Launch of international open data week, promoted by Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism

The week during which Madrid becomes the global open data capital began on Monday morning. Over 30 events in this sector will be held, culminating with the IV International Open Data Conference (IODC16) on 6 and 7 October. This is the most important annual open data event held in the world and will be held for the first time in Europe under the slogan 'Global Objectives, Local Impact'.

The week, organised by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism via the State Secretariat of Telecommunications and the Information Society and the public body Red.es, began with the VI Encuentro Aporta, which highlighted the importance of coordinating and standardising open data for release. This aspect is key to Spain maintaining its international position in the field of open data.

The State Secretary for Telecommunications and the Information Society, Víctor Calvo-Sotelo, officially opened the Encuentro Aporta on Monday morning. In his speech, Víctor Calvo-Sotelo stated that the joint efforts by Spanish authorities mean that Spain occupies a leading international position in this field. Public sector data are a high-quality asset that opens new opportunities for creating value in a digital society, such as smart cities or the promotion of language technologies.

IV International Open Data Conference, 6 and 7 October

Following the third such conference in Ottawa (Canada), the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism - together with the World Bank, the Canadian Government's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Open Data for Development Network (OD4D) - is organising the IV International Open Data Conference (IODC16).

Under the slogan 'Global Objectives, Local Impact' and over the course of two days, over 1,000 people will be able to attend 80 sessions from close on 250 speakers from over 40 countries who will present their work and thoughts on the importance of open data as a factor of great value for 24 highly varied sectors, such as healthcare, the environment, journalism, agriculture, education, transport and smart cities.

A number of other cross-cutting issues will also be discussed, such as standardisation, training and learning, the resolution of certain problems, and the mechanisms for measuring and evaluating open data.

The re-use of data has become an increasingly important resource for the public, who use it in applications that benefit their daily lives. With that in mind, various practical cases will be presented at the conference that demonstrate how the use of data makes life easier and democratises access to information: their use for mapping areas prone to flooding; for knowing how best to invest public money or channel donations during a natural disaster; the visualisation of prices in the medicine market; offering local information (such as available parking spaces, air quality or noise levels); nutrition; or the impact of tropical deforestation on climate change, among others.

More events scheduled at IODC16

Of the 30-plus events scheduled at IODC16, the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism is also co-organising three sectoral meetings on 5 October related to the opening up of data in the fields of culture, natural language and smart cities.

The Open Data and Linguistic Processing Systems Workshop will focus on the potential benefits of combining open data and language technologies, and will discuss the social, economic, legal and technical challenges this poses. Medialab-Prado will attend the Open Cities Summit, the aim of which is to understand how cities and their citizens are implementing measures based on open data. Finally, the Spanish National Library will host Open Data & Culture to debate the challenge faced by cultural institutions in launching the European Re-use of Public Sector Information Directive, which is expanding its scope to libraries (including universities), museums and archives.

The value of open data

Open data generate a real impact on job creation, the provision of citizen-adapted services and the development of innovative solutions. The European Commission report entitled Creating Value through Open Data shows that the re-use of data enables 7,000 lives to be saved each year by improving healthcare responses, energy consumption to be cut by 16% and accidents on European roads to be reduced by 5.5%.

Furthermore, open data constitute a valuable raw material for offering solutions in such key sectors as agriculture, food, education and healthcare services.