Positive Independent Assessment of Progress on Implementation

After 12 months of OGP implementation, Ireland was required to publish a Mid-term Self-Assessment Report assessing its performance in respect of its commitments under its OGP National Action Plan, and be reviewed by the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM). Ireland’s report was drafted in September 2015 and was been published following a 3-week consultation process. This can be viewed online or downloaded.

The Independent mid-term Report by the IRM was published on 2^nd February 2016 for public comment. It is positive in its assessment of the Government on its implementation of the ambitious commitments in the Plan and of the process of consultation undertaken during the development and implementation of individual actions in the Plan. It notes that going forward, formalising permanent dialogue forums and more awareness-raising will strengthen participation.

Implementation of the Plan – Mid-term Self-Assessment Report

After 12 months of OGP implementation, Ireland is required to publish a Mid-term Self-Assessment Report assessing its performance in respect of its commitments under its OGP National Action Plan, and be reviewed by the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM). Ireland’s report was drafted in September 2015 and has now been published following a 3-week consultation process. This can be viewed online or downloaded from this website.

Open Government Partnership Consultative Event

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform hosted a Consultative Event on the Open Government Partnership (OGP) on Tuesday 14 July 2015. Conscious of the citizen participation actions in the OGP National Action Plan (NAP) the consultative event sought to establish how best to raise awareness of the OGP and succeed in broadening participation of citizens and civil society, as well as to inform the final approach to a model for reviewing the OGP NAP. The Department is currently analysing this and considering next steps.

Public consultation process on Principles to guide public engagement on policy and services development

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Mr. Brendan Howlin T.D., published proposed Principles based Guidelines which aim to foster greater citizen consultation and involvement in policy and service development to strengthen democracy and improve public services on 27 July 2015 – see www.per.gov.ie/?p=14542

A consultation process on these draft Guidelines concluded recently and the Department is currently analysing the submissions received

• a Foundation Document for the development of Ireland’s Open Data Strategy; and

• a Technical Frameworkto underpin the publication of datasets in open data format on the Government’s open data portal data.gov.ie

Launching the consultation process, the Minister said:-

“This consultation is a major milestone for the Open Data Initiative in the public service and to the realisation of the potential of open data to generate significant economic, social and democratic benefits”.

The Minister highlighted that the next phase of the Open Data Initiative will involve significant engagement with citizens, business, researchers, and public bodies and is a core element of Ireland’s approach to Open Data.

The public consultation, including the discussions at the Open Data Forum which the Minister will attend on the 30^th June, will guide and inform the development of an Open Data Strategy and the finalisation of the Technical Framework.

The Minister also said:-

“I encourage all interested parties to consider the proposed approach in both the Foundation Document and the Technical Framework and to respond by the deadline, to ensure that their views are taken into account in shaping the Open Data Initiative.”

Observations on the consultation documents should be submitted to opendata@per.gov.ie by 15 July 2015.

ENDS

Notes to Editor:

The concept of Open Data is about making data held by public bodies available and easily accessible online for reuse and redistribution. Open Data forms a core element of the Open Government Partnership National Action Plan which was published in July 2014.

As part of the consultation process, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform will host an event on 30 June 2015 to allow discussion on both documents.  The public input will inform the development of the Open Data Strategy and the completion of the draft Technical Framework which will be submitted for Government approval in due course.

Other progress that has been achieved in advancing the Open Data Initiative includes:

• The ongoing development and enhancement of the Open Data portal, data.gov.ie
• The development of governance arrangements for Open Data
• The commencement of data audits in public bodies, and
• Dissemination, outreach and capacity building activities

See also http://www.per.gov.ie/open-data/

Time: 5-8pm, Tuesday 30 June 2015

Venue: The Atrium, Department of Justice & Equality, 51 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is currently developing Ireland’s Open Data Strategy. To deliver this, the Department is committed to collaborating and engaging with all interested stakeholders – citizens, businesses, researchers and public bodies.

The programme for this event is available here. To register for this event, please visit this link.

See also http://www.per.gov.ie/open-data/

As part of this Initiative, the Minister published a consultation document on Open Data Licences on 11 February 2015. This consultation document considers a number of options for an Open Data licence for use in Ireland, to help ensure interoperability with other datasets internationally and to help facilitate use and re-use by ensuring continuity of Open Data availability.

The paper also outlined a number of issues requiring further consultation and analysis. The full text of the consultation paper is available here.

Submissions have been analysed and will inform the licence element of the Technical Framework for Open Data. The draft Technical Framework will be issued for public consultation in May 2015.

Submissions Received:

Office of the Attorney General

Wikimedia Community Ireland

Michael Larkin (Openstreetmap contributor)

Open Knowledge Ireland (Mr Denis Parfenov and Dr Ingo Keck)

Ms Flora Fleischer

Digital Repository of Ireland

Dublinked

Ordnance Survey Ireland

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources/GSI

Fingal County Council

UCD Library

Department of Environment, Community and Local Government

Programmable City (NUI Maynooth)

Office of the Revenue Commissioners

“Just as oil was likened to black gold, data takes on a new importance and value in the digital age.”

-Commissioner Neelie Kroes

Open Data, data that is published under an Open License so that it can be freely accessed and used, is recognised internationally as a valuable resource that can drive innovation, as well as shining a light on the operation of public services.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (D/PER) launched the Irish National Open Data portal, http://data.gov.ie, in July 2014, as part of a wider Open Data initiative. Facilitating an effective Open Data ecosystem requires a number of elements, as outlined in the Open Data Ireland Best Practice Handbook. These include supporting data publishers, engaging with data users, and establishing and adopting standard practices.

On Thursday 19^th February, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform hosted an Open Data Workshop in the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC). The aim of the workshop was to bring together Open Data publishers and Open Data users to discuss key opportunities, challenges and approaches to Open Data. The Workshop was well attended, with 100 participants. The attendees came from different sectors: 35% from the public sector, 30% from industry (both SMEs and larger organisations), 23% from the research domain, and 12% came from civil-society, media or other domains.

The Workshop was structured around a number of discussion sessions so that all attendees had the opportunity to participate. Evelyn O’Connor from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform introduced the Workshop, highlighting the current status of the Open Data initiative and outlining the various activities that are underway.

This was followed by the first discussion session, focusing on six particular domains: transport, heritage, geospatial, fiscal, local government, and natural hazards / flooding. The NDRC venue leant itself perfectly to facilitating the parallel roundtables, with each group setting up in a different area.

We next heard from a number of organisations on how they were currently using public-sector information and what are the challenges they are facing. Oisin Ryan of LocalMint, Vinnie Quinn of Evercam and Valerie Vetter of Aftering discussed the time-savings their start-ups could realise with Open Data, as well as the added-value it could bring to their innovative products. Eamonn O’Neill, data scientist at the internationally recognised organisation The Web Summit, presented the potential use of Open Data for data analytics and business intelligence. Nuala Haughey from the Think Tank TASC talked about the importance of Open Data for a transparent and accountable public sector.

The second discussion session focused on general aspects of Open Data, namely: Open Data Licensing, Open Research Data & Non-Tabular Digital Content, data.gov.ie Open Data Portal, Priority Domains to Target, and Open Data Access: APIs vs. Bulk Downloads.

A number of common themes ran through both discussion sessions, such as the need for standardised, machine-readable data, the importance of metadata, and the benefits of real-time data and APIs. Some of the datasets that emerged as being high-value were townland/administrative boundary data, road and terrain data, crime statistics and weather data. Many challenges were discussed in the different groups, for example, licensing, ownership of aggregated data, resources and the capacity of public bodies to publish data, compliance with data protection, and ensuring data is up-to-date.

Through the discussions, a number of opportunities for promoting Open Data in Ireland were also discussed. Local Enterprise Offices were identified as potential regional supporters of Open Data Initiatives. Requirements from the EU could act as a driver for Open Data, for example, through directives or through compliance with Eurostat or EU-funded projects guidelines. Some ideas for moving forward with Open Data included putting in place workflows for newly-created data to be automatically published as Open Data, as well as improving the feedback mechanism on the portal.

The Workshop produced many fruitful discussions, many of which were cut short due to time constraints. The scribe notes from the Workshop can be found here.  It is vital to continue these conversations – at future workshops, online, or via public consultations, such as the recent consultation on Licensing found here.

Government Reform Unit

The OGP requires member countries to identify a forum to enable regular multi-stakeholder consultation on OGP implementation.As set out in Section 7 of Ireland’s first National Action Plan, an Implementation and Review Group (IRG) will be established to oversee the implementation of the National Action Plan. The IRG will be composed of representatives of both civil society and Government Departments/public bodies.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, as the lead Department for the OGP, is keen to establish the IRG and has prepared draft Terms of Reference for this group – OGP Implementation and Review Group DRAFT. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with civil society and interested citizens to discuss the draft Terms of Reference and to hear your views. A meeting to discuss the draft Terms of Reference will take place at 3pm on Tuesday 9th December at 7-9 Merrion Row. If you would like to attend this meeting, please RSVP by sending an email to Claire.martinez@per.gov.ie by 8^th December. Alternatively, please submit your views to this email address.

The format of this meeting will be a presentation by Insight NUI Galway on open data and the recently launched Open Data Portal. The floor will then be opened for discussion of priorities for a national Open Data Strategy, to include issues such as priorities for the next steps in the area of open data, including how to ensure a focus on high value datasets, as well as how the publication and reuse of official non- personal information has the potential to create significant economic and social benefits. Click here to read an article on the PER blog on the Potential for Open Data in Ireland.

Insight’s research comprises a Best Practice Handbook, a Data Audit Report, a Roadmap for Open Data, an Evaluation Framework and an Open Data Publication Handbook. These reports have been published to assist in the development of an Open Data strategy for Ireland and are accessible here. You may wish to review these in advance of this briefing session. Submissions or comments may be made by email in advance of the event to opendata@per.gov.ie We will continue to accept submissions until 19 September. If you have any questions, please email opendata@per.gov.ie

This is a public event – please share with your contacts.

Open Data forms a core element of Ireland’s first Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan which, following Government approval, will be published and transmitted to the OGP Steering Committee to facilitate Ireland’s full membership of the partnership.

Read full details of this announcement.