The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where over 300 member organisations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C’s mission is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web. Tim Berners-Lee OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA and others created W3C as an industry consortium dedicated to building consensus around Web technologies. Sir Tim remains the Director of W3C which employs technical staff fully committed to working on tasks through four hosts: ERCIM (for Europe), MIT (for the Americas), Beihang University (for China) and Keio University (for Asia).
The Public Research Centre Henri Tudor (TUDOR) is dedicated to the support of research, development, innovation and technology transfer in different technological domains including ICT, health, environment and materials. The Tudor Public Research centre is a Research and Technology Organisation (RTO) member from the EARTO. The department of Service Science and Innovation (SSI) has been involved in multiple international projects, including the INTEROP network of excellence and the Net-EUCEN network on user centricity in eGovernance. It is investigating issues related to the role of open data in the development of innovative services, including through gaming technologies. The SSI department supports the Luxembourg administrations in its international digital cooperation, in the scope of the EU projects STORK2 and SPOCS.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is a network of member firms with a strong presence in all EU Member States. It has a solid experience of working with European public and private organisations in matters of assurance, consulting, tax, and legal services. In the field of Public Sector Information, PwC is currently the contractor for the Open Data Support project of the European Commission, which aims at improving the cross-border searchability of datasets listed on local and national Open Data portals. PwC also provides services to the ISA Programme of the European Commission on semantic interoperability. Working for both private and public sector organisations, PwC has hands-on experience in the field of licensing, pricing, publishing, interoperability, and cataloguing of public sector information.
Institute “Mihajlo Pupin” (IMP is the leading Serbian R&D institution in ICT, as well as the biggest and oldest ICT institute in Southeastern Europe. The R&D profile represents a synthesis of scientific and expert knowledge in the broad areas of: electronics, automation, process control, computers, telecommunications, digital signal processing, information systems and robotics. PUPIN has 15 years' experience in design, implementation and maintenance of information systems based on Internet/Intranet technologies for several Serbian governmental organizations including the Ministry of Finance, Ministry for Telecommunications and Information Society, Ministry of Science, Serbian Business Registry, the Agency for the Prevention of Money Laundering, etc. In the FP7 LOD2 project framework, IMP is currently taking part in Open Data initiatives for different Serbian governmental organizations.
MTA SZTAKI is the Institute for Computer Science and Control of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, founded in 1972. The department involved in the project is the Department of Distributed Systems (DSD). DSD is an active member of the digital library research community in Europe and runs the Hungarian office of W3C. DSD also performs applied research for large multinational companies such as RICOH (Japan) in the area of collaborative systems and services. SZTAKI DSD has successfully taken part in more than 15 EU R&D projects, including: VISIONAIR Advanced Infrastructure for Research, S-Cube: European Network of Excellence in Software Services and Systems, DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries, CORES: A Forum on Shared Metadata Vocabularies.
Forum Virium Helsinki (FVH) is not for profit organization for research and development of digital services especially in the public/private collaboration. FVH belongs to the City of Helsinki Group and currently has 20 member organizations: corporations, public sector bodies and SMEs. It participates in several Smart city projects – both national and international. It is the coordinator in Smart City Service Development Kit (CitySDK) and partner in Commons4Europe, Open Cities and Apps4Europe. In the Open Data realm FVH has contributed greatly to opening of the public sector data in Helsinki Region. FVH coordinates Helsinki Region Infoshare, a joint venture with 16 Helsinki region municipalities, gathering regional public data and opening the data for developers through a linked data catalogue and promoting open data through seminars and app contests.
Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI) aims to strengthen the government's work in renewing the Norwegian public sector and improve the organisation and efficiency of government administration. Difi works to ensure that government administration in Norway is characterised by values of excellence, efficiency, user-orientation, transparency and democracy. We aim to develop the organisation and leadership of the public sector, with coordination among public authorities and services. Our tasks include: providing assistance with reorganisation processes in the public sector; developing a good national information policy; encouraging coordinated and cost-efficient use of ICT within the public sector; making public information and services more accessible for citizens and public agencies. Difi is overseen by the Ministry of Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs (FAD).
University of Economics, Prague (UEP) is the largest Czech university focused on economics and business. The joint research group of Dept. of Information Technology and Dept. of Information and Knowledge Engineering, which already carried out several Linked Data and Open Data activities at both national and international level, will participate in this project. Most notably, the group is engaged in the EU FP7 LOD2 project (among other, as leader of a use case in Public Procurement and organizer of a Linked Data Mining Challenge) and set up the Czech instance of the CKAN catalogue. Members of the group co-authored the Open Data Cataloguing Strategy of the Czech public administration and organised Linked/Open Data events and meetings at various levels of public administration, from Ministries through the Statistical Office to the Office of the Government.
The Public Sector ICT unit of the Ministry of Finance Finland (VM) is responsible for the overall development of public administration information management, e-Government and corporate data, for information management governance in central government and for the coordination of joint development projects in Finland. Public sector ICT promotes information management cooperation between central and local government, formulates joint functional and technical solutions and methods and is in charge of overall development of information security in public administration as well as data security governance in central government.
University of Zagreb (FOI), The Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI) is a medium-sized faculty belonging to the University of Zagreb (UniZg). It is considered the leading higher education institution in Croatia to provide education in applied information technology and information sciences. UniZg is the oldest and the biggest university in South-Eastern Europe consisting of 29 faculties, 3 art academies, and the Centre for Croatian Studies. With over 70,000 full-time undergraduate and postgraduate students, it represents the strongest teaching and research institution in Croatia and one of the most important higher institutions in the South-Eastern Europe. FOI has more than 10 years' experience in e-governance and e-business. FOI has provided support to the Croatian Government in development of the national interoperability framework, drafting strategy for e-business development, as piloting training on e-government for public servants.
Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) is the central driver of the Government’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) policy, programmes and initiatives in Malta. MITA’s role is to deliver and implement the assigned programmes as set out in the national ICT strategy as directed by the ministry responsible for information technology related services. MITA manages the implementation of IT programmes in Government to enhance public service delivery and provides the infrastructure needed to execute ICT services to Government. MITA is also responsible to propagate further use of ICT in society and economy and to promote and deliver programmes to enhance ICT education and the use of ICT as a learning tool.
Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic (MFSR) is a public body responsible for the areas of finance (including state budget, taxes and customs) and information society (general legislation, strategies, e-Government, standardization, information security, internet governance, etc.). The Ministry has mainly a role of legislator and regulator and is a body belonging to central government. In the field of open data it defines mandatory and recommended standards for open data and for publishing, accessibility and availability of public data in electronic environment and works in strong cooperation with the public body responsible for preparation of data.gov.sk portal.
The University of the Aegean (UAEGEAN) is an international research-oriented university. UAEGEAN is an inspiring, innovative, socially committed institution, embodying the concept of a 'university- network' operating in Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, Syros, Lemnos and Athens. It pursues a strong and lasting collaboration with academic and research institutions, public sector organizations and innovation-oriented enterprises from Greece, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Members of the laboratory are actively participating in ICT policy, research and standardisation in European Union and internationally (EU/EC, FP6/FP7, CIP/PSP, CEN-ISSS, SEMIC.EU, W3C, IFIP, AIS). Acquired knowhow is channelled in the creation of vocational and academic training material, and the implementation of high quality academic work in the domain of information systems.
The Ministry of Finances and Public Administrations (MINHAP) is responsible for the preparation and implementation of Government action in the National Government. Within the ministry, the DG of Administrative Modernisation, Procedures and for the promotion of eGovernment' conducts relevant studies, sets up action programmes and disseminates good practice cases, ensuring cooperation among all levels of Government and raising awareness of the necessary tools for developing eGovernment. Jointly with the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, MINHAP is responsible of the open data and Reuse of PSI policies. These two ministries promote the open data culture inside the Government and maintain close relations with the open data community through regular meetings. They have conducted several studies on the economic impact of the Reuse of PSI in the past two years. The National PSI Catalogue Portal is also one of its responsibilities.
Latvijas Universitātes Matemātikas un informātikas institūts (Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science), IMCS, established in 1959, is a research institute at the University of Latvia with 3 core research areas: Computer Science, Mathematics and E-Infrastructure. Its research directions in Computer Science include semantic web technologies, computational linguistics, graph theory and visual information processing, complex system modelling, and bioinformatics. The institute has more than 200 employees, more than half of them in research positions. IMCS supports teaching at the University of Latvia and hosts its Master's Degree programme in Computer Science. The institute is also involved in commercial software development (systems modelling tools, network visualization, etc.).
Agência para a Modernização Administrativa IP, the Agency for the Public Services Reform, IP (AMA) is under the Presidency of Council of Ministers and is the central public entity responsible for the Portuguese public administration reform. It develops initiatives of administrative modernization and simplification as well as projects of eGovernment, collaboration networks and public services centred in citizens and companies’ needs. AMA’s goal is to identify, develop and assess programmes, projects and strategic actions, and to coordinate, manage and evaluate the system of public services distribution as set by the Portuguese government. AMA leads projects such as the Platform of Interoperability for the Public Administration, Citizen Card, Open Data Portal, One-Stop-Shops, Business Point-of-Single-Contact, Citizen Portal, amongst other key projects on Public Sector Modernization.
Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale (AgID) is responsible for implementing the Italian Digital Agenda and has the mandate to foster a wide usage of ICT technologies in Italy; to develop technical requirements and guidelines; to enable cooperation among information systems of governmental bodies and between these systems and the European Union; to promote and disseminate information initiatives as well as training for citizens and civil servants; to monitor the implementation of ICT plans n public administrations in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. In addition, AgID is the national point of reference for the metadata related to the geographic data and services, one of the components of the geographical information established with the INSPIRE Directive.
The Danube University Krems (DUK) focuses on providing continuing education in the spirit of the EUCIS-LLL programme. The research focus of the centre for E-Governance is at the intersection of ICT and public administration. Active co-operations exist with the Austrian chancellery (BKA); the ministry of finance; the federal Austrian computing centre; the city of Vienna; the Austria associations of municipalities; and the the association of municipality leaders. BKA appointed the centre to define a public sector open data infrastructure and to work out a public sector practice model for e-participation and social media usage; the city of Vienna mandated an ex-ante assessment of the Open Government strategy. It is also advisor to the Cooperation Open Government Data Austria, which established a national framework for open public sector data. The co-operation is endorsed by the Austrian chancellery and the outcome is on the way to becoming a national recommendation.
CTIC Technology Centre is a private non-profit foundation for technological research and innovation within the ICT field. Its mission is helping companies and public sector to improve their competitiveness through the generation of technological knowledge by means of R&D&I activities and high value-added services, with specific experience in the fields of Semantic Web and Open Data. In the field of Open Government, CTIC’s focus is the openness of public data, working on promotion of the use of open standards and electronic public services in order to encourage, consolidate and integrate public assets, as well as to improve interoperability and facilitate the reuse of PSI. CTIC has deployed more than a dozen local, regional and international Open Data initiatives, including the complete national Open Data strategy and implementation. CTIC, host of the W3C Spain Office, is leading the W3C Open Data Spain Community Group, for Spanish PSI stakeholders.
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is the merger of the former Universität Karlsruhe (TH) and the former Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. With about 8000 employees and an annual budget of 700 million Euros, KIT is the largest technical research institution within Germany. The Institute AIFB (Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods) at KIT is one of the world-leading institutions in Semantic Web technology. Approximately 20 researchers of the knowledge management research group are establishing theoretical results and scalable implementations for the field, closely collaborating with the sister institute KSRI (Karlsruhe Service Research Institute), a number of start-up companies like Audriga or Calpano, and the Knowledge Management group at the FZI Research Centre for Information Technologies.
Peter Krantz AB (PK) provides information and consulting services primarily to government organisations in the areas of open government, open data, project management and software development. Projects typically involve solving problems in the domains of semantic interoperability, linked data and information architecture. Clients include both local and central government organizations. Peter Krantz AB also provides information services based on open government data.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. is the leading non-profit organization for institutes of applied research in Germany. Fraunhofer FOKUS, the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, was established in 1988 in Berlin. Over 500 employees are involved to realize user-centric technological solutions for the information society. As an independent research body, the institute explores how communication networks will contribute to a more convenient and more secure living. Thus, the institute addresses important challenges in the society, including access to information, economic and sustainable use of resources, smart mobility and a modern governmental administration that is efficient as well as accessible from everywhere. . It contributes to many R&D projects on open data, which are described at FHG' Open Data research portal and runs the annual International Open Data Dialog.
Digital Birmingham (BCC) is part of Birmingham City Council and was established in 2006 to ensure the benefits of digital and new emerging technologies are available to all people, businesses and sectors in the city. Digital Birmingham is leading the Council’s Smart City Vision and is working with representatives from key business, research, educational, health and community sector organisations to develop collaborative partnerships and approaches to ensure that the City maximises the opportunities created by its key assets, citizens and businesses. It is determined to see Birmingham become a Smart City which will be critical in enhancing the region's economic opportunities, as well as promoting greater social inclusion, enterprise and wellbeing.
The Nexa Center for Internet & Society is a multidisciplinary policy-support-oriented research centre at Politecnico di Torino (POLITO) (Computer Science Dept.), with significant experience Open Government and a strong focus on Open Contents. In recent years, Nexa Center has been coordinating COMMUNIA, the European thematic Network on the Public Domain in Europe, and LAPSI, the European Commission-funded thematic network on Public Sector Information, whose role in the field has been explicitly recognized by the EC when presenting its ‘Open Data Strategy’. The Nexa Center is besides partner in the Open-DAI project, aimed at supporting open publication of datasets from selected European public administrations, and participates in the EINS EU Network of Excellence on Internet Science. The Nexa Center is one of the main advisors of the Italian Piedmont Region in the regional Open Data strategy.
The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open data and open content in all their forms. It is an international leader in its field and has extensive experience in building tools and community around open material. The Foundation’s software development work includes some of the most innovative and widely acclaimed projects in the area. For example, its CKAN project is the world’s leading open source data portal platform – used by data.gov, data.gov.uk, the European Commission’s open data portal, and numerous national, regional and local portals from Austria to Brazil. Its award winning OpenSpending project enables users to explore over 13 million government spending transactions from around the world. It has an active global network which includes Working Groups and Local Groups in dozens of countries – including groups, ambassadors and partners in 21 of Europe’s 27 Member States.
The Estonian Information Systems Authority (EISA) coordinates the development and administration of the state’s information system, organises activities related to information security, and handles the security incidents that have occurred in Estonian computer networks. EISA advises the providers of public services on how to manage their information systems as per requirements and monitors them. In addition, EISA is a final beneficiary of the structural assistance of the European Union. EISA is a subdivision of the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. Our main duties include: executing supervision over information systems used to provide vital services; organising activities related to the state’s information system; coordinating the development projects of the state’s information system, preparing international projects and participating in them; maintaining the state portal eesti.ee.
]init[ was founded in Germany in 1995. Today it has grown to employ more than 200 employees, and has offices in Berlin, Cologne, Mainz, Munich, Abu Dhabi, Brussels and Delhi. ]init[ designs and implements tailor-made solutions for governments, public authorities, businesses, and NGOS, drawing on long-standing experience and comprehensive skills in e-government and e-business. ]init[ constantly strives to find innovative solution paths for its clients, and follows new technologies and trends.
The PSI Alliance (PSIA) was established to encourage the public sector to maintain a trading environment that is fair and equitable, in particular in relation to the licensing and re-use of public sector information. Our members are private sector companies and associations who are committed to working with PSI holders towards the maintenance and development of a vibrant, information-driven EU economy that ultimately works to the benefit of the public sector, private sector and the end consumer. The PSI Alliance feels strongly that re-users of PSI should work together to make their voice heard. The PSI industry encounters different barriers in every country, but companies can gain by sharing experiences and discussing common problems in a dedicated forum.
The Scottish Government (SCOT): The devolved government for Scotland is responsible for most of the issues of day-to-day concern to the people of Scotland, including health, education, justice, rural affairs, and transport. The Scottish Government was known as the Scottish Executive when it was established in 1999 following the first elections to the Scottish Parliament. The current administration was formed after elections in May 2011. The Government's Purpose: To focus government and public services on creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth.
The Open Data Institute (ODI), founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, was officially launched in December 2012 as an independent, non-profit, non-partisan company. The institute seeks to offer the catalyst for the evolution of an open data culture, to create economic, environmental and social value. We have a remit to convene world class experts to collaborate, incubate, nurture and mentor new ideas and promote innovation. The ODI has three key objectives: to unlock the supply of open data; to stimulate the demand for open data; to enable and develop capability. As an organisation with both public and private backing as well as support from the academic community, it is uniquely placed to convene experts on a range of subjects and to communicate to a broad range of networks the potential and benefit of new ways of working which will enable the dissemination of knowledge.
West University of Timisoara (UVT) is a large university meant to be representative for the West part of Romania. The Computer Science Department hosts a Research Center with Distributed & Parallel Computing, Artificial Intelligence, & Computational Mathematics as main topics of research. The biggest supercomputing center of Romania is managed by the center too. Under UVT affiliation, or under the center’ research spin-off, Institute e-Austria Timisoara, the research team has one of the most successful track of attracting R&D funds from FP7, in Romania, as well in playing a coordination role in FP7 projects (two). Current research projects involving open-data are related to an EC-SF project Romanian-Serbian related to sensor data for water levels and EC-CIP SEED exposing governmental open data for citizens (PSI case).
The Hellenic Ministry of Administrative Reform and E-governance (MAREG) is the public body responsible for initiatives aiming at the simplification of procedures and the reduction of administrative burdens as well as the implementation of government policy on the introduction, application and development of information technology in the Public Sector. It is the competent authority for the supervision of the PSI Directive implementationn and the safeguarding of transparency of the governmental actions. Major initiatives towards this direction include the transparency program diavgeia.gov.gr/en (all government institutions are obliged to upload their decisions on the Internet) as well as the National Open Data Portal (data.gov.gr).
The National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) - Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) was founded in 2003, funded by a CSET grant from SFI, renewed in 2008, and again in 2013 as part of SFI’s INSIGHT Research Centre. The most recent peer review of DERI conducted by SFI concluded that the science and the applications of technology at the Institute were “impressive” and “world class”. NUIG-DERI is one of the main actors in R&D of semantic technologies in the world. It is one of the main actors in research and development of Web technologies with direct research awards in excess of €60 million from SFI, Enterprise Ireland, and EU framework programmes. It has developed and successfully implemented a strategy to “Enable Networked Knowledge” which aims at capitalizing on knowledge as the fuel for our increasingly digital service economy by linking information and exploiting it as the basis for economic productivity.
The Open Group (TOG) is a vendor-neutral, international consortium of more than 400 members where buyers and suppliers of technology are able to agree on technology evolution and interoperability. The Open Group vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™ is to enable access to integrated information, within and among enterprises and public administrations, based on open standards and global interoperability. The Open Group's members represent end user organisations, including leaders in government, health care, commerce, finance, telecommunications and academia, which have combined IT budgets in excess of 22 billion Euros annually. For over 20 years, The Open Group has been one of the industry's flagships for ICT standards, developing a broad experience in the collaborative process of ensuring technology meets the needs of users.
University of La Laguna (ULL), Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, is the largest University in the Canary Islands with 25000 students and around 2000 workers (academics and administrative employees). The research group of the Computer Science Faculty, named Taro: Software Engineering and Data Bases, carries different activities related to Linked Data, OpenData and eGovernment for the local institutions of the island. The group has experience in projects related to reuse of public data. The group experience is in the scope of software engineering, and mostly in model driven engineering. Actual work is the design, analysis and implementation of the Open Data Platform of three differente institutions: Cabildo de Tenerife (island administration), General Foundation of University of La Laguna and the University of La Laguna. As deliverables of the project we develop mobile and web applications to encourage the necessity of Open Data.
AMI Consult (AMI) is a consultancy company specialising in the area of information management and metadata solutions. Most of the work of the company concerns interoperability in an international context for diverse and distributed solutions for information provision and management, covering a range of strategic, technical and organisational aspects. Incorporated in the year 2000 as a Limited Liability Company (Société à responsabilité limitée) and based in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the company provides services in many countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (Europe) Limited (OGC) is a subsidiary of OGC. The non-profit company was formed in 2001 to conduct business in Europe on behalf of OGC’s mission, goals and objectives: promoting the development and use of advanced open standards and techniques to enable the full integration of spatial data and geoprocessing resources into mainstream computing. Supporting interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT is another focus on the OGC's work. The OGC is an international, consensus based and voluntary standards development organisation with 475+ member organisation (private industry, government agencies and public administrations as well as universities and research centres). Additionally a broad worldwide user community is actively referring to, implementing and using OGC Standards on various levels.
Co-ordination Cell Flemish e-Government (CORVE) is the e-government team for the Flemish administration. It initially set up a technical infrastructure and defined standards for the sharing of authentic data between different administrations on the federal, Flemish and local level. This made major improvements in electronic service delivery and reused authentic data from base registries. CORVE also leads the policy formulation of the Flemish government concerning Open Data and PSI, and is setting up an Open Data infrastructure. CORVE works closely with the Open Data efforts at the federal level (Fedict), in the Walloon region (eWBS) and at the local level, i.e. in Flemish cities and communities (V-ICT-OR). CORVE coordinates the Citadel on the Move project which is creating a European open innovation environment using common open data formats and mobile application templates to help citizens generate the ‘Smart City’ services they want and need.
UAB Linked Data (UABLD) is a software consultancy specializing in custom Semantic Web, Linked Data, and XML publishing solutions. It actively contributes to the open-source Graphity project which is a first-of-a-kind Linked Data platform for generic declarative Web development. Graphity showcases features being standardized by the W3C and beyond; it has been deployed in projects in a wide range of domains, from online content management to product information systems. The company set up the first prototype Linked Open Data portal in Lithuania, which integrates scraped data on asset and interest declarations of parliament candidates with municipality public contract and tender data. The portal runs on Graphity platform and cloud RDF triplestore.
The Slovenian Ministry of the Interior and Public Administration (MNZ) is, among others, in charge of the development and implementation of the legislation on transparency (access to information, PSI re-use). MNZ performs continuing promotional and developmental tasks in relation to access to public information, in particular informing the public about the means and conditions for access to and re-use of public information and providing counselling to other bodies. MNZ is in charge for the development and implementation of eGovernment in Slovenia. It is responsible for major projects, like State eGovernment portal, Business portal, eProcurement, eJustice and others. The ministry manages the solutions to support national and EU cross-border interoperability level. MNZ is involved in STORK 2 and SPOCS.
The Federal Chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt Österreich, BKA) is responsible for coordinating general government policy, the public information activities of the Federal Government and the Federal constitution. It represents the Republic of Austria vis-à-vis the Constitutional Court, the Administrative Court, and international law courts. Moreover, it has responsibility for special matters such as women and equality, European policy, e-government, security policy, the civil service, bioethics, data protection, media affairs – excluding criminal media law – and matters pertaining to ethnic groups. In the specific topic of e-government the Federal Chancellery manages the platform Digital Austria and related bodies. The platform Digital Austria is the coordination and strategy committee of the Federal Government for eGovernment in Austria. Since 2012 the Federal Chancellery has managed the central open government data portal data.gv.at, which collects & publishes all open government datasets.
iMinds (previously: IBBT) is an independent research institute founded by the Flemish government to stimulate ICT innovation. The institute brings together companies, authorities, and non-profit organizations to join forces on research projects. iMinds unites more than 1000 researchers from numerous Flemish universities and knowledge centres. It consists of 5 research departments. Each research group is specialized in one or more of the basic competencies of iMinds: networks of the future, advanced software technologies, multimedia and interfaces, policy and law, market issues and usability. Since its establishment in 2004, iMinds has run more than 250 projects, representing a total value of well over 250 million euro. For this application, the iMinds’ research group MMLab from Ghent University will participate.
National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE) is one of the leading Universities in Russia. In 2011 the University has established a centre for Semantic Web and in 2012 agreed to be the host of the W3C office. In the last 2 years NRU HSE and partners (e.g. Avicomp) have been working on Linked Data projects and just recently finished a project with the city of Moscow to create one of the first Open Data catalogues in Russia.
OpenDataFrance (ODF) consists of local authorities at all levels and collects information, blogs, articles etc.
in one place. ODF also facilitates working groups established to work on
common elements of open data projects in France.
The Albanian Institute of Science (AIS) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization
whose mission is to promote research activities that offer solutions to socio-economic problems,
increase transparency and strengthen civic engagement. AIS aims to encourage
enthusiasm about science and innovation among young generations. The
institute is organized around three thematic pillars: eParticipation,
eScience, and Think Tank.
The institute has successfully executed its most prominent project on
transparency through Open Data usability in the country. It has set up and
keeps enriching the Open Data Portal in Albania, the only platform in the
country that provides data from various government institutions and other
sources in open data format. Through the platform open.data.al, AIS has
published hundreds of datasets, analyses and studies on socio-economic
topics, and launched numerous activities with the goal of creating an Open
Data movement.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where over 300 member organisations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C’s mission is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web. Tim Berners-Lee OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA and others created W3C as an industry consortium dedicated to building consensus around Web technologies. Sir Tim remains the Director of W3C which employs technical staff fully committed to working on tasks through four hosts: ERCIM (for Europe), MIT (for the Americas), Beihang University (for China) and Keio University (for Asia).
The Public Research Centre Henri Tudor (TUDOR) is dedicated to the support of research, development, innovation and technology transfer in different technological domains including ICT, health, environment and materials. The Tudor Public Research centre is a Research and Technology Organisation (RTO) member from the EARTO. The department of Service Science and Innovation (SSI) has been involved in multiple international projects, including the INTEROP network of excellence and the Net-EUCEN network on user centricity in eGovernance. It is investigating issues related to the role of open data in the development of innovative services, including through gaming technologies. The SSI department supports the Luxembourg administrations in its international digital cooperation, in the scope of the EU projects STORK2 and SPOCS.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is a network of member firms with a strong presence in all EU Member States. It has a solid experience of working with European public and private organisations in matters of assurance, consulting, tax, and legal services. In the field of Public Sector Information, PwC is currently the contractor for the Open Data Support project of the European Commission, which aims at improving the cross-border searchability of datasets listed on local and national Open Data portals. PwC also provides services to the ISA Programme of the European Commission on semantic interoperability. Working for both private and public sector organisations, PwC has hands-on experience in the field of licensing, pricing, publishing, interoperability, and cataloguing of public sector information.
Institute “Mihajlo Pupin” (IMP is the leading Serbian R&D institution in ICT, as well as the biggest and oldest ICT institute in Southeastern Europe. The R&D profile represents a synthesis of scientific and expert knowledge in the broad areas of: electronics, automation, process control, computers, telecommunications, digital signal processing, information systems and robotics. PUPIN has 15 years' experience in design, implementation and maintenance of information systems based on Internet/Intranet technologies for several Serbian governmental organizations including the Ministry of Finance, Ministry for Telecommunications and Information Society, Ministry of Science, Serbian Business Registry, the Agency for the Prevention of Money Laundering, etc. In the FP7 LOD2 project framework, IMP is currently taking part in Open Data initiatives for different Serbian governmental organizations.
MTA SZTAKI is the Institute for Computer Science and Control of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, founded in 1972. The department involved in the project is the Department of Distributed Systems (DSD). DSD is an active member of the digital library research community in Europe and runs the Hungarian office of W3C. DSD also performs applied research for large multinational companies such as RICOH (Japan) in the area of collaborative systems and services. SZTAKI DSD has successfully taken part in more than 15 EU R&D projects, including: VISIONAIR Advanced Infrastructure for Research, S-Cube: European Network of Excellence in Software Services and Systems, DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries, CORES: A Forum on Shared Metadata Vocabularies.
Forum Virium Helsinki (FVH) is not for profit organization for research and development of digital services especially in the public/private collaboration. FVH belongs to the City of Helsinki Group and currently has 20 member organizations: corporations, public sector bodies and SMEs. It participates in several Smart city projects – both national and international. It is the coordinator in Smart City Service Development Kit (CitySDK) and partner in Commons4Europe, Open Cities and Apps4Europe. In the Open Data realm FVH has contributed greatly to opening of the public sector data in Helsinki Region. FVH coordinates Helsinki Region Infoshare, a joint venture with 16 Helsinki region municipalities, gathering regional public data and opening the data for developers through a linked data catalogue and promoting open data through seminars and app contests.
Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI) aims to strengthen the government's work in renewing the Norwegian public sector and improve the organisation and efficiency of government administration. Difi works to ensure that government administration in Norway is characterised by values of excellence, efficiency, user-orientation, transparency and democracy. We aim to develop the organisation and leadership of the public sector, with coordination among public authorities and services. Our tasks include: providing assistance with reorganisation processes in the public sector; developing a good national information policy; encouraging coordinated and cost-efficient use of ICT within the public sector; making public information and services more accessible for citizens and public agencies. Difi is overseen by the Ministry of Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs (FAD).
University of Economics, Prague (UEP) is the largest Czech university focused on economics and business. The joint research group of Dept. of Information Technology and Dept. of Information and Knowledge Engineering, which already carried out several Linked Data and Open Data activities at both national and international level, will participate in this project. Most notably, the group is engaged in the EU FP7 LOD2 project (among other, as leader of a use case in Public Procurement and organizer of a Linked Data Mining Challenge) and set up the Czech instance of the CKAN catalogue. Members of the group co-authored the Open Data Cataloguing Strategy of the Czech public administration and organised Linked/Open Data events and meetings at various levels of public administration, from Ministries through the Statistical Office to the Office of the Government.
The Public Sector ICT unit of the Ministry of Finance Finland (VM) is responsible for the overall development of public administration information management, e-Government and corporate data, for information management governance in central government and for the coordination of joint development projects in Finland. Public sector ICT promotes information management cooperation between central and local government, formulates joint functional and technical solutions and methods and is in charge of overall development of information security in public administration as well as data security governance in central government.
University of Zagreb (FOI), The Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI) is a medium-sized faculty belonging to the University of Zagreb (UniZg). It is considered the leading higher education institution in Croatia to provide education in applied information technology and information sciences. UniZg is the oldest and the biggest university in South-Eastern Europe consisting of 29 faculties, 3 art academies, and the Centre for Croatian Studies. With over 70,000 full-time undergraduate and postgraduate students, it represents the strongest teaching and research institution in Croatia and one of the most important higher institutions in the South-Eastern Europe. FOI has more than 10 years' experience in e-governance and e-business. FOI has provided support to the Croatian Government in development of the national interoperability framework, drafting strategy for e-business development, as piloting training on e-government for public servants.
Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) is the central driver of the Government’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) policy, programmes and initiatives in Malta. MITA’s role is to deliver and implement the assigned programmes as set out in the national ICT strategy as directed by the ministry responsible for information technology related services. MITA manages the implementation of IT programmes in Government to enhance public service delivery and provides the infrastructure needed to execute ICT services to Government. MITA is also responsible to propagate further use of ICT in society and economy and to promote and deliver programmes to enhance ICT education and the use of ICT as a learning tool.
Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic (MFSR) is a public body responsible for the areas of finance (including state budget, taxes and customs) and information society (general legislation, strategies, e-Government, standardization, information security, internet governance, etc.). The Ministry has mainly a role of legislator and regulator and is a body belonging to central government. In the field of open data it defines mandatory and recommended standards for open data and for publishing, accessibility and availability of public data in electronic environment and works in strong cooperation with the public body responsible for preparation of data.gov.sk portal.
The University of the Aegean (UAEGEAN) is an international research-oriented university. UAEGEAN is an inspiring, innovative, socially committed institution, embodying the concept of a 'university- network' operating in Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, Syros, Lemnos and Athens. It pursues a strong and lasting collaboration with academic and research institutions, public sector organizations and innovation-oriented enterprises from Greece, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Members of the laboratory are actively participating in ICT policy, research and standardisation in European Union and internationally (EU/EC, FP6/FP7, CIP/PSP, CEN-ISSS, SEMIC.EU, W3C, IFIP, AIS). Acquired knowhow is channelled in the creation of vocational and academic training material, and the implementation of high quality academic work in the domain of information systems.
The Ministry of Finances and Public Administrations (MINHAP) is responsible for the preparation and implementation of Government action in the National Government. Within the ministry, the DG of Administrative Modernisation, Procedures and for the promotion of eGovernment' conducts relevant studies, sets up action programmes and disseminates good practice cases, ensuring cooperation among all levels of Government and raising awareness of the necessary tools for developing eGovernment. Jointly with the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, MINHAP is responsible of the open data and Reuse of PSI policies. These two ministries promote the open data culture inside the Government and maintain close relations with the open data community through regular meetings. They have conducted several studies on the economic impact of the Reuse of PSI in the past two years. The National PSI Catalogue Portal is also one of its responsibilities.
Latvijas Universitātes Matemātikas un informātikas institūts (Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science), IMCS, established in 1959, is a research institute at the University of Latvia with 3 core research areas: Computer Science, Mathematics and E-Infrastructure. Its research directions in Computer Science include semantic web technologies, computational linguistics, graph theory and visual information processing, complex system modelling, and bioinformatics. The institute has more than 200 employees, more than half of them in research positions. IMCS supports teaching at the University of Latvia and hosts its Master's Degree programme in Computer Science. The institute is also involved in commercial software development (systems modelling tools, network visualization, etc.).
Agência para a Modernização Administrativa IP, the Agency for the Public Services Reform, IP (AMA) is under the Presidency of Council of Ministers and is the central public entity responsible for the Portuguese public administration reform. It develops initiatives of administrative modernization and simplification as well as projects of eGovernment, collaboration networks and public services centred in citizens and companies’ needs. AMA’s goal is to identify, develop and assess programmes, projects and strategic actions, and to coordinate, manage and evaluate the system of public services distribution as set by the Portuguese government. AMA leads projects such as the Platform of Interoperability for the Public Administration, Citizen Card, Open Data Portal, One-Stop-Shops, Business Point-of-Single-Contact, Citizen Portal, amongst other key projects on Public Sector Modernization.
Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale (AgID) is responsible for implementing the Italian Digital Agenda and has the mandate to foster a wide usage of ICT technologies in Italy; to develop technical requirements and guidelines; to enable cooperation among information systems of governmental bodies and between these systems and the European Union; to promote and disseminate information initiatives as well as training for citizens and civil servants; to monitor the implementation of ICT plans n public administrations in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. In addition, AgID is the national point of reference for the metadata related to the geographic data and services, one of the components of the geographical information established with the INSPIRE Directive.
The Danube University Krems (DUK) focuses on providing continuing education in the spirit of the EUCIS-LLL programme. The research focus of the centre for E-Governance is at the intersection of ICT and public administration. Active co-operations exist with the Austrian chancellery (BKA); the ministry of finance; the federal Austrian computing centre; the city of Vienna; the Austria associations of municipalities; and the the association of municipality leaders. BKA appointed the centre to define a public sector open data infrastructure and to work out a public sector practice model for e-participation and social media usage; the city of Vienna mandated an ex-ante assessment of the Open Government strategy. It is also advisor to the Cooperation Open Government Data Austria, which established a national framework for open public sector data. The co-operation is endorsed by the Austrian chancellery and the outcome is on the way to becoming a national recommendation.
CTIC Technology Centre is a private non-profit foundation for technological research and innovation within the ICT field. Its mission is helping companies and public sector to improve their competitiveness through the generation of technological knowledge by means of R&D&I activities and high value-added services, with specific experience in the fields of Semantic Web and Open Data. In the field of Open Government, CTIC’s focus is the openness of public data, working on promotion of the use of open standards and electronic public services in order to encourage, consolidate and integrate public assets, as well as to improve interoperability and facilitate the reuse of PSI. CTIC has deployed more than a dozen local, regional and international Open Data initiatives, including the complete national Open Data strategy and implementation. CTIC, host of the W3C Spain Office, is leading the W3C Open Data Spain Community Group, for Spanish PSI stakeholders.
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is the merger of the former Universität Karlsruhe (TH) and the former Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. With about 8000 employees and an annual budget of 700 million Euros, KIT is the largest technical research institution within Germany. The Institute AIFB (Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods) at KIT is one of the world-leading institutions in Semantic Web technology. Approximately 20 researchers of the knowledge management research group are establishing theoretical results and scalable implementations for the field, closely collaborating with the sister institute KSRI (Karlsruhe Service Research Institute), a number of start-up companies like Audriga or Calpano, and the Knowledge Management group at the FZI Research Centre for Information Technologies.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. is the leading non-profit organization for institutes of applied research in Germany. Fraunhofer FOKUS, the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, was established in 1988 in Berlin. Over 500 employees are involved to realize user-centric technological solutions for the information society. As an independent research body, the institute explores how communication networks will contribute to a more convenient and more secure living. Thus, the institute addresses important challenges in the society, including access to information, economic and sustainable use of resources, smart mobility and a modern governmental administration that is efficient as well as accessible from everywhere. . It contributes to many R&D projects on open data, which are described at FHG' Open Data research portal and runs the annual International Open Data Dialog.
Digital Birmingham (BCC) is part of Birmingham City Council and was established in 2006 to ensure the benefits of digital and new emerging technologies are available to all people, businesses and sectors in the city. Digital Birmingham is leading the Council’s Smart City Vision and is working with representatives from key business, research, educational, health and community sector organisations to develop collaborative partnerships and approaches to ensure that the City maximises the opportunities created by its key assets, citizens and businesses. It is determined to see Birmingham become a Smart City which will be critical in enhancing the region's economic opportunities, as well as promoting greater social inclusion, enterprise and wellbeing.The Nexa Center for Internet & Society is a multidisciplinary policy-support-oriented research centre at Politecnico di Torino (POLITO) (Computer Science Dept.), with significant experience Open Government and a strong focus on Open Contents. In recent years, Nexa Center has been coordinating COMMUNIA, the European thematic Network on the Public Domain in Europe, and LAPSI, the European Commission-funded thematic network on Public Sector Information, whose role in the field has been explicitly recognized by the EC when presenting its ‘Open Data Strategy’. The Nexa Center is besides partner in the Open-DAI project, aimed at supporting open publication of datasets from selected European public administrations, and participates in the EINS EU Network of Excellence on Internet Science. The Nexa Center is one of the main advisors of the Italian Piedmont Region in the regional Open Data strategy.
The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) is a non-profit organisation founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open data and open content in all their forms. It is an international leader in its field and has extensive experience in building tools and community around open material. The Foundation’s software development work includes some of the most innovative and widely acclaimed projects in the area. For example, its CKAN project is the world’s leading open source data portal platform – used by data.gov, data.gov.uk, the European Commission’s open data portal, and numerous national, regional and local portals from Austria to Brazil. Its award winning OpenSpending project enables users to explore over 13 million government spending transactions from around the world. It has an active global network which includes Working Groups and Local Groups in dozens of countries – including groups, ambassadors and partners in 21 of Europe’s 27 Member States.The Estonian Information Systems Authority (EISA) coordinates the development and administration of the state’s information system, organises activities related to information security, and handles the security incidents that have occurred in Estonian computer networks. EISA advises the providers of public services on how to manage their information systems as per requirements and monitors them. In addition, EISA is a final beneficiary of the structural assistance of the European Union. EISA is a subdivision of the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. Our main duties include: executing supervision over information systems used to provide vital services; organising activities related to the state’s information system; coordinating the development projects of the state’s information system, preparing international projects and participating in them; maintaining the state portal eesti.ee.
]init[ was founded in Germany in 1995. Today it has grown to employ more than 200 employees, and has offices in Berlin, Cologne, Mainz, Munich, Abu Dhabi, Brussels and Delhi. ]init[ designs and implements tailor-made solutions for governments, public authorities, businesses, and NGOS, drawing on long-standing experience and comprehensive skills in e-government and e-business. ]init[ constantly strives to find innovative solution paths for its clients, and follows new technologies and trends.
The PSI Alliance (PSIA) was established to encourage the public sector to maintain a trading environment that is fair and equitable, in particular in relation to the licensing and re-use of public sector information. Our members are private sector companies and associations who are committed to working with PSI holders towards the maintenance and development of a vibrant, information-driven EU economy that ultimately works to the benefit of the public sector, private sector and the end consumer. The PSI Alliance feels strongly that re-users of PSI should work together to make their voice heard. The PSI industry encounters different barriers in every country, but companies can gain by sharing experiences and discussing common problems in a dedicated forum.
The Scottish Government (SCOT): The devolved government for Scotland is responsible for most of the issues of day-to-day concern to the people of Scotland, including health, education, justice, rural affairs, and transport. The Scottish Government was known as the Scottish Executive when it was established in 1999 following the first elections to the Scottish Parliament. The current administration was formed after elections in May 2011. The Government's Purpose: To focus government and public services on creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth.
The Open Data Institute (ODI), founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, was officially launched in December 2012 as an independent, non-profit, non-partisan company. The institute seeks to offer the catalyst for the evolution of an open data culture, to create economic, environmental and social value. We have a remit to convene world class experts to collaborate, incubate, nurture and mentor new ideas and promote innovation. The ODI has three key objectives: to unlock the supply of open data; to stimulate the demand for open data; to enable and develop capability. As an organisation with both public and private backing as well as support from the academic community, it is uniquely placed to convene experts on a range of subjects and to communicate to a broad range of networks the potential and benefit of new ways of working which will enable the dissemination of knowledge.
West University of Timisoara (UVT) is a large university meant to be representative for the West part of Romania. The Computer Science Department hosts a Research Center with Distributed & Parallel Computing, Artificial Intelligence, & Computational Mathematics as main topics of research. The biggest supercomputing center of Romania is managed by the center too. Under UVT affiliation, or under the center’ research spin-off, Institute e-Austria Timisoara, the research team has one of the most successful track of attracting R&D funds from FP7, in Romania, as well in playing a coordination role in FP7 projects (two). Current research projects involving open-data are related to an EC-SF project Romanian-Serbian related to sensor data for water levels and EC-CIP SEED exposing governmental open data for citizens (PSI case).
The Hellenic Ministry of Administrative Reform and E-governance (MAREG) is the public body responsible for initiatives aiming at the simplification of procedures and the reduction of administrative burdens as well as the implementation of government policy on the introduction, application and development of information technology in the Public Sector. It is the competent authority for the supervision of the PSI Directive implementationn and the safeguarding of transparency of the governmental actions. Major initiatives towards this direction include the transparency program diavgeia.gov.gr/en (all government institutions are obliged to upload their decisions on the Internet) as well as the National Open Data Portal (data.gov.gr).
The National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) - Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) was founded in 2003, funded by a CSET grant from SFI, renewed in 2008, and again in 2013 as part of SFI’s INSIGHT Research Centre. The most recent peer review of DERI conducted by SFI concluded that the science and the applications of technology at the Institute were “impressive” and “world class”. NUIG-DERI is one of the main actors in R&D of semantic technologies in the world. It is one of the main actors in research and development of Web technologies with direct research awards in excess of €60 million from SFI, Enterprise Ireland, and EU framework programmes. It has developed and successfully implemented a strategy to “Enable Networked Knowledge” which aims at capitalizing on knowledge as the fuel for our increasingly digital service economy by linking information and exploiting it as the basis for economic productivity.
The Open Group (TOG) is a vendor-neutral, international consortium of more than 400 members where buyers and suppliers of technology are able to agree on technology evolution and interoperability. The Open Group vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™ is to enable access to integrated information, within and among enterprises and public administrations, based on open standards and global interoperability. The Open Group's members represent end user organisations, including leaders in government, health care, commerce, finance, telecommunications and academia, which have combined IT budgets in excess of 22 billion Euros annually. For over 20 years, The Open Group has been one of the industry's flagships for ICT standards, developing a broad experience in the collaborative process of ensuring technology meets the needs of users.
University of La Laguna (ULL), Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, is the largest University in the Canary Islands with 25000 students and around 2000 workers (academics and administrative employees). The research group of the Computer Science Faculty, named Taro: Software Engineering and Data Bases, carries different activities related to Linked Data, OpenData and eGovernment for the local institutions of the island. The group has experience in projects related to reuse of public data. The group experience is in the scope of software engineering, and mostly in model driven engineering. Actual work is the design, analysis and implementation of the Open Data Platform of three differente institutions: Cabildo de Tenerife (island administration), General Foundation of University of La Laguna and the University of La Laguna. As deliverables of the project we develop mobile and web applications to encourage the necessity of Open Data.
AMI Consult (AMI) is a consultancy company specialising in the area of information management and metadata solutions. Most of the work of the company concerns interoperability in an international context for diverse and distributed solutions for information provision and management, covering a range of strategic, technical and organisational aspects. Incorporated in the year 2000 as a Limited Liability Company (Société à responsabilité limitée) and based in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the company provides services in many countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (Europe) Limited (OGC) is a subsidiary of OGC. The non-profit company was formed in 2001 to conduct business in Europe on behalf of OGC’s mission, goals and objectives: promoting the development and use of advanced open standards and techniques to enable the full integration of spatial data and geoprocessing resources into mainstream computing. Supporting interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT is another focus on the OGC's work. The OGC is an international, consensus based and voluntary standards development organisation with 475+ member organisation (private industry, government agencies and public administrations as well as universities and research centres). Additionally a broad worldwide user community is actively referring to, implementing and using OGC Standards on various levels.Co-ordination Cell Flemish e-Government (CORVE) is the e-government team for the Flemish administration. It initially set up a technical infrastructure and defined standards for the sharing of authentic data between different administrations on the federal, Flemish and local level. This made major improvements in electronic service delivery and reused authentic data from base registries. CORVE also leads the policy formulation of the Flemish government concerning Open Data and PSI, and is setting up an Open Data infrastructure. CORVE works closely with the Open Data efforts at the federal level (Fedict), in the Walloon region (eWBS) and at the local level, i.e. in Flemish cities and communities (V-ICT-OR). CORVE coordinates the Citadel on the Move project which is creating a European open innovation environment using common open data formats and mobile application templates to help citizens generate the ‘Smart City’ services they want and need.
UAB Linked Data (UABLD) is a software consultancy specializing in custom Semantic Web, Linked Data, and XML publishing solutions. It actively contributes to the open-source Graphity project which is a first-of-a-kind Linked Data platform for generic declarative Web development. Graphity showcases features being standardized by the W3C and beyond; it has been deployed in projects in a wide range of domains, from online content management to product information systems. The company set up the first prototype Linked Open Data portal in Lithuania, which integrates scraped data on asset and interest declarations of parliament candidates with municipality public contract and tender data. The portal runs on Graphity platform and cloud RDF triplestore.
The Slovenian Ministry of the Interior and Public Administration (MNZ) is, among others, in charge of the development and implementation of the legislation on transparency (access to information, PSI re-use). MNZ performs continuing promotional and developmental tasks in relation to access to public information, in particular informing the public about the means and conditions for access to and re-use of public information and providing counselling to other bodies. MNZ is in charge for the development and implementation of eGovernment in Slovenia. It is responsible for major projects, like State eGovernment portal, Business portal, eProcurement, eJustice and others. The ministry manages the solutions to support national and EU cross-border interoperability level. MNZ is involved in STORK 2 and SPOCS.
The Federal Chancellery (Bundeskanzleramt Österreich, BKA) is responsible for coordinating general government policy, the public information activities of the Federal Government and the Federal constitution. It represents the Republic of Austria vis-à-vis the Constitutional Court, the Administrative Court, and international law courts. Moreover, it has responsibility for special matters such as women and equality, European policy, e-government, security policy, the civil service, bioethics, data protection, media affairs – excluding criminal media law – and matters pertaining to ethnic groups. In the specific topic of e-government the Federal Chancellery manages the platform Digital Austria and related bodies. The platform Digital Austria is the coordination and strategy committee of the Federal Government for eGovernment in Austria. Since 2012 the Federal Chancellery has managed the central open government data portal data.gv.at, which collects & publishes all open government datasets.
iMinds (previously: IBBT) is an independent research institute founded by the Flemish government to stimulate ICT innovation. The institute brings together companies, authorities, and non-profit organizations to join forces on research projects. iMinds unites more than 1000 researchers from numerous Flemish universities and knowledge centres. It consists of 5 research departments. Each research group is specialized in one or more of the basic competencies of iMinds: networks of the future, advanced software technologies, multimedia and interfaces, policy and law, market issues and usability. Since its establishment in 2004, iMinds has run more than 250 projects, representing a total value of well over 250 million euro. For this application, the iMinds’ research group MMLab from Ghent University will participate.
National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE) is one of the leading Universities in Russia. In 2011 the University has established a centre for Semantic Web and in 2012 agreed to be the host of the W3C office. In the last 2 years NRU HSE and partners (e.g. Avicomp) have been working on Linked Data projects and just recently finished a project with the city of Moscow to create one of the first Open Data catalogues in Russia.
OpenDataFrance (ODF) consists of local authorities at all levels and collects information, blogs, articles etc. in one place. ODF also facilitates working groups established to work on common elements of open data projects in France.
The Albanian Institute of Science (AIS) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to promote research activities that offer solutions to socio-economic problems, increase transparency and strengthen civic engagement. AIS aims to encourage enthusiasm about science and innovation among young generations. The institute is organized around three thematic pillars: eParticipation, eScience, and Think Tank. The institute has successfully executed its most prominent project on transparency through Open Data usability in the country. It has set up and keeps enriching the Open Data Portal in Albania, the only platform in the country that provides data from various government institutions and other sources in open data format. Through the platform open.data.al, AIS has published hundreds of datasets, analyses and studies on socio-economic topics, and launched numerous activities with the goal of creating an Open Data movement.