Stories

Please record your stories here. We're looking for evidence that Share-PSI is helpful in your work, that it provides a source of best practice guidance and expertise that you can use/are using.

• The “Mihajlo Pupin” Institute from Belgrade, Serbia has a long term partnership with the Serbian governmental organizations. Being part of the SHARE-PSI consortium helps the Institute to strengthen the links with the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia ant the Serbian Business Registers Agency as main sources of open data published to the Serbian CKAN (established in the FP7 LOD2 project), as well as the collaboration with the Directorate for eGovernment, Ministry for State Administration and Local Self-Government. In year 2015 the Serbian SHARE-PSI team will organize a special session “Open Data and GIS applications” at the 5th International Conference on Information Society and Technology.

• Danube University Krems is founding partner of Cooperation Open Government Data Austria. The Cooperation was responsible to work out the standards and good practice to publish open data in Austria and maintains strong connections with other German speaking countries (Swiss, Germany, Liechtenstein). Three times a year German speaking open data representatives meet to discuss the harmonization of data descriptions, data quality issues, interoperability challenges and community engagement. Danube University Krems serves as an information hub to this think tank, disseminating the outcomes of SharePSI and to announce possible feedback mechanisms.

• Workshop1 - SAMOS - Greece has been assisted by the Share-PSI team to the transposition of the new PSI Directive 2013/37 - law 4305/31.10.2014 (Government Gazette A237). In 2014, the Greek Ministry of Administrative Reform and e-Government was implementing a new policy on opening PSI. Late October the Greek Government adopted law 4305/31.10.2014 (transposition of the new PSI Directive 2013/37). Since Greece is not very mature to the open data initiative, our participation to the Share-PSI project helped us a lot to understand - with concrete examples - how other countries bring and implement such policies. The knowledge exchange during the workshops help us to form the new policy but also the implementation methodology. In addition to this, we had the chance to have bilateral cooperation with some other project partners to initiatives and projects of common interest that arise during the workshops and the information exchange in general.

• Workshop1 - SAMOS - open data and transparency initiatives in Greece and Slovenia. Following the first workshop in Samos we have started a cooperation with the Slovenian partner ( mag. Mateja Prešern, MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR) on public expenditure tracing inititiatives and relevant projects as well as on legislation issues on public sector information access. Slovenia was interested and has been sent information about our "flagship" initiative - http://diavgeia.gov.gr/en

• Workshop2 - LISBON - producing a guide to help implement the new Greek Government open data policy. In Lisbon, during the project meeting, Greece requested by all partners to help us in the process of creating guides to support the public sector administrations implement the “open by default” law 4305/31.10.2014 (methodology, specific instructions and guidance to be provided with a Ministerial Decree.). Many partners responded to this request and sent us material to use (e.g. OKFN, Flemish government, Donau-Universität Krems). This request and the partners reaction concluded to the creation of a knowledge base of localised quides that we have started gathering - https://www.w3.org/2013/share-psi/wiki/Localised_Guides

• Workshop2 - LISBON - provided input to a Share-PSI partner wishing to describe a process of the Greek open data policy as a best practice example in a paper. The process concerns the obligation of public sector bodies to register any datasets/resources that they hold and indicate for each resource whether it is exempt from the new default rule that all government information made public is freely re-usable - http://www.lapsi-project.eu/sites/lapsi-project.eu/files/LAPSI_D2%202.pdf

• Workshop2 - LISBON - openlaws.eu. In Greece we are currently working on the design of an open laws and law codification platform for the Greek legislation. In Lisbon’s workshop I had the chance to meet Mr Clemens Wass who presented a relevant initiative that he is working on - the openlaws.eu project, funded by DG Justice. We exchanged useful information during the workshop and I arranged that the project team in Greece starts a close cooperation to move in parallel with the EU project team and help each

• Workshop2 - LISBON - provided input to a Share-PSI partner to organize the Open Data Quality workshop 2015 (ODQ2015) . In Lisbon, I (Lorenzo Canova - POLITO) had a chance to talk to several partners about the issue and the need of measuring open data quality. From this discussion came up the idea to organize a workshop about this topic that took place in Munich on March 30, 2015 (http://nexa.polito.it/2015/03/OpenDataQuality). This was a great occasion to exchange ideas and to build the background for a future collaboartion also with Johann Höchtl (Danube University Krems) who reasearches on the same topic.

• Workshop 4 - KREMS - Cooperation between Nancy Routzouni representing the OpenGov team in Greece and André Lapa, Open Data Project Lead at AMA Portugal. (a) AMA is willing to evaluate the Greek Transparency Program presented in Krems and the applied project management model - based on a hierarchical network of 4.500 project teams - so they can implement a relevant program for the Portugal Public sector. Had bilateral discussions and exchanged information. (b) Portugal is currently drafting the Law on the new PSI directive and are willing to use the Greek law adopting the PSI directive (Oct 2014) as an example. Discussed basic aspects of the Greek law and how these can be applied in Portugal and exchanged documents.

• Workshop 4 - KREMS - Cooperation between the Slovenian open data team in Ministry of Public Administration and the Greek OpenGov team in Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform working on the new PSI directive and its implementation in the Public Sector. Exchanged legislation and other documents and guides for implementing the open data policy in the two Countries.

• Workshop 4 - KREMS - Cooperation between Nancy Routzouni representing the Greek openGov Team and Pekka Koponen, Smart Cities development director, Forum Virium Helsinki. Discussed the Greek Transparency initiative, the greek Transparency Portal and how the open data API has been used by entrepreneurs, academic institutions and individuals to build applications especially for municipalities budgeting and spending. Documentation exchanged and cooperation started so that SmartCities could implement such initiatives.

• Workshop 4 - KREMS - Collaboration with the Cedem congress - Shauneen Furlong, Canada, with her presentation on the difficulties to get transformational changes done in digitalization. Discussions with other participants working on handbooks on open data for governmental level. Expertise in linked data questions among the other participants.

• West University of Timisoara (UVT) has good connections with the Department for Online Services and Design of Chancellery of the Prime Minister (part of Romanian Government) and it is also an active member of Romania's Coalition for Open Data. A direct outcome of this close collaboration is the participation of representatives of Romanian’s Government to two Share-PSI workshops (Lisbon and Timisoara). The annual Romania’s OGP (Open Government Partnership) self-assessment report recognizes Share-PSI network as an important channel for the dissemination of Open Government initiatives Romania has been carrying on for past two years.