The newly published open data lifecycle management model for the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, intended for data administrators, describes the duties and responsibilities related to opening and maintaining data, as well as the responsibilities divided between the data administrator and the HRI service.

The cities of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area have been opening data for a long time, over 12 years now. Many datasets that were opened during the early days of open data are still being actively maintained and updated on a regular basis. However, there have already been several situations along the way in which data is no longer updated or no longer available for some other reason.

Since the early days of the service, HRI has had clear but not thoroughly documented procedures in place for opening, maintaining and updating data. Along the years, there has been an increasing need for operating principles at the other end of the lifecycle of data: What should be done if a dataset is no longer updated or becomes entirely unavailable? Based on what criteria is data removed from the HRI’s data catalog – or is it ever removed? What should be done if the responsibility for maintaining data is transferred from the City to another party?

These are just some of the questions that we were aiming to answer by creating an open data lifecycle management model for the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The new model features a more detailed description of the duties involved in the data opening and maintenance stages. It also clarifies the division of responsibilities between the data administrator and HRI.

People have approached us a few times for a lifecycle management model in international contexts as well. When we set out to create a model for the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, we first surveyed whether similar models have been created in other countries, but failed to find a single one. This is another reason why the model we have published has been translated into and published in English as well.

Even though the model makes a clear distinction between the responsibilities of the data administrator and HRI, HRI will continue to help data administrators in every stage of the data opening process.

What do you think about this model? Is something missing from it? Is something unclear about it? We are keen to receive any feedback or development suggestions.