EU: First European Open Data Summit held after transparency success

BRUSSELS – 9 / 5 / 2009 - What do you do, when you achieve a good bit of one task? You move on to the next level or to the next task. This is exactly what the Farmsubsidy.org team did last week, when they gathered in Brussels past week with a group of e-gov experts and journalists for the first European Open Data Summit. 

The meeting brought together about 15 committed computer and freedom of information experts, bloggers and journalists – all dealing with e-government and/or European affairs. The aim was to have a look at what information about the EU is available, and how we can use it and make it accessible for journalists and citizens.

The Farmsubsidy.org  network consists of journalists, academics and campaigners of various directions. They united in a loose research network with one common aim: To get access to good quality data about who receives the EU farmsubsidy billions.

The summit was held one week after one of the more prominent journalistic fights for good information to readers and viewers had moved a step ahead: On April 30^th the European Transparency Initiative by Commission vice-president Siim Kallas came into force and obliged EU countries to disclose all recipients of what for decades was the largest (and probably most secret) EU-policy – the farmsubsidies. 

Some of those, whose subsidies are being disclosed, have been and are fiercely fighting against disclosure, in some courtcases supported by the German farmers association. However the fight was praised by the Kallas cabinet, that worked in favour of transparency throughout the past years. “Mr Kallas has enjoyed working with you on transparency,” said Kristian Schmidt, deputy head of kabinet of Siim Kallas during a press briefing by the First European Data Summit. “The support from organisations such as Farmsubsidy.org was very useful, because our proposal was met with scepticism and, often, strong opposition. Some paid lip service to the principle of transparency whilst opposing all practical steps to implement it,” Schmidt said.

The data summitteers thus for part of the meeting dealt with the farmsubsidy data: Downloading, analysing, cleaning the data and finally ranking the quality of the publication.

This was concluded with a press briefing, where the farmsubsidy-millionairs and the results of the farmsubsidy analysis for this stage were presented. 

Press coverage – which through the years occured each time good quality data were disclosed in a new country  - was big this time too: La Vanguardia in Spain could report about lacking security in connection with the Spanish data, and the New York Times / International Herald Tribune runs a series of articles about farmsubsidies, the two most recent articles about US agro-business in Eastern Europe and about the status of the transparency process. The EUobserver.com looked into the Italian farmsubsidy millionaires.

But the open data summetteers continued. They started to gather an overview over EU databases, accessably or not, and they will be looking into options to use these data for journalistic stories and to make the accessible to a broader public.

Inspiration? Plenty! See for example http://okfn.org/, http://www.undemocracy.com/, http://www.theyworkforyou.com/, http://theyworkforyou.co.nz/, http://www.mysociety.org/ and http://www.kaasogmulvad.dk/.