Difference between revisions of "Case Studies/Piemonte Regional Government"

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Curator, Creator

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unspecified

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Text, Geodata, Data

2010

Italy, Europe

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open data, PSI, public sector information, data, government

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Currently the most interesting Open Data initiative carried on by an Italian Public Administration, that is the single project with the largest scope and one coherent vision and road-map, is the portal for open data launched in 2010 by Region Piedmont, building on already existing common regional guidelines about PSI reuse. — Marco Fioretti, Open Data, Open Society

Overview

The Piemonte Regional Government in Italy has adopted the CC0 public domain dedication for its open data portal (dati.piemonte.it). The Piemonte Region is leading the open data movement in Italy at the government level, being the only regional government to open up all its data for reuse without restrictions. Piemonte also has a preeminent role in the Italian Conference of Regions in this domain.

The data available on dati.piemonte.it consist of raw datasets that can be downloaded directly from the site, and also information about the data available under CC Attribution, including government news, reports, and testimonials. According to an ePSIplatform blog post, Piemonte's open data portal falls under Category 1, "Catalogues by Governments – data.gov style catalogues (with access to raw data)," on the ePSIplatform PSI Data Catalogues page.

License Usage

dati.piemonte.it site content is defaulted under the CC BY license. The actual data (including raw datasets), however, are released to the public under the CC0 public domain dedication. There is a "license agreement" for each dataset that, when viewed, reveals the following language:

"Regione Piemonte autorizza la libera e gratuita consultazione, estrazione, riproduzione e modifica dei dati in essa contenuti da parte di chiunque (Licenziatario) vi abbia interesse per qualunque fine, ovvero secondo i termini della licenza Creative Commons - CC0 1.0 Universal."

In (Google) translation, it reads:

"Regione Piemonte authorizing the free and open consultation, retrieval, playback and editing of data in it by anyone (Licensee) has interest for any purpose, or pursuant to the terms of the Creative Commons license - 1.0 Universal CC0."

Motivations

The Piemonte Regional Government, working independently from the Italian Federal Government, launched its data portal in May 2010. In Italy, the local, regional, and federal governments function independently of each other, with significant policy differences in regards to data. The Piemonte region, having close ties with the Open Knowledge Foundation and the NEXA Center for Internet & Society, was interested in opening its data, especially following the European Union's directive on the re-use of public sector information. Following the EU directive, the Piemonte region developed its own guidelines (pdf) on the reuse of public data. In addition, the research initiative, Extracting Value from Public Sector Information (EVPSI), is based in and supported by the Piemonte Regional Government. EVPSI's "main objective is to maximize the benefits achievable from the access and the reuse of PSI by the end of 2011." [1]

Working closely with the Open Knowledge Foundation and NEXA, the Piemonte Regional Government adopted the CC0 public domain dedication as the default for its data. The motivations for choosing CC0 can be summed up as follows:

1) They wanted to reproduce the public domain status of information, as the public domain exists elsewhere (such as as in United States).

2) They wanted to use a standard that was recognized globally with permissions that were simple and easy for users to comprehend. These permissions would be interoperable with the laws of other countries and would allow the data to be re-used without further specifications.

These considerations led to the adoption of CC0 as the default for Piemonte regional data, and from there the government would license other information, such as text on their website, under CC Attribution. Guidelines for use of CC licenses for dati.piemonte.it are outlined here (pdf).

The resulting Piemonte Regional Government portal is the first and currently (as of February 2011) only official regional government in Italy that has adopted a CC0 open data policy, surrendering all copyrights to the extent possible under law to the data available through dati.piemonte.it.

Impact

Since Piemonte's adoption of CC0 for its data, other regions, specifically Trentino Alto Adige and Emilia Romagna, are in talks to open their data as well.

Several interesting re-use cases of Piemonte's data have been documented at http://www.dati.piemonte.it/casi-duso.html. Re-use cases include iPhone applications for tourists (based on hotel data), urban plans data and agricultural index now available on Google maps, tools for designing future cities and schools, visualizations of the growth of foreign students, and other applications of Piemonte data. Most of these re-use cases have been carried out by independent citizens.

Technical Details

Provide any technical details of the implementation here

Media

Blog posts:

• "What does the Future Hold for Open Data in Italy?" - EPSIplatform blog post that describes the Italian scenario and the Piedmont open data portal
• Open Knowledge Foundation blog
• Other press coverage: http://dati.piemonte.it/dicono-di-noi.html

Reports:

• Open Data, Open Society a research project about openness of public data in EU local administration (pdf)
  • § 3.6 mentions the status of open data in Italy, with specific reference to the Piedmont open data portal (host site)
• Piemont regional guidelines on the reuse of public data (pdf)

Guidelines:

• On [http://www.dati.piemonte.it/media/files/Linee%20guida%20PSI_ALLEGATO%20B.pdf Operations Guide to the adoption of an alternative license to the License

Creative Commons CC0] (pdf) Statistics:

• http://dati.piemonte.it/statistiche.html