This document discusses how open data is turned into services. It notes that while open data initiatives aim to spur the creation of new services, the development of sustainable services based on open data has been disappointing. Several approaches are explored to better encourage the creation of open data services, such as addressing intellectual property rights, improving data discoverability, providing support like APIs and training, and running competitions. However, studies suggest that the potential for open data to generate new services may be overstated, as reusers are not strongly demanding open datasets and there is a lack of alignment between released datasets and created services.

1. How open data are turned into
services?
Muriel Foulonneau, Sébastien Martin, Slim Turki
IESS 2014 – 5th Int. Conf. on
Exploring Services Science
5-7 February 2014
Geneva, Switzerland

2. Recent Highlights
2009 – USA, Memorandum on Transparency and Open
Government
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1000s of datasets released in multiple sectors.
2013 – EU Commission, new release of Public Sector Information
directive
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amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information
known as the “PSI Directive”
include in particular cultural heritage data in the public data that has to be
made openly accessible by public institutions in Europe.
2013 – G8 Open Data Charter; Principles are:
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Open Data by Default
Quality and Quantity
Useable by All
Releasing Data for Improved Governance
Releasing Data for Innovation
How open data are turned into services?
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3. Observations
Open Data movement mainly a data provision movement.
Release of Open Data motivated by:
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government transparency (citizen access to government data)
development of services by third parties for benefit for citizens and
companies (typically smart city approach), or
development of new services that stimulate the economy
Many platforms are supported by initiatives dedicated to creation
of services based on open data
Development of sustainable services based on open data is
extremely disappointing
Services delivered through Applications
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How open data are turned into services?
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4. Objectives
1. Study development of services based on open data
2. Means to make data opening process more effective
3. Assessment of data opening and RoI
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How open data are turned into services?
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5. Existing approaches to encourage
creation of services based on open
data

6. Intellectual property rights and reuse
conditions
Singapore
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insists on having well documented IPR on each dataset
Europeana
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Data Exchange Agreement, all data providers have to sign in order to have
their data included in the platform.
Release of all data (metadata in this case) transferred to Europeana with a
CC0 license, i.e., the data is in the public domain.
Lowest possible barrier to reuse; reusers haven’t to address
heterogeneous reuse conditions when reusing multiple datasets
Enforcement of a single and so open license created a number of issues
with cultural heritage institutions which have invested large resources in
manual creation of these metadata for years.
French Min. of Culture launched a study to verify if revenues of cultural
data selling > revenues in regard with open data release potential.
How open data are turned into services?
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7. Dataset discoverability
Open Data portals at regional, national and international level
aggregate metadata on datasets, to make datasets accessible.
Vocabularies
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Different vocabularies can be used to describe datasets (VoID, POWDER,
Dublin Core Collection application profile or DDI)
Heterogeneity of metadata is an obstacle to their discovery
Harmonization of metadata through vocabularies such as DCAT can help
datasets discovery.
How open data are turned into services?
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8. Support
Release of open data is not sufficient to make them accessible
and understandable by reusers
“Reuse requires technical skills and extensive knowledge of the
context of data that are beyond the reach of a large part of the
population” (Remiti, 2012).
Publishers create APIs to lower technical barrier and time required
to develop new services:
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Reusers do not have to address format heterogeneity and less knowledge
required
Singapore / API provides access to the datasets recorded on the portal
USA / Federal agencies to create public APIs that could be used by
government and private developers to tap in to data. Free, open source
tools are released to accelerate adoption of open data practices by
providing plug-and-play tools and best practices to help agencies improve
the management and release of open data.
In France, API for data.gouv.fr is under study
How open data are turned into services?
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9. Training
World Bank platform
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Exception, provides various training services, basic knowledge
Help potential reusers how to get data and to represent data it into maps.
Developers can rely on initiatives from third parties like Open
Knowledge Foundation
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For stakeholders who may not have extensive technical knowledge but
wish to work on the data (e.g. data journalists), it founded a School of data
in 2012.
How open data are turned into services?
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10. Publicizing datasets
When data producers publish new datasets, they have to make the
datasets known to reusers to optimize the chances that reusers
will take advantage of datasets.
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French National Library has established contacts with the semantic
community to make new datasets known so as to facilitate the creation of
new services. They publicize on virtual community channels the
information and reach potential reusers for their data.bnf.fr datasets.
How open data are turned into services?
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11. Competitions for service creations
Hackathons
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Locking developers, citizens, civil servants, researchers, company
programmers or any other interested party to create services in a short
amount of times, typically 1 or 2 days.
Dev. can be individual or the result of joint code developed on site.
Europeana for instance organized several hackhatons.
Paris city, France organized an open data competition in collaboration with
companies opening their data
Off-site competitions
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Veni, Vidi, Vici competitions organized by the European LinkedUp project
to encourage reuse of educational datasets, accompanied by monetary
prizes (39.500€).
 Variety of services that can be created based on open datasets.
 Effective at raising awareness of developers and service creators on
potential for reuse of the open datasets.
 Most often services created in these contexts do not lead to the
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How open data are turned into services?
development of actual sustainable services.
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12. Ensuring creation of sustainable services
Singapore government organizes co-funding of services via Calls
for contribution
European Commission co-funds development of
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services to take advantage of geographic information coming from the
Galileo satellite
services reusing open datasets (open access to scientific outcomes
experimentation calls in ICT-PSP and services based on open geographic
data).
How open data are turned into services?
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13. Publicizing services to show reuse and
encourage service usage
Open data portals include a section to show services and
applications that use the datasets
“Application Showcase”
“Apps” section
data.gov.uk
data.gov.sg
“Anwendungen”
Berlin Open Data portal
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“Application showcase”
World Bank data portal
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14. Selection of datasets to open
In order to identify the datasets to open:
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investigate which datasets are already available, which IPR conditions
would allow a publication under an open licence, and whose quality is
sufficient, or
investigate what citizens and potential reusers are interested in.
In 2013 the French ministry of culture launched a survey for the selection
of priority datasets for open data release.
How open data are turned into services?
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15. Typology of created services

16. Monitoring
Difficult to monitor services created based on open data sets.
Easier to monitor actual reuse of data, datasets available only
through APIs.
On open data catalogues, the number of downloads can be
monitored.
Effective reuse of data is more difficult to trace if reusers do not
establish a direct contact with the data publishers.
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Most popular datasets on the Paris
Open Data portal
How open data are turned into services?
opendata.paris.fr
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17. UK / data.gov.uk
314 apps listed; Domains of application include:
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Economy (Property prize , Job market)
Environment (Use of renewable energies)
Transparency (e.g., Availability of governmental financial data with the app.
« Where does my money go? »)
Society (Criminality map)
Local services (best surgery services next to me, postal code where I am,
fuel station search)
Education (geological layers where I stand), and
Citizen life (elections results, « UK arms export licence browser »)
Thematic distribution of applications based into services?
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How open data are turned
on datasets published on data.gov.uk
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18. UK / data.gov.uk
Thematic distribution of applications
Although categories are not
exactly similar
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Imbalance between low number of
geographic and transportation
datasets and large proportion of
transportation services.
Suggests the quite uneven potential
of datasets for reuse.
Transportation datasets appear to
have a high reusability potential
Education datasets attract less
Distribution of datasets by topic
reusers in proportion of their
quantity.
Domain is clearly not the only
element to take into
consideration when assessing
the reusability of a dataset.
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How open data are turned into services?
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19. How are datasets reused?
78% reuse only a single dataset.
As an exception, Sketchmap.co.uk uses 19 datasets.
Most reused datasets are Code-Point® Open and the National
Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN).
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 Transportation datasets are popular.
80% of apps are available for free
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Others are most often sold for less than 1£.
The most downloaded app available via GooglePlay is NHS direct
app (medical diagnostic) with more than 100.000 downloads.
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This application was however created by the same administration which
released the data.
How open data are turned into services?
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20. Evaluation of open data initiatives

21. Evaluation of open data initiatives
 Usage, audience, and uniqueness of the services
 Entailed changes in public institutions opening data (improved
data management, increase information sharing culture)
 Created business opportunities
 Citizen and business perception of the city (open data as a
communication tool on how modern a city or country is)
 Modification to particular markets it has entailed
 Sustainability of created services
 New dialog created with citizens (open legislation process, UK)
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How open data are turned into services?
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22. Conclusion
Studies suggest that reusers are not really interested in open
datasets
 Not a demand driven initiative but rather an initiative of data providers,
hoping for a possible impact in terms of service creation.
Inadequacy between released datasets and created services as
well as between the claims of huge potential service creations
and the low demand from service creators, particularly
companies
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Are reusers aware of the potential reuse of datasets or do not they really
need them?
Is there an adequacy between the datasets that are of interest to reusers
and the datasets actually opened?
Can we measure the potential for reuse of particular datasets? Which are
the obstacles to reuse?
Is the potential impact of open data in terms of service creation really
inflated or are there obstacles to data reuse that have not been sufficiently
addressed?
How open data are turned into services?
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23. Thank you for your attention
How open data are turned into
services?
Muriel Foulonneau, Sébastien Martin, Slim Turki
muriel.foulonneau@tudor.lu
slim.turki@tudor.lu
IESS 2014 – 5th Int. Conf. on
Exploring Services Science
5-7 February 2014
Geneva, Switzerland