Country Insights on the European Data Portal

European Data Portal v3.0

In March 2020, the European Data Portal (EDP) launched version 3.0 of the website. Several new features were introduced in this version update, including:

• A new user interface for easier navigation;
• A new enhanced EDP home page that better balances the editorial content and dataset focus / content;
• Ongoing harvesting of portal sources, including non-geo and geo portals, and maintaining existing harvesters; and
• A Country Insights page that enables users to filter content per country in Europe and explore specific insights of how open data is used in that country.

Country Insights

The aim of the new Country Insights page is to share public administration success stories on open data and, as stated, to enable users to better filter their search for country-specific content. Thus, on this page users can discover insights on country developments and best practices on open data through blog posts, new use cases that exemplify how organisations use open data, news pieces, feature highlights and analytical reports. The blog posts are a new feature. Currently, there are two posts that are available on the Country Insights page, one from the Netherlands and one from the United Kingdom.  

The Netherlands

On the Netherlands Country Insights page, a blog post titled “Insights from data.overheid.nl” is focused on the open governmental data in the Netherlands . The article was written by Jelle Verburg, the product owner of the Dutch National Open Data Portal (data.overheid.nl). In this post, Mr. Verburg discusses how he and his team work with open government data in the Netherlands and how they support open data re-users in finding requested data for their work. Moreover, he discusses how the data.overheid.nl team are creating more insights into the impact of open data in local communities across the Netherlands.

Interested in learning more about what the data.overheid.nl team is doing around open data? Join the EDP’s Data Spaces Talks on Wednesday 10 June at 13:00 CEST to hear Mr. Verburg elaborate more on open government data and open data best practices in the Netherlands.

United Kingdom

On the United Kingdom’s Country Insights page, a blog post on the Bus Open Data Service is focused on the open transportation data in the United Kingdom. The article was contributed to the EDP by Ito World, the supplier to the Department of Transport in the United Kingdom who is responsible for the delivery of Bus Open Data Service (BODS). The service is a crucial enabler of the UK government’s manifesto commitment to open up data on local bus services across England from 2020 onward. Furthermore, the article provides two main use cases for the BODS:

• Data Publishers – Bus operators that can use the Publish Bus Data Service to create timetable data, quality assurance and then publish it open for consumption by application developers.
• Data Consumers: The Transport for London (TfL) publishes open datasets in the transit space. Since they began opening their data, TfL has seen 17,000 developers register to use these datasets, which in turn support 600 travel applications across the UK that generates economic benefits and a savings of approximately £130m a year.

Call for Country Insights contribution

Are you a civil servant working with open data? Do you use open government data for your work? Share your expertise, knowledge and insights with us by writing a blog post for your country! You can contact us via mail (info@europeandataportal.eu) or through our social media channels Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

For more information or examples on open data, explore the European Data Portal’s (EDP) news archive. Aware of open data examples or stories?  Share them with us via mail, and follow up on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to stay up to date!