GREECE The Value of Open Data What did the commitment seek to achieve, and why is this important?

Access to information at all levels of public life is a crucial component of a true information society. This was the position the Greek government took when it came to reforming how they publish their data. Its not just that access to information supports fundamental democratic values, such as accountability and citizen participation; the data held by public authorities has economic potential too. Information held by the government can be reused in all kinds of economic endeavors, from developing new customer services to fostering new scientific research open data promotes new knowledge and this in turn encourages innovation. In line with these central principles, the Greek government set up Data.gov.gr. This is the central catalog of public data which provides access to public datasets from all Greek government bodies. The main purpose of data.gov.gr is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets, by cataloging, indexing, storing and searching the public sectors data and information, as well as providing web services to citizens and other information users. How did you go about implementing the commitment? Who were the key advocates both within and outside of government during the implementation phase? The call for a centralized list of public data came from citizens (through social media as well as through official government sites) civil society organizations, NGOs and other stakeholders alike. In response, the Prime Ministers office sent a letter in May 2013 to all Ministries calling for data to be centralized. An initial set of datasets was collected and the development of a central data catalog became a governmental priority. Data.gov.gr was itself was initially developed by the Strategic Planning Bureau of the General Secretariat of the Prime Minister and was initially launched in September 2013. Data sets will subsequently be managed by the relevant public bodies. Ministries are responsible for ensuring the availability of datasets falling under their jurisdiction in the form of "open data", giving priority to those with high value and benefit to citizens and businesses. How have citizens benefitted from this reform? If possible, please include evidence of results or uptake, e.g. links to news coverage, quotes, and/or quantitative measures, such as web analytics. Until Data.gov.gr, available public datasets were scattered in different public websites, in various formats (which usually did not permit their easy reuse) and with a variety of

complex licensing rules, meaning citizens could not be sure what was public and useable and what was not. Now, all the data are available in reusable formats under a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to use, reproduce and modify these data without needing to do anything but identify the source. Data.gov.gr also provides a mechanism for citizens to vote for the datasets they wish to see that are not yet publicly available. Citizens proposals are sent to the relevant public bodies and the datasets are made priorities for publication. What did NOT go as planned, and what did you learn from this? What is the unfinished business, e.g. how might you take this work forward in your next OGP action plan? The development of data.gov.gr was something of an unplanned commitment for the Greek government, which rapidly became a priority as demand grew. Given the lack of time and resources, the development of the software platform was developed in-house, which meant some compromises had to be made with the sites functionality. Next year, the government is aiming to improve the software platform and enrich it with new functionalities. They are also preparing the necessary legal and organizational changes that will allow the decentralized management of datasets.