1. OPEN DATA IN FLANDERS
17 Feb 2014
Noël Van Herreweghe

2. Open Data in Flanders – the road behind us
Minister Bourgeois
Round Table
2010
OPEN DATA

3. Open Data in Flanders – the road behind us
2011

4. 1. Open Data is the norm at the Flemish government
2. Re-use of this data is permitted, also for commercial purposes
3. Open Data makes use of open standards
4. Open data from authentic data sources
5. Open data using an integrative approach
6. VO business data in a central repository

5. Open Data in Flanders – the long walk to being “open”
2012 - 2013

7. 2012
2013
VLAAMS OPEN DATA ACTIEPLAN
Noël Van Herreweghe
Vlaamse Overheid
14-11-2012

8. 2012
2013

10. The Flemish Open Data Platform
VLAAMS OPEN DATA PLATFORM

13. PSI Directive - 2003
PSI Directive - 2013

14. Vlaamse Innovatie Projecten

19. The promised land
A bright and
sunny future?
PLANS

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Too expensive
There’s no business case
There’s no commercial value
It’s private
It’s secret
It’s not ours, and we don’t know who’s data it is
No idea what the quality of the data is
We don’t know where to find it
It’s not our job
It isn’t in the right format
I am not authorised
People are going to misuse it
Image damage for the minister
We not ready for this
Image loss for Government
The data file is too big
Not enough bandwidth
This is a first step
We can’t find it, we have no access
It is out of date / too old
We have it on paper
We don’t know if it’s legal
Management says no
We never did this before
Who is going to use this anyway

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No value in it
No time / no resources
We will open up (but adapt 90%)
It’s incorrect
Commercially sensitive
It is dangerous when linked
People are going to make the wrong conclusions
This is going to start a wrong discussion
We can’t say whether we have it or we don’t
We know the data is wrong, and people will tell us where it is wrong, then we'd waste
resources inputting the corrections people send us
Our IT suppliers will charge us a fortune to do an ad hoc data extract
Our website cannot hold files this large
it's not ours and we don't have authorisation from the data owner
We've already published the data (but it's unfindable/unusable)
People may download and cache the data and it will be out of date when they reuse it
We don't collect it regularly
Too many people will want to download it, which will cause our servers to fail
People would get upset
It’s very sensitive information
We are not ready for this
Tell us who is going to use it and we will make it open
Etc..

22. Our future plans can be summerised as such:
1. We are going to keep working on quality. The quality of
everything we do, the quality of the datasets, the quality
of our platform, and so on and so forth..
2. The service we offer to our partners and customers, be it
internal organisations at the Flemish, be it
citizins, businesses or otherwise..
3. Reliability. People need to be able to rely on us, rely on
the availability of the datasets, a single point of
contact, constant attention to detail.

23. The promised land
A bright and
sunny future?
CHALLENGES

24. Some of our challenges:
1.The quality of our datasets
2.Licensing: proper usage of licensing of Public data is
essential. The more Open Data activities continue, the
clearer this rule becomes. What distinguishes Open Data
from "mere" transparency is reuse
3.Privacy issues
4.Continued co-operation amongst open data actors and
open data champions instead of competing against each
other
5.Hoping that organizations working with open data or
facilitating open data efforts are going to work with us
instead of agains us
6.Keeping entities from building their own applications
7.Finding the necessary budget under present economical
conditions

25. focus
The user community
Open Access
Open Data & Mobility
3 oktober 2014

26. noel.vanherreweghe@bz.vlaanderen.be
www.vlaanderen.be/opendata
https://twitter.com/#!/opendataforum
Linkedin: opendataforum