Case Studies/Piemonte Regional Government
—
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, local, regional, and federal government function independently of each other, often with significant difference in policies. The Piemonte region, having close ties with the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) and the NEXA Center for Internet & Society was extremely interested in open data and the European Union's directive on on the re-use of public sector information. Following the EU directive, the Piemonte region developed its own guidelines on the reuse of public data (see Media below). 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 OKF and NEXA, the Piemonte Regional Government decided on CC0 public domain dedication as the default for its data. The motivations for choosing CC0 were of a practical nature and 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) And they wanted to use a standard that was recognized globally with permissions that were simple and easy for users to comprehend. They also wanted permissions that were interoperable with the laws of other countries, and that would allow the data to be re-used without further specifications. approach was really practical.
These considerations led to the adoption of CC0 as the default for Piemonte regional data, and from there the government would license other information that did not fall under the scope of raw data under other licenses, such as CC Attribution.
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. In addition, 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 on Google maps, tools for designing the future cities and schools, agricultural index on Google maps, visualizations of the growth of immigrant students, and other applications of Piemonte data.
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
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)
