Open Environmental Data (GR0074)

Commitment 10: Open access to data of the Ministry of Environment and Energy

Current situation
The information is now covered by Law 4305/2014 on the «Open access and re-use of documents,
information and public sector data, amendment of Law 3448/2006 (Α΄ 57), adaptation of national
legislation to the provisions of Directive 2013/37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council,
further strengthening of the transparency, regulation of issues regarding the recruitment competition
of the National School of Public Administration and Local Government and other provisions» (Official
Gazette Α’ 237/31.10.2014), with the differentiations provided for under the Directive regarding
libraries, museums and archives, and a specific provisions regarding the protection of cultural
heritage.

Description of Commitment
A wealth of data falling within the scope of Law 4305/2014 is available to the Ministry of
Environment and Energy and its supervised entities and will be made available for re-use in order to
contribute to the development and participation of citizens.

OGP Principles
Access to public information

Implementation entities, stakeholders
Implementation: Ministry of Environment and Energy
Cooperation with supervised entities.

Contact details: Ministry of the Environment and Energy, Directorate for e-Government, Department for
the Planning and Development of ICT Applications

Objective
1. A wealth of data falling within the scope of Law 4305/2014 is available to the Ministry of
Environment and Energy and will be made available for re-use in order to contribute to the
development and participation of citizens.
2. Investigation of the possibility of harvesting the data of the Ministry of Environment and Energy
into data.gov.gr
3. Integration of new datasets and web services
4. Improvement of the quality of datasets
5. Open data release decisions

Key milestones - Timetable
Milestone Completion
1) Creation of new datasets
2) Investigation of the possibility of harvesting our data in data.gov.gr
(creation of a compatible API)
3) Integration of new datasets and web services
4) Improvement of the quality of datasets
5) Open data release decisions

10. Open access to data of the Ministry of Environment and Energy

Main Objective

The published NAP mentions (p.33) the main objective for this commitment as follows:

"Description of Commitment: A wealth of data falling within the scope of Law 4305/2014 is available to the Ministry of Environment and Energy and its supervised entities and will be made available for re-use in order to contribute to the development and participation of citizens."

"Objectives: 1. A wealth of data falling within the scope of Law 4305/2014 is available to the Ministry of Environment and Energy and will be made available for re-use in order to contribute to the development and participation of citizens.

2. Investigation of the possibility of harvesting the data of the Ministry of Environment and Energy into data.gov.gr
3. Integration of new datasets and web services
4. Improvement of the quality of datasets
5. Open data release decisions."

Milestones

The published NAP mentions (p. 33-34) the milestones for this commitment as follows:

"1) Creation of new datasets

2) Investigation of the possibility of harvesting our data in data.gov.gr (creation of a compatible API)

3) Integration of new datasets and web services

4) Improvement of the quality of datasets

5) Open data release decisions."

Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see Greece's action plan at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Greece_Action-Plan_2019-2021_EN.pdf, p.33-34.

Commitment analysis

This commitment seeks to publish new datasets held by the Ministry of Environment and Energy, develop an API which would help make the data available on data.gov.gr and improve the quality of published datasets.

The commitment is considered verifiable and relevant to the Access to Information OGP value because, if implemented fully, it will lead the government to disclose more information (milestones 1, 3 and 5) and improve the quality of the information disclosed to the public (milestone 4). [80] However, the commitment does not contain all required details regarding the datasets to be made open nor any criteria for selecting datasets to be published.

The Ministry of Environment and Energy (MEE) has more than 250 datasets published across various websites, including its own Maps Portal [81] and Geoportal, [82] along with data.gov.gr [83] and geodata.gov.gr [84] which published data from multiple public institutions, including land use maps. Geospatial dataset views on MEE's Maps Portal amount to 1,000+ for the most popular datasets, whereas MEE's Geoportal does not provide usage statistics. MEE explained in interviews that datasets that existed already upon release of the action plan include spatial data, custom queries from diavgeia.gov.gr and technical reports.

MEE explained that currently no APIs exist for harvesting the agency's data (milestone 2), but MEE controls two geoportals (geoportal.ypen.gr and mapsportal.ypen.gr) that provide web services according to Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) [85] standards. MEE stated that it was not planning to integrate information stored on an urban planning platform (E-Poleodomia [86]) as part of the changes foreseen in the commitment. MEE also stated that many published datasets were not machine readable for further processing and reuse.

Concerning the rationale behind choosing datasets to open, MEE mentioned no specific rationale other than the absence of access restrictions and stated that no relevant stakeholders outside the public sector are involved in this process.

The commitment is expected to have no potential impact. It is not sufficiently clear which datasets will be opened, what the criteria will for choosing them and, therefore, how relevant these datasets will be.

Improvements to implementation of this commitment could bring in CSOs and other non-governmental stakeholders into the process of selecting datasets to open. Non-government stakeholder interviews revealed that foundational geospatial data such as base maps and ortho-imagery (aerial/satellite photos) would be a basic but high-value dataset that these stakeholders would like to see published. [87] This may help address the issue of illegal constructions, antiquities protection, land and seascape restoration, which are topics that concern the ministry's responsibilities and have appeared in media during the last 12 months. [88]

Commitment 10. Open access to data of the Ministry of Environment and Energy

● Verifiable: Yes

● Relevant: Yes, access to information

● Potential impact: None

● Completion: No evidence available

● Did it open government? No evidence of early results yet

The commitment sought to increase the quantity and quality of data publicly available from the Ministry of Environment and Energy and supervised entities to foster better scrutiny and reusability of the data by citizens.

The OpenGovMonitor states that two milestones are ongoing—concerning creation of new datasets and three data release decisions—but there is no publicly available evidence of this. It also shows that three milestones on integrating and improving datasets and creating an API have been canceled. The government’s old open data portal showed 126 documents from the Ministry of the Environment, but none of these have been added or updated since the action plan was originally submitted. [38] The new open data portal contains 16 datasets under the topic “Environment.” [39] The only one of these datasets published directly by the Ministry of Environment was published before the action plan was originally submitted.