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3rd Samos Summit 2012: “Open Data and Interoperability for Governance, Industry and Society”

Yannis Charalabidis|

More than 80 high-level ICT experts and decision makers from 20 countries participated in the international Samos 2012 Summit on Open Data and Interoperability for Governance, Industry and Society, that took place from 2nd  to 6th July 2012 in the island of Samos.

The summit was co-organised by the University of Aegean, the Greek Interoperability Centre of the National Technical University of Athens, the ENGAGE eInfrastructures project (co-funded by the European Commission) and the ENSEMBLE Support Action (under the auspices of the Future Internet Enterprise Systems cluster of DG Connect), in order to foster international cooperation and strive for a new research and practice agenda in open data, collaborative governance, enterprise interoperability and future internet systems.

With an emphasis on open data, interoperability and a new participative governance model for the public sector, the enterprise and within a connected, inclusive society, the Samos Summit was a first-class opportunity to see, interact with and influence cutting-edge European ICT research projects and initiatives.

The Samos Summit participants came from more than 20 countries, representing research and development centres of Google, IBM, Microsoft, Intrasoft International, Engineering, TXT, Whitehall Reply, Athens Technology Centre, Fraunhofer, Poznan supercomputing centre, Cycorp and more. Representatives from several collective bodies and organizations joined the discussions and workshops of the Summit including W3C, ISA (European Commission unit for interoperability), EGI (European grid infrastructure), the Hellenic Parliament and Greek, Austrian, Slovenian, Spanish, Italian  public sector / eGovernment units.  See the List of Participants for more information.

The key messages of the Summit, as presented in the Samos Declaration, put the emphasis on the following actions:

  • Raise the legal and administrative barriers which prevent the spreading of open data
  • Support research on metadata, core vocabularies and visualization, as new ways of discovering and using open data
  • Promote innovation and entrepreneurship on open data applications for the public
  • Support open data use by science, in a global effort to reach evidence-based decision making on societal problems
  • Promote scientific approaches in solving interoperability issues, and especially the Interoperability Scientific Foundations
  • Strive for open data and interoperability “killer-apps”, in order to illustrate the power of ICT tools towards wider audiences
  • Foster collaboration among scientific communities, industry, SMEs, public sector and citizens, towards an ecosystem where the immense potential of open, interoperable data will be exploited

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For more information and all the presentations and workshops of the Samos 2012 Summit visit: http://www.samos-summit.org or follow us on Twitter @samos-summit

Filed Under: Champions National Open Data Public Participation
Open Government Partnership