• The top-performing Member States are France (100%), Poland (98%), and Slovakia (96%). Among EFTA countries, Norway leads with a score of 89%, while Ukraine stands out as the most mature candidate country with 97%.
• The most significant improvements were recorded by Latvia (+10 percentage points), Croatia (+9 pp), Serbia (+9 pp), and Czechia (+6 pp).

Ireland’s Achievements in 2024

Ireland recovered its position as a trend setter,                                                                          

achieving high scores in all dimensions (Policy 99%, Portal 96%, Impact 97%, Quality 88%)

and continuing its role as one of Europe’s leaders in open data.                                                       

Policy: Building a Strong Foundation

Ireland achieved a near-perfect score of 99.2%, tying with Czechia and Cyprus for second place in this dimension.

• Policy Framework: Ireland’s “open by default” principle ensures that all non-sensitive public data is accessible proactively. This approach was solidified in the 2023–2027 national strategy, which introduced iterative updates based on stakeholder feedback.
• Governance Excellence: The Open Data Governance Board and a dedicated open data unit continue to drive robust policy execution. Regular workshops and stakeholder consultations further strengthen the framework.
• Training Initiatives: Ireland’s consistent focus on capacity building for public sector employees ensures effective data management and publication practices. These efforts were expanded in 2024 to include updated training modules.
• Reuse: Ireland has measures in place to support the reuse of open data by both the public and private sectors. ​

Highlight from Ireland – iterative development and continuous improvement

Ireland employs an iterative process to developing and updating its national open data strategy, emphasising continuous improvement. The Open Data Unit collaborates with a stakeholder working group to draft the strategy, which outlines specific goals, objectives and action plans. After incorporating public feedback on the draft, the strategy is finalised and submitted for review and approval by the governance board and other stakeholders before being presented to the cabinet for government endorsement.

Once approved, the Open Data Unit oversees the implementation of the strategy’s initiatives, collaborating with various government agencies and stakeholders. The unit actively monitors user needs and collects feedback from data publishers and users to ensure that the strategy remains effective. This ongoing communication facilitates the identification of necessary revisions to adapt to evolving needs and challenges, initiating a new development cycle.

The most recent updates to the strategy, covering 2023 to 2027, focus on three key pillars: supporting data publishers, maintaining the open data platform and engaging users. This shift towards a more user-centric approach includes strengthening communication channels between data publishers and users to better tailor data offerings to their needs.

Source: Open Data Maturity Report 2024

Compared to 2023, Ireland’s performance in the policy dimension remains exceptionally strong, demonstrating sustained excellence in strategy and implementation.

Portal: Innovation & Usability

Ireland scored 96% in the portal dimension, a slight increase of 0.7 percentage points from last year, maintaining its high ranking from 2023 despite stricter assessment criteria this year.

• Enhanced Features: The national portal now supports real-time data access, including updates on electric vehicle charging stations. It also includes APIs and SPARQL endpoints for programmatic data access.
• User Support: Comprehensive guides for publishers ensure high-quality, standardized data uploads.

• Feedback: Mechanisms for users to provide general feedback and feedback on specific datasets. ​

• Planned Upgrades: Ireland aims to introduce data visualization tools in the coming year, allowing users to create custom charts and insights directly on the platform.

This year, Ireland retained its focus on user-centric improvements, aligning with its 2023 commitment to enhance discoverability and usability.

Quality: Ensuring Data Excellence

Ireland scored 88.1% in the quality dimension, with a slight increase of 0.6 percentage points from last year.

• Metadata Compliance: Ireland adheres strictly to DCAT-AP standards, ensuring datasets are interoperable and easily reusable. The Data Audit tool automatically validate metadata quality.
• Automation and Monitoring: Over half of metadata updates are now automated, reflecting an improvement from 2023. Regular quality checks ensure datasets are machine-readable, properly licensed, and up to date.

Highlight from Ireland – automated audit tool for DCAT-AP

In Ireland, the national open data portal, data.gov.ie, fully adheres to the DCAT-AP framework to ensure interoperability and consistency with international open data standards. Compliance with DCAT-AP is mandated for all data published on the platform, which is outlined in the portal’s technical framework and the publishing guidelines.

To ensure compliance, the portal advocates using URIs, which play a crucial role in improving data discovery and interoperability across platforms. Additionally, the portal provides an audit tool specifically designed to validate datasets against DCAT-AP standards. This tool checks for missing mandatory properties, verifies the correct use of controlled vocabularies and ensures adherence to the DCAT-AP schema.

Moreover, the portal offers a range of training resources to support data providers in creating highquality, DCAT-AP-compliant metadata. These resources include best practices, examples and tutorials, all aimed at enhancing the quality and interoperability of published datasets. Through these measures, data.gov.ie ensures that all published data meets international standards, facilitating better data sharing and reuse.

Source: Open Data Maturity Report 2024

Ireland’s efforts to strengthen metadata quality and compliance show continuity with its 2023 focus on efficiency and precision.

Impact: Measuring and Maximising Results

Ireland achieved 96.6% in the impact dimension, a significant increase of 9.9 percentage points from last year, reflecting its leadership in tracking and promoting open data reuse.

• Reuse Metrics: Ireland continues to monitor how open data is used across sectors, classifying reuse cases according to categories such as environmenta, social, and economic impact, and gathering feedback to inform future strategies.
• Support for Innovation: Initiatives like the Open Data Engagement Fund provide grants to projects that leverage open data for societal and economic benefits.
• Community Outreach: Ireland’s workshops and consultations with stakeholders ensure the data ecosystem remains dynamic and responsive.

Compared to 2023, Ireland has made steady progress in capturing the tangible benefits of open data, demonstrating how its strategies translate into real-world impact.

Ireland’s sustained excellence in the 2024 Open Data Maturity Report reflects its commitment to transparency, innovation, and collaboration. By continuously refining its policies, upgrading its portal, and maintaining rigorous quality standards, Ireland sets a benchmark for the European open data landscape.

In 2024, following the Open Data Maturity Questionnaire, Ireland introduced significant enhancements to its portal. Notably, the new High-Value Datasets (HVDs) functionality enables publishers to designate datasets as high-value within their respective categories. These datasets are then automatically harvested by the European Data Portal, streamlining the open data publishing process while ensuring compliance with all standards.

As the country builds on its strong foundations, it remains well-positioned to further its leadership, driving impactful data use for public benefit in the years to come.