End of Commitment Report – Expand and improve the open data sets relating to Asturias available on the central government open data portal (datos.gob.es).

Name of Evaluator

MANUEL ANTONIO MUÑIZ PEREZ

Email

manumuni@uniovi.es

Member Name

Asturias, Spain

Action PlanAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... Title

Action plan – Asturias, Spain, 2022 – 2023

CommitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action...

Expand and improve the open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici... sets relating to Asturias available on the central government open data portal (datos.gob.es).

Action

This commitment entails:1. The extension of 25% of the data sets offered so far2. Standardisation of the characteristics of all datasets to facilitate their visualisation, downloading, and usability.

Problem

The issues are:1. There are data that are not easily accessible to the public as they are not on the open data portal;2. There are non-standardised data.

1.1 What was the overall level of progress in the commitment implementation at the time of this assessment?

complete

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The commitment entailed a 25% expansion of the dataset initially offered, as well as standardization of the characteristics of all the datasets to facilitate their search, visualization, download, and usability. As of 20 April, a total of 1,787 datasets are available, provided by the Principality of Asturias Administration. The initial starting number was 1,396 datasets, so this represents a 28% increase, thereby substantially improving accessibility and availability to said data in terms of both the formats available and their potential download.

Provide evidence that supports and justifies your answer:

• Data Catalog

1.2 Describe the main external or internal factors that impacted implementation of this commitment and how they were addressed (or not).

From an internal perspective, it must be noted that there is no “single data policy” in the Principality of Asturias, which shows, a priori, little commitment to uniformity and hinders achieving the commitment to accessibility. On the other hand, perhaps excessive reliance on SADEI (Asturian Society of Industrial and Economic Studies) was detected in terms of data accessibility by the Principality Administration. This issue offers the benefits of the specialization of said Society, which guarantees a certain level of information quality, while on the other hand, it also presents some unnecessary restrictions.

1.3 Was the commitment implemented as originally planned?

All of the commitment milestones were implemented as planned

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The expected milestones were reasonably met regarding both the increased volume of shared information and solving the accessibility issues detected by the evaluation team and communicated to the commitment managers.

Provide evidence for your answer:

• Data Catalog

2.1.1. – Did the government disclose more information; improve the quality of the information (new or existing); improve the value of the information; improve the channels to disclose or request information or improve accessibility to information?

Yes

Degree of result:

Major

Explanation: In narrative form, what has been the impact on people or practice.

The number of available datasets increased substantially, both in quantity and quality. In that sense, we wish to emphasize the excellent progress that has been made in terms of the available formats for consulting and downloading the information, for which both transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More and accessibility have improved greatly.

Provide evidence for your answer:

• Data Catalog

2.1.2. – Did the government create new opportunities to seek feedback from citizens/enable participation inform or influence decisions; improve existing channels or spaces to seek feedback from citizens/enable participation/ inform or influence decisions; create or improve capabilities in the government or the public aimed to improve how the government seeks feedback from citizens/enables participation/ or allows for the public to inform or influence decisions?

Not Applicable

Degree of result:

Did not change

Explanation: In narrative form, what has been the impact on people or practice.

While the improvement in information and its accessibility is evident, a more proactive attitude may be needed with regard to interested civil society institutions.

2.1.3 Did the government create or improve channels, opportunities, or capabilities to hold officials answerable for their actions?

Unclear

Degree of result:

Did not change

Explanation: In narrative form, what has been the impact on people or practice.

No meetings have been held with citizens beyond the only somewhat regular dialogues that we are aware of in this regard with ASEDIE (Multisectoral Information Association), which brings together infomediary companies from different sectors and whose express aim is the use, reuse, and distribution of information, creating added-value products that contribute to enhancing security in Global Trade via the application of methods that promote reliability and transparency in commercial transactions in the corporate environment.

Our fundamental interest is information that can be used to create added-value products. That is the primary aim of our companies. Information is essential to business development security and for increasing both competition and economic progress and efficacy.

Provide evidence for your answer:

• Comunication with ASEDIE

2.1.4 Other Results

Not Applicable

2.2 Did the commitment address the public policy problem that it intended to address as described in the action plan?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The significant increase in information in terms of both quantity (volume of data) and quality (available formats) perfectly addresses the need to improve transparency and accessibility proposed in the initial objectives for the commitment.

3. Provide at least one lesson or reflection relating to the implementation of this commitment. It can be the identification of key barriers to implementation, an unexpected help/hindrance, recommendations for future commitments, or if the commitment should be taken forward to the next action plan.

In our opinion, the commitment was successfully implemented. In a very short period of time, the capacity to significantly increase the information available in a wide range of formats was demonstrated, notably improving overall accessibility to a wide-ranging set of data and its handling, processing, and analysis by any interested party and, consequently, its transparency.

Regarding the implementation of the commitment, as the evaluating committee, we must highlight the excellent collaboration at all times from the people responsible for carrying this out, both in terms of communicating to us all the measures that were being implemented and incorporating our suggestions for improvement and corrections of problems observed throughout the process.

In this sense, with regard to the future, we can point out that it would be advisable to improve interconnectivity between the different data providers to the datos.gob.es platform, both to avoid unnecessary duplication of data and to facilitate organized access to the information by end users.

Administrations have extensive collections of data that they obtain from sources dependent on others, which in turn organize and catalog said data according to their own criteria, creating complications that are not easy to remedy. Therefore, we suggest studying the possibility of setting up a set of systems with links to the original sources, making it easier to assign responsibility regarding the maintenance and quality of the information.

This suggestion should not be understood as diminishing in any way the effort made by the Principality of Asturias Administration to implement the commitment. To reiterate, in our opinion the commitment was implemented with great success, particularly given the haste with which it had to be done and the lack of human resources available for its implementation. This latter we do consider to be a point which should be remedied in the future.