What is open data?

Open data consists on datasets produced or compiled by public bodies that public administrations make available to citizens so that they can be freely used in a simple, user-friendly way. Open data has significant potential value and is essential to public administration transparency, efficiency and equality of opportunities when it comes to wealth creation.

The main objective of releasing data is for the data managed by administrative authorities to be made public and available to society for use by any individual or organisation. With this service, the administrations increase their transparency since citizens are able to access a true picture of the services provided. In addition, the reuse of open data by companies, organisations, associations and citizens in general enables the development of new products and services that create value, innovation, knowledge and business opportunities.

Open data licenses and terms of use are subject to the laws on public sector information reuse and, in some cases, may be protected by intellectual property licenses, although the data is typically released without conditions, provided it is not altered and includes the mandatory source credit and latest update citation.

How can you benefit from using open data?

With the development of the information society, open data has become a very valuable information tool that provides benefits for citizens and companies, as well as for the administration itself, able to improve efficiency as a result of facilitating greater interoperability.

The provision of open data is an exercise in information transparency that allows citizens access to information related to the administration's actions and services and its management of public resources.

Benefits for citizens: information
1. It establishes an active, participatory and bidirectional dialogue between a government and its citizens, a fundamental principle of open government.
2. It facilitates the creation of new social services that improve the life of citizens.
3. It promotes the democratic participation of citizens.

Benefits for businesses: generation of wealth
1. It enables the creation of economic value as it generates new services and web applications developed from the open data
2. It opens up a new market based on digital content
3. It creates the potential for the generation of profit from public information

Benefits for public administrations: transparency
1. Promotes intelligent and effective use of resources
2. Generates a transparent government that promotes a higher degree of public confidence
3. Facilitates interoperability between different administrations

Whats is a dataset?

The term dataset refers to a set of typically structured data that has been used to construct information published in data catalogues or displayed independently.

Raw data is organised into datasets so that it can be more easily indexed and located; in order to achieve this, different fields are used that define the data group such as description, update frequency, format and usage licence, among others.