I had a chance to participate in the first day of Digital Agenda Assembly, the conference organized by European Commision to summarize developments in the area of European digital economony. During two days of conference (16-17 of June) participants had a chance to take a part in series of parallel workshops. Topics covered during the conference were related to seven pillars of Digital Agenda for Europe, including stimulation of growth of single European digital market, interoperability and standards, trust and security, fast and ultra-fast Internet access, research and innovation, enhancing digital literacy, skills and inclusion, ICT-enabled benefits for EU society.

During the first day of the conference I was attending „Open data and re-use of public sector information” workshop. Agenda featured multiple case studies coming from several member states, showing that open governmental data can bring benefits to all interested parties, including citizents, administration and commercial entities. Discussions covered things related to financial models behind releasing public data but also boundaries of transparency of public administration (mainly in the context of security).

Among other case studies presented during the workshop I wanted to bring your attention to a talk given by Katalin Gallyas showing how Amsterdam authorities are approaching to problems related to open data and its reuse. Katalin was talking about various projects and activities including Open Cities and Open Government Data Initiative. I hope that this short summary will encourage you to take a closer look to slides from her talk.

Apart from case studies and discussions, participants had a chance to see the results of Open Data Chalenge and series of hackathons Hack4Europe!.I will come back to Hack4Europe! in my next post. Open Data Challenge was a competition organized by Open Knowledge Foundation in cooperation with multiple institutions all around the Europe. Participants competed in several categories including best application using public open data, best idea for application and best visualization. Organizers received 430 entries from 24 member states, there were 20 000 euros in prizes to win. I encourage you all to watch short video which summarizes the results of the competition.

Open Data Challenge from Open Knowledge Foundation on Vimeo.

To summarize my impression after the workshop, open data can be really valuable for various commercial entities. This oportunity was already noticed by giant of IT like Google (with its http://opendatakit.org/ and involvement in OpenData Challenge) and Microsoft (Open Government Data Initiative). Hope that involvement of private sector will help to accelerate change in public sector.