Availability of Open Data Portals for Green Transition (FR0126)

What is the issue that the commitment will address?

There is still room to improve access to data on the green transition and data discoverability for public policymakers, researchers and citizens. Data is highly scattered within the Ministry; there are over 130 information systems sharing data across more than 50 platforms and over 130 organisations that own the data. A study that received 130 responses has listed 156 problems related to using one data platform. These cover six main areas: data quality, discoverability, familiarity, use value, reproducibility and governance. Thematic environmental data platforms have grown in number since the 2016 Digital Republic Act.

What is the commitment?

Title: Develop projects to make available centralised open government data portals, especially for the green transition

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem?

Government actors are stepping up their efforts in data openness in order to respond to users’ problems and encourage data reuse. The Ecosphères project, for example, aims to reference data for each region to support the Ministry for the Ecological and Energy Transition and Regional Cohesion in response to the France Nation Verte programme. This portal does not host the data directly, but “harvests” metadata from open-source environmental databases operated by decentralised government departments, e.g. the Département Regional Planning Directorate (DDT) and the Environment, Planning and Housing Regional Directorate (DREAL), government agencies and operators. The portal harvests data from all the catalogues of regional and national datasets. Entry to the portal is by theme (water, biodiversity, waste, etc.) or use case (from those initially identified by Ecosphère(s): drafting a regional climate, air and energy plan or a prevention plan for natural flood risk, calculating a carbon footprint, producing a biodiversity status report or monitoring the energy-efficient renovation of buildings). The portal complies with the DCAT Application profile for data portals in Europe (DCATAP) and is now associated with the data.gouv.fr national platform. It will provide a self-diagnosis service to check the quality of a dataset, including the qualification of data from indicators based on metadata (obsolescence, interoperability, discoverability, etc.) and identification of datasets with metadata that needs to be completed, updated or consolidated. The aim of the portal is to improve access to and discoverability of data for the green and energy transitions. Organisations such as the National Institute for Geographical and Forestry Information (IN) and Météo France also play a key role in this process designed to promote the reuse of data which will be crucial for a successful green transition. To encourage innovation, in 2024 Météo France will open up access to all its public data relating to observations, forecasts, the climate and outlooks.

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?

This commitment is related to data openness and sharing and describing public policy in readily understandable terms. Access to information about the environment is enshrined in Article 7 of the 2004 Charter for the Environment, which states that everyone has the right to have access to information pertaining to the environment in the possession of public bodies and to participate in the public decision-taking process.

What are the expected impacts?

• Smoother drafting and monitoring of regional action plans for France Nation Verte

• New value-added services

Milestones

• September 2023: Implementation on data.gouv.fr

• 2024: Platform goes live, governance framework defined