First Anniversary of the relaunch of data.gov.ie - Blog by Emer Coleman, Chair of the Open Data Governance Board

A year has passed since the re-launch of Ireland’s Open Data portal, https://data.gov.ie, on 30^th June 2015; and those 12 months have seen significant developments for Open Data in Ireland.

I am privileged to chair the Open Data Governance Board since October 2015. The ODGB provides leadership for, and drives the implementation of, Open Data in Ireland.  The Board is supported by the Public Bodies Working Group (PBWG) and the Open Data Unit within the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in implementing our mandate.   

In my time as ODGB chair, I have been impressed with the willingness of public bodies to engage with the Open Data Initiative; to consider how to open their data; and to publish Open Data via data.gov.ie.

The portal is central to the Open Data Initiative, providing a single source of access to official data in open format; and it has been enhanced considerably over the last year.

As an Irish person involved in the UK’s move to Open Data, I was delighted when the Open Data Initiative and the original Open Data portal were launched in 2014. At the time, there were 420 datasets from 45 public bodies. It is debatable whether the portal contained any truly “open” datasets, because of licensing and format issues.

When the portal was re-launched on 30^th June 2015, it had about 840 datasets.

Today, it has 4328 datasets from 85 publishers. The vast majority of these use an open licence – Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) - which was selected after a public consultation. 

Some might say that this is still a relatively small number, but I think it is right to take a measured approach to publishing Open Data. Public bodies are working hard to comply with the Open Data Technical Framework which sets out what is needed if we are to publish data in high quality format with understandable context. I think it appropriate that Ireland publishes datasets that meet the required formats and standards for Open Data; and are published in a consistent, persistent and truly open way, making them more discoverable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. 

As public bodies’ understanding of the requirements and potential benefits of Open Data increases, I am certain that the number of high-quality open datasets will increase significantly. The ODGB will monitor progress and help to identify the use cases that will encourage public bodies to publish more high-value Open Data to deliver economic, social or democratic benefits.

The portal is a tool for all interested citizens and businesses. We are constantly looking at enhancements to the portal and recent improvements include a Stats page and a “Suggest a Dataset” feature. By suggesting dataset from users, public bodies will gain insights into what data users would like to use, re-use and redistribute. This engagement with data users is critical to progress and I encourage everyone to get involved.

We still have a long journey to the internationally important objective of “Open by Default”. I am hugely optimistic that, by working together, we can achieve an Open Data environment that is comparable with the very best.