Selected Talk of Taru Rastas, Senior Advisor, Ministry of Communications of Finland at the European Data Forum 2014, 19 March 2014 in Athens, Greece: Open data for transport and communications

1. Open Data in Transport and
Communications
Taru Rastas
Communication policy department, Internet Services

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Data guide
 What is open data?
 How to get started?
 Steps and examples

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Geographical data as a key enabler
 Also weather data, postal codes…
HERE by Nokia
Google maps
Finnish national geoportal by The National
Landsurvey of Finland

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Finnish open data policy thinking
 Measures are taken to further the accessibility
of the public sector's digital information
resources
– active provision of data
 Evidence rationalize
– services and applications emerge as data is
made available
 EU Digital Agenda highlights open data
– open single markets

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Finnish open data policy actions
 Government resolution to increase re-use of public sector
data (March 2011)
 Government programme (2011-2015)
 GIDE strategy: open data and pilots (2011 on-going)
 Availability of public data working group (Ministry of
Transport and Communications 2011)
 Act on Information Management Governance in Public
Administration (forced in June 2011)
 Charging policy and technical interface standards (2012)
 Information Resources for Research (Ministry of Education
and Culture 2012 on-going)
 Open data programme (Ministry of Finance 2013 ongoing)

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Transport and communications
(incl. weather data) open data
Working group
– Ministry of Transport and Communications with agencies
and authorities
– Roadmap published in April 2013
Tasks
Identification of data resources and prioritization
Clarification and harmonization of practises
Technical and administrative development
Legislative issues on re-use and interoperability
Enhancing co-operative models to support use of data

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Interoperability, platforms & practises
- maintenance, quality, development
Data sets to be opened with no restrictions
Restrictions
Open data sets
• 17 data sets
• For example: Public transport timetables and routes
nationally, 24h weather forecasts, Digiroad
• 5 data sets
• For example:
Information security
indicents (cert-fi)
•42 data sets
• For example:
Driving licence data
Opening
• Machine readable
• Publication mode
• Effects
• Finance
Partial opening?
• Copyrights
• Anonymisation
• Regulation
• Identification, user
permits
Promotion
• Accessibility, open
licenses, APIs
ACTIONS:
Step1:Identified data reserves

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Step2: Transport and communications
open data roadmap
Timeline visualisation http://floapps.planeetta.com/lvm/timeline/index.php

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Step 3: Shared data for
situation awareness (pilot)
 Communications, transport, energy networks
and weather data for exceptional situations
– storms, environment crisis, accidents etc.
 Project in co-operation with Code4Europe
– Fellow recruitment
9

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Open infrastructure challenges
 VISIBILITY
– portals, websites, service directories, multi-channels etc.
 CONSISTENCY
– described in a coherent manner – information architecture,
metadata repository
 EFFICIENCY
– support services to facilitate the use - clearing house function,
help desk, competence building
– long-term funding – first-step cost sharing between
stakeholders e.g. income from selling data and interface
services
 SCALABILITY
– maintenance and distribution e.g. cloud, open interfaces
 DEMAND DRIVEN
– prioritization of datasets, engagement with developers,
monitoring use

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Data portal
http://data.suomi.fi
Ministry of Finance is
running the project for
data portal

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Promoting service and application
development
 Developing culture of
openness - attitude
 Betas - piloting
 Developer community
dialogue
 Research - impacts
 International co-operation
 Apps and problem solving
competitions
Helsinki Region Infoshare
www.hri.fi

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Examples
”Public transport GPS
navigator”
”Tax receipt”
ParkMan
”Library book finder”
Blindsquare

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Background materials
Further information
contact:
taru.rastas@lvm.fi

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What is open data
 Data which is made available for re-use
– machine readable (technical)
– common licences (legal)
– free of charge (economical)
 Public data: handling not subject to statutory
limitations
 Governments, companies, citizens all collect and use
data
 From data to reuse: services, applications, algorithms,
visualisations…
 Accessibility: requires action in a society – political and
collective issue

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GIDE project
 Finland's future is in digital services
 To promote the growth of digital services by increasing public-private
cooperation
– Strategic partners, companies, associations, researchers, entrepreneurs and
people are called to join in
 To draw up a roadmap for the digital economy in which the challenges of
society have been converted into opportunities
– Experiments, pilots, new practises
 Cross-sectoral action areas
– Open data
– Cloud services
– Start up citizen
– Green ICT
– ICT&work
– ICT research
– ICT infrastructure

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Government resolution 3/2011
http://www.lvm.fi/web/fi/tiedote/view/1234053
Policy lines and measures needed for
improving the accessibility and increasing
the reuse of digitalised public sector
information resources in all areas of
society
 Lines and actions
1. Data policies and legislation (1)
2. Open infrastructure (2)
3. Development of services and applications (3)