Proceedings from the Workshop of Share-PSI 2.0 project on "Raising awareness and engaging citizens in re-using Public Sector Information"

1. Raising awareness and engaging
citizens in re-using PSI
Yannis Charalabidis
University of the Aegean
Greece
W3C - Share PSI 2.0 Workshop, 17th March 2015, Timisoara, Romania
Daniel Pop
West University of Timisoara
Romania

2. Topics of the Workshop
• How can public bodies engage the potential reusers of their
data and/or services ?
• Which methodologies, channels, technical platforms have
been used ?
• What methods are available to reusers of your data to send
feedback about published data ?
• How do you handle feedback received so as to improve your
data ?
• Should data producers track use of, and demand for, data? If
so, how?
… or …

3. Ways to boost utilisation of
Open Data by citizens

4. Way #1: Give them a home
• An open data portal has to offer the ability to
citizens / users to create and maintain a profile
• Allow easy login via social media

5. Way #2: Make them customers / Create
an Open Data marketplace
• When a citizen cannot find the dataset he is looking
for, he can put a request that is channeled to the
appropriate administration

6. Way #3: Make them opendata publishers
• Allow for upload of datasets by users

7. Way #4: Allow working on datasets /
make them curators
• A dataset can be processed by a user and then
republished as a new version. Datasets can be
visualised, extended, linked by users

8. Way #5: Give them incentives
• Measure and publish popularity of the users, based
on their activity
• Give incentives for data usage / utilisation (e.g. free
tickets to community events, free parking to most
prominent users)
• Organisation of competitions / datathons with
prizes for the best applications
• Organisation of data journalism competitions for
users

9. Other Ways ? #6
• Rationale: people care about services – not
data. Also, we never ask them.
• So, involve them upfront: organise meetings
of interest groups (e.g. fin, env, etc) among
interested citizens and entreprises
• Questionnaires, too, for initial screening of
ideas and people

10. Other Ways ? #7
• Rationale: companies have different viewpoint
than citizens. Need quality, support, etc
• So, provide something like that for companies
and utilisation will be higher.
• Build communities

11. Other Ways ? #8
• Rationale: people might want to “make a
story” acting like data journalists, but they
might not have the skills needed
• So: make small groups among citizens to work
around open data, generating small or larger
stories

12. Other Ways ? #9
• Rationale: citizens without the proper
knowledge cannot take advantage of
incentives targeting (mainly) developers
• So: invest in training citizens on basic digital
skills (make a web site, work with a dataset,
write a story, etc)