6 March 2015 — Government representatives from Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland and Serbia will be among those discussing Open Data Priorities and Engagement at the West University of Timişoara, Romania, 16 – 17 March. The event is the third in a workshop series organised by the EC-funded Share-PSI Network that brings together governments, academics, citizens, groups, commercial companies and standards bodies from across Europe developing best practice guidance on the sharing of public sector information and open data.
As initiatives like the Open Knowledge's Global Open Data Index, the Web Foundation's Open Data Barometer and the ePSI Platform Scoreboard show, many European countries are at the forefront of the global trend to make the information held by governments more readily available. It boosts public sector efficiency, increases transparency and drives innovation. However, the current economic climate means that governments must ensure that tax payers' money is spent as efficiently as possible. This workshop will gather experiences as data holders prioritise their datasets for publication and engage directly with users, whether those users are private individuals, commercial companies or public sector bodies, part of the same organisation or external to it.
The lead of the Share-PSI team within the Department of Computer Science - Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, West University of Timisoara - and local chair of the workshop, Prof. Dr. Dana Petcu emphasizes "Timisoara is a centre of academic excellence and business development and this event will show how those skills can be applied in a rapidly growing and exciting market across Europe."
As with all Share-PSI workshops, the aim is to identify best practices in these areas with a focus on Public Sector Information, although cultural heritage, commercial and scientific data are also relevant. Those best practices are being codified by the project itself as well as through international standards bodies including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Open Group.
More on the workshop can be seen at http://www.w3.org/2013/share-psi/workshop/Timisoara/.
End Press Release
Share-PSI 2.0 is the European network for the exchange of experience and ideas around implementing open data policies in the public sector. It brings together government departments, standards bodies, academic institutions, commercial organisations, trade associations and interest groups to identify what does and doesn't work, what is and isn't practical, what can and can't be expected of different stakeholders.
Share-PSI 2.0 is co-funded by the European Commission under the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme; Agreement no. 621012.
Founded in 1944, West University of Timişoara is the largest public university in the western part of Romania (Timis). Over the last twelve years, the university has responded to changes in the national educational and social environment, to a radically different economy and marketplace requirements, to emerging local and regional needs, and to new technologies. This work is currently done through eleven faculties that provide a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and lifelong learning programmes. The Department of Computer Science hosts a research center with distributed and parallel computing, artificial intelligence and computational mathematics as main areas of research, and it manages the biggest supercomputing center of Romania.
For West University: Daniel Pop danielpop@info.uvt.ro
For Share-PSI: Phil Archer phila@w3.org