Publications and education

Several publications, ranging from the yearly Open Data Maturity report to specific data stories and open data news are available through data.europa.eu.

The portal offers social media coverage on open data topics, with the purpose of educating and informing citizens about the opportunities that using and reusing public data resources can bring. It also hosts the data.europa academy and publishes a monthly newsletter.

The Use cases section offered a catalogue that included hundreds of use cases from both publishers and people who reuse open data.To browse the list of use cases gathered until end 2023, consult the web archive.

The portal is linked to other activities that demonstrate the potential of open data, such as the EU Datathon (an annual open data competition), the EU Open Data Days (a worldwide conference about open data and data visualisation) and different online seminar series (EU DataViz webinars, EU Open Data Explained webinars and data.europa academy webinars).

The portal also offers documentation on general recommendations for topics like data quality and data citation.

Finally, the portal researches and documents the impact of open data in reports such as the 2020 report on The Economic Impact of Open Data – Opportunities for value creation in Europe. The study forecasts the open data market size and employment growth for 2025. The impact is exemplified by efficiency gains and cost savings due to open data.

Open data maturity

The study on open data maturity serves as benchmark to gain insights into the development of European countries in the field of open data. This annual assessment, started in 2015, presents the overview to better understand the countries level of maturity on open data. The study captures their progress over time and areas of improvement and benchmarks them against other countries. The report assesses the maturity against four dimensions:

Policy
Portal
Impact
Quality

It also provides an overview of best practices implemented across Europe and a set of recommendations tailored to the level of maturity and characteristics of each group. Every year, the data is collected through a questionnaire sent to national open data representatives working in collaboration with the European Commission and the Public Sector Information Expert Group.

Data.europa academy

The data.europa academy is your knowledge hub on data. It helps you to become more knowledgeable about open data and become more data literate, with different courses hosting e-learnings, reports, webinars and related material. You will find an extensive learning offer depending on your profile (academia, civil servant, data provider, developer, journalist, NGO, private sector) or your level of expertise on data. They are also grouped per theme (business, communication, impact, legal, policy, portal, and quality).

Whether you are an expert or just getting started, you will find the information you need to upskill your data learnings!

News and data stories

Under news, you can find short articles about the latest activities, events, projects, initiatives, studies, trends and use cases related directly or indirectly to open data in Europe and beyond. If you would like your event, project, or initiative to be featured in our news section, let us know via the contact form.

Data stories

Data stories are a set of articles on a variety of topics related to the European Commission’s priorities, showcasing relevant open data through data visualisations. The section also includes interviews, highlighting examples of good practices and innovative techniques related to open data across the world.

Studies

The portal commits to open data research and learning as key milestones to keep updating in this constantly changing data ecosystem. This section provides a full collection of the research developed on several topics.

Calendar

The events calendar features virtual and in-person events related directly and indirectly to open data in Europe and beyond. If you would like your event to be featured in this section of the portal, let us know via the contact form.

EU Open Data Days

The EU Open Data Days in 2021, was the first-ever event of its kind and took place from 23 to 25 November 2021. It comprised EU DataViz, an international conference on open data and data visualisation, followed by the finals of EU Datathon, the annual open data competition.

The EU Open Data Days were designed to be relevant to all open data stakeholders and data users, with a special emphasis on the needs of the EU’s public sector. The event attracted well over 2 000 registrations from data enthusiasts, data visualisation experts and solution-seekers. On the stage, different sectors of the society were represented, with more than 70 speakers coming from all around the world to bring their expertise for public administrations.

The EU Open Data Days were organised by the Publications Office of the EU, with the active support of over 60 partners, representing the data providers from EU institutions and agencies, European national open data portals and national statistical offices, the key digital players in Luxembourg.

You can access the recordings and presentations online.

EU Datathon

EU Datathon is an annual open data competition organised by the Publications Office of the EU since 2017. The competitions are organised to create new value for citizens through innovation and promote the use of open data available on the portal.

EU Datathons gather teams of people from all over Europe to stimulate innovation, creating a bridge between citizens and the EU’s administration. As a result, new applications are developed to improve existing services or create completely new ones. The competitions have also demonstrated that potential users do need these initiatives for visibility purposes before potential business partners.

Open data demonstrated in every edition how powerful it could be, in every sector of society. It showed us how it could help in the creation of start-ups, innovative products and services; it promotes transparency in the public sector, addresses current societal challenges, boosts economic growth and accelerates scientific progress.

Every EU Datathon competition showed innovation when teams tackled different challenges, such as helping to achieve the digital single market (e.g. Tenderlake and C4P.io), making legislation more interoperable (e.g. The Smartfiles Network and Lexparency), offering innovative technology relating to medicines (e.g. Medicatio and Open Food Facts) or tackling climate change (ODCCI) through a platform which optimises irrigation to reduce water waste (e.g. Chloe irrigation system).

These examples, among others, uncover how accessible and reusable data can help to build a better future.

EU Datathons are organised in collaboration with partners in EU institutions and Member States to address domains of primary importance for citizens, the public sector and businesses: legislation, medications, food safety and public procurement, among others. This interinstitutional collaboration highlights the common goals to be closer to citizens and support innovative start-ups. Additionally, by facilitating cooperation between public entities and the private sector, EU Datathons generate innovative ideas for open government, offering a platform for all sides to exchange information and learn.

Moreover, it is a new, more direct way of interaction between citizens, innovative youth and the EU administration and it can generate a positive atmosphere around the Commission and the EU institutions in general.

The portal newsletter is sent to subscribers monthly. It provides an overview of the recent and upcoming events and activities of the portal, along with the most important news, events, and developments in the open data domain in Europe.

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