UNLOCKING THE DATA RESERVES

Open Data Roadmap of the State

Text Petja Partanen

The Finnish Government launched an Open Knowledge Programme in April 2013. Open data from the state administration will be collected into a common data portal in accordance with the HRI example.

In April 2013 the Government gave green light to the opening of the state administration’s data reserves in 2014 through 2017.

”The state can compensate the loss of revenues and the costs of building of technical interfaces to those ministries or agencies which have the readiness to do so”, says Timo Valli, Director of Public Government ICT in the Ministry of Finance.

The goal of advancing the unlocking of public data has been part of two consecutive government programmes. Concrete action has often been stalled by the lack of money. For example, the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland receives significant sales revenue from selling data. The unlocking of the National Land Survey map resources last year took away revenues worth approximately 1.5 million euro. But the usage of the free resources has increased vastly. ”The revenues received by the agencies have been altogether around 30 million euro per year. Individual agencies may lose money but the economy gains from the unlocking of data”, says Governmental Advisor Anne Kauhanen-Simanainen.

Many government agencies have made progress in unlocking information. The weather data of the Finnish Meterological Institute was opened in summer 2013.

”The unlocking of data resources will proceed. Statistical data, business data, traffic and communication data and airport observational data will be opened”, states Timo Valli.

Building a nationwide data portal

Part of the funding will be used for implementing an Open Knowledge Programme starting in April 2013. The opening of data resources will be promoted, among other things, with a nationwide data portal.
”The aim is to build a nationwide data catalogue, in the same way that HRI has done in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. We should certainly make use of the technology HRI is using”, says Timo Valli.

The project will also develop open governance and the use of new tools. The ambition is to start a dialogue with the open data developer community.

”Online forums will be utilised in the development of the Open Knowledge Programme and the data portal, and the developer community will have the chance to comment on the plans”, says Ministerial Adviser Mikael Vakkari.

JulkICT Lab, a test environment for public administration, is under planning. In the test environment, those dissatisfied with the electronic services of the administration can build their own proposals with open source tools.

”Businesses – or anyone – could try out new services”, says Vakkari.

The JulkICT function has ambitious goals for opening data. The aim is that all the essential public data reserves will be available to citizens, businesses and anyone else by the end of this decade.

“The government has given the green light and we have the funding to do it”, says Valli.

 

“Public Sector ICT Strategy emphasises open knowledge."

The first ICT strategy for Finland’s central and local government is looking for solutions to the public administration’s IT-related challenges.
As suggested by the title of the strategy – “Making better use of information and services” – the aim is is that the citizens will have well-functioning electronic services at their use, and that they will not be strained with unnecessary bureaucracy. The blueprint also concretises a goal written in the government programme: ”Public data resources will be brought openly available and for reuse in a machine-readable form.”
According to the strategy, the essential data reserves of the public administration should be openly available online by the end of 2014, in machine-readable form. Government agencies should not charge each other for data releases, and preferably other clients should not be charged either. To speed up the implementation of the goal, an Open Knowledge Programme will be launched.

Transport and Communications Ministry takes action

The roadmap of the Ministry of Transport and Communications raises the expectations of the users of open data.

While planning the economy for the next few years, the Ministry of Finance asked all the government ministries in spring 2012 to give an account of which data resources they were going to unlock and in what time frame.

The report “Open Data in Transport and Communications” (Avoin tieto liikenteessä ja viestinnässä) presents a clear roadmap for the administrative sector of transport and communications.

At the moment there are only a few open data sets but unlocking of the data is underway in all agencies, states the report of the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The plan is that, by 2017, free open data will include, among other things, nautical charts. The Finnish Meteorological Institute, on its part, has offered meteorological observations and forecasts as open data from summer 2013 onwards.

The nationwide public transport route and timetable data was unlocked in autumn 2012 as a result of the Apps4Finland contest. The Ministry of Transport and Communications is planning to make the participation of developer communities in open data competitions a permanent practice within the administrative sector.

Another new thing is the “beta” operations model where datasets are handed over to the developer community already at an early stage, despite the fact that the data may not yet be in its final form.

The Finnish Transport Agency publishes new experimental services and opens new data sources at
beta.liikennevirasto.fi

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