Best Practices/Open Data Publication

Outline of the best practice

Open Data Publication Plan

Budgetary and other constraints prevent public sector bodies from publishing all the suitable datasets as Open Data. Datasets that are fit for publication as Open Data need to be identified as well as the requirements of both the internal and external stakeholders taken into account. An Open Data publication plan should be developed, taking into account needs of the relevant stakeholders as well as the potential benefits, risks and costs of publication of the datasets.

Management summary

Challenge

Public sector bodies hold a large number of various datasets. However they also operate under budgetary and other constraints that prevent them from making every potential dataset available for re-use at once. Aside from this, a complete list of datasets is not always available which complicates identification and selection of datasets to be published as Open Data.

Solution

An analysis of the available datasets should be performed, needs and requirements of both the internal and external stakeholders should be understood and the open data publication plan should be developed. The analysis should aim to:: Identify available dataset Assess potential barriers to publication of the identified datasets, e.g. confidentiality of the data or issues around privacy protection If any of the datasets cannot be published as open data, justification needs to be provided that explains why it cannot be made available for re-use. Releasing anonymized data or aggregate statistics derived from some primary data should be taken into account Collecting the basic metadata such as the title, description, responsible person/department and current formats. Scope of the collected metadata might be adjusted according to the needs of the organization Assess the potential benefits and risks of publishing the identified datasets as Open Data Assess costs and effort associated with publication of the identified datasets as Open Data Publication of open data should be in line with the strategic aims of the organization, with the relevant policies such as the national open data strategy and it should meet the demand of the potential users of the data. Therefore the requirements both internal and external stakeholders should be identified and analyzed. Based on the results of the previous steps the open data publication plan should be developed. It should contain all the necessary tasks to implement the open data initiative. With regard to the datasets planned to be published as open data a release roadmap should be developed. Release of the datasets should be prioritized taking into consideration the requirements of the stakeholders as well as the results of the analysis of the datasets, i.e. the identified benefits and risks and the cost/effort estimates. Progress should tracked against the open data publication plan. This plan should be also regularly reviewed and updated.

Best Practice identification

Open data publication plan has been successfully used to manage the open data initiative of the Czech Telecommunication Office. Development of the open data publication plan is a recommended practice. Carrying out a data audit to discover the potential datasets for release as open data and the subsequent priority publication of the high-value datasets is a proposed best practice. In the UK the government departments publish their open data strategies. For example open data strategy of the Department of Health contains a list of datasets released or planned to be released.

Why is this a Best Practice? What’s the impact of the Best Practice?

Dataset criteria and priorities and value and scope of datasets Selection of information/data to be published according to various criteri

Why is there a need for this Best Practice?

This best practice aims at balancing the requirements and needs of the relevant stakeholders with the available resources by planning of the data release and other necessary steps that takes into account the demand for data, the potential benefits and risks associated with the publication of the identified datasets as well as the estimated costs of the publication.

What do you need for this Best Practice?

This best practice requires: Obtaining a top management support Appointing a person responsible for development of the open data publication plan Securing cooperation of the departments involved in the open data initiative Setting up a review process for the open data publication plan

Applicability to other Member States

In general this best practice should be applicable across the EU member states because it does not build upon any particular legal framework. However the legal framework, national or other strategies as well as for example the data management practices applied in the particular member state and its public sector bodies might affect what datasets should be included in the open data publication plan and how this plan is going to be implemented and assessed.

Contact info

Jan Kučera (University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic). Email: jan.kucera@vse.cz

Editorial information: emma.beer@okfn.org