Co-Produce Data Infrastructure with Civil Society (FR0014)

STAKES The new forms of collaboration between administrations and civil society enable to create new common goods, necessary to public service, society and economy, in faster, more efficient and more cost effective ways than in the past.

CONTEXT & AIM With the diffusion of digital power in society, citizens are becoming more and more committed to producing resources that, until now, only public authority could produce. This situation could be a key opportunity for public authority to learn working with civil society. It is not only a source of democratic progress and a resource for improving the quality of public service, but also a means of retaining, in the public area, common assets which could eventually be threatened by the emergence of new de facto digital monopolies. For example, in April 2015, the National Institute of Geographical and Forestry Information (IGN), the La Poste Group, the Secretariat-General for Government Modernization and OpenStreetMap France inaugurated a collaborative national address database containing 20 million open data addresses18. It was released under a "share-alike” license by the French Postal Services (La Poste Group) and the IGN and under an ODBL license by the OpenStreetMap association. This agreement initiated a new chapter in the government's open data policy and the policy of open government, which goes beyond access to administrative documents. It involves supporting the creation and maintenance of major collaborative common assets to serve the economic dynamism, the efficiency of public service and the autonomy of citizens. This effort is continuing with the development, still under ODBL license, of a database including all establishments open to the public, along with their characteristics.

ROADMAP
• Increase cooperation between public players and civil society in constituting essential data infrastructure and key registers

11. Co-produce with civil society the data infrastructure essential to society and economy

Commitment Text:

The new forms of collaboration between administrations and civil society enable to create new common goods, necessary to public service, society and economy, in faster, more efficient and more cost effective ways than in the past.

With the diffusion of digital power in society, citizens are becoming more and more committed to producing resources that, until now, only public authority could produce. This situation could be a key opportunity for public authority to learn working with civil society. It is not only a source of democratic progress and a resource for improving the quality of public service, but also a means of retaining, in the public area, common assets which could eventually be threatened by the emergence of new de facto digital monopolies.

For example, in April 2015, the National Institute of Geographical and Forestry Information (IGN), the La Poste Group, the Secretariat-General for Government Modernization and OpenStreetMap France inaugurated a collaborative national address database containing 20 million open data addresses. It was released under a 'share-alike” license by the French Postal Services (La Poste Group) and the IGN and under an ODBL license by the OpenStreetMap association.

This agreement initiated a new chapter in the government's open data policy and the policy of open government, which goes beyond access to administrative documents. It involves supporting the creation and maintenance of major collaborative common assets to serve the economic dynamism, the efficiency of public service and the autonomy of citizens.

This effort is continuing with the development, still under ODBL license, of a database including all establishments open to the public, along with their characteristics.

ROADMAP

• Increase cooperation between public players and civil society in constituting essential data infrastructure and key registers

Responsible Institutions: Ministry of State for State Reform and Simplification attached to the Prime Minister; Ministry of State for the Digital Sector, attached to the Ministry of the Economy, Industry and the Digital Sector

Supporting Institution(s): N/A

Start Date: Not Specified  

End Date: Not Specified

Commitment Aim

This commitment aimed to involve civil society in the development of central and local governments' data infrastructure. Through the Digital Republic Bill, which would require the state to generate and release data as a public service and to make reference data open by default, this commitment sought to ensure that the process of identifying and prioritising essential data involved civil society. The commitment, however, was unclear regarding activities and outputs.

Status

Midterm: Limited

The first year of implementation largely focused on reflection and gathering inputs from stakeholders. The government intended to carry out the majority of the commitment deliverables in the second year of implementation. During this time, the government joined several national-level, collaborative initiatives, such as the publication of the national address database (BAN), a result of continued cooperation between the National Geographic Institute (IGN), La Poste, SGMAP, the association OpenStreetMap France, and local authorities.

In July 2016, the State Secretariat for Digital Affairs commissioned the organisation Open Data France to establish, along with civil society and local governments, a list of essential and reference datasets to be published. Open Data France published the list in an October 2016 report. It is also worth mentioning that according to stakeholders, the collaboration to define reference datasets created an ongoing dialogue between civil society, local governments, and national administrations. In addition, Etalab organised multiple initiatives to continue opening more reference datasets. In November 2016, Etalab held two hackathons. The first focused on preparations to open the national company register, SIRENE, containing more than 10 million legal entities. The second involved collaboration between the Ministry of Interior and civil society to define the data schema needed to open polling station data.

End of Term: Substantial

The government self-assessment considers this commitment complete due to the opening of nine reference datasets. The commitment text however concerns cooperation with civil society rather than the opening of new data. Due to the ambiguous commitment text and the scarcity of public information, the IRM researcher considers the commitment to be substantial rather than complete.

Etalab is responsible for the newly established public service of data, created by Article 14 of the Digital Republic Law. In September 2017, there were nine datasets available on the data.gouv.fr platform: the national address database, the national company register SIRENE, the Official Geographic Code, the digital cadastral plan, the graphic parcel register, reference data for the state's administration, large scale reference data, the National Association Directory, and the Operational Directory of occupations and employment. Six of these datasets had been identified as key reference datasets in the impact study of the Digital Republic Law (all except the geographic code, the administration data, and the Operational directory).^{[Note79: National Assembly, Projet de loi pour une République numérique – étude d'impact (9 Dec. 2015), http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/projets/pl3318-ei.asp (accessed 30 Sept. 2017).]} The datasets had all been updated within the last six months.

The government self-assessment notes that prior to the production of Decree n° 2017-331, adopted 14 March 2017, Etalab organised a public online consultation from 29 September 2016 to 20 October 2016 on the list of relevant reference data, the conditions of data provision, and the quality criteria. Etalab received 160 contributions from public officials (40%), private citizens (30%), private companies (20%), and associations (10%). The dataset containing the contributions has not been cleaned and does not link the contributions to actors or groups. There is no public information on the mechanism used by Etalab to take these contributions into account in the implementation decree. An interview with a former government stakeholder confirmed that civil society contributions were important in selecting the essential datasets but indicated that other factors also played a part, such as the availability and quality of the datasets, the amount of available resources to maintain them, and their recognised structural value.^{[Note80: Former member of the Prime Minister's cabinet, personal communication with IRM researcher, 6 Nov. 2017.]}

A bylaw published 14 June 2017^{[Note81: Arrêté du 14 juin 2017 relatif aux règles techniques et d'organisation de mise à disposition des données de référence prévues à l'article L. 321-4 du code des relations entre le public et l'administration, https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000034944648&dateTexte=&categorieLien=id. (accessed 30 Sept. 2017).]} sets the rules regarding the publication of reference data as well as provides information about producing reference data, the frequency of updates, and methods of accessing the data. It provides a list of minimum metadata and indicates which datasets are to be updated daily, weekly, or monthly. It also states that reference data should be made available as a downloadable dataset and through an API.

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Major

Civic Participation: Marginal

During the implementation period, the government opened several sets of reference data and consulted the public on the development of the country's essential data infrastructure. As such, the commitment is a step forward for government openness in access to information. This commitment marginally opened government with respect to civic participation, since stakeholders were consulted on identifying key data but it is unclear how these inputs were included in the criteria for releasing information nor is there information about the mechanisms used to include public contributions in decision-making.

As a result of this commitment, the government discloses more information than previously, and does so in an open data format. The Digital Republic Law, Article 14, provides for public access to reference data while the bylaw published 14 June 2017 provides operational and technical guidance for the publication of reference data. The dedicated webpage on data.gouv.fr contained nine datasets in September 2017 and five of them had been reused at least once, with the result published on data.gouv.fr.

Regarding civic participation, the government appears to have made an effort to consult civil society in identifying key data but the IRM researcher did not find any public information on the criteria for selecting which data would be considered as reference data. The consultation findings^{[Note82: Available at https://www.etalab.gouv.fr/consultation-spd (accessed 13 April 2018).]} list many datasets that contributors identified as key but that were not included in the final reference data. Moreover, the commitment title reflected ambition greater than simply a public consultation as the data infrastructure was to be co-constructed.

Carried Forward?

This commitment was carried over to the next action plan. In the new action plan, the commitment focuses on opening new datasets; on improving the open data platform (data.gouv.fr); on assisting government agencies with opening their data and fostering dialogue with public officials; and on evaluating the impact of the efforts already taken in opening data.