Access and Reuse of Data from the Education System (IT0026)

Short description Developing a systematic strategy to enhance information from the education system, with the purpose of opening data (for citizens, other institutions, businesses and research) and ensuring the development of new digital and participation skills. Establishing the infrastructure for the timely publication of high-quality data about the whole education system as a tool to foster innovation in teaching methodologies and training processes so that students are no longer mere consumers but “critical consumers” and “ producers” of digital content and architecture. General objective Increase the availability of data as well as the ability to use and process them not only by people who have specialist skills, but involving the Ministry, institutions, society and businesses, at all levels. Current situation The Ministry has a large data stock which is the result of administrative and management procedures, ad hoc statistical surveys and evaluation and self-evaluation of teaching and research. This information is only partly available to individual institutions for their management-related choices and, only to a limited extent, openly accessible to the vast public. The Ministry’s information stock is therefore not fully exploited yet, nor can it be fully used at its best. The enhancement of the Ministry’s data stock is a practice of good governance, transparency and participation and helps create a proper relationship between public administration and citizens. More specifically, this brings in a new idea of administrative transparency by transforming the request to access information by an individual into an ongoing flow of information for the whole society, for public scrutiny and for the accountability of the organization; it is useful for the organization itself since it relies on public exposure to reduce the time of bureaucratic procedures needed to circulate information among administrations; it provides civil society and the trade sector with the raw material to develop high-density information applications and services through visualizations, cross-referencing, typical big data processing, often simplifying or increasing the value of the service provided by the administrations themselves. Expected results Establishment of the Single Portal of Education Data which is meant to allow users to easily read high-quality data. It also relies on a set of access policies whose main aim is to ensure accountability, participation, reuse for commercial purposes and research. The portal will have different access policies depending on the type of user, including ad hoc policies for researchers. See also the Big Data @ MIUR report. A specific section of the Portal will include a “data gym”, an environment expressly dedicated to the culture of data and to support training, research and the growth of the future data scientists. The launch of the portal will be accompanied by a hackathon involving the communities of developers, civil society and students, with the purpose of planning together with the administration the next data releases and updates.

For commitment details, see IRM Year 1 report: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/italy-mid-term-report-2016-2018-year-1/

For commitment details, download the IRM report: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/italy-end-of-term-report-2016-2018/