Capgemini Invent announced that it has been awarded by the Publications Office of the European Union a six-year framework contract to continue the development of the European Data Portal into a new service: Data.Europa.EU, along with related consultancy and research work. The new service will combine the two current European data portals, and their efforts towards facilitating open data publication and re-use across Europe.
The new Data.Europa.EU, to be launched in spring of 2021, will integrate the pre-existing European Data Portal and European Union Open Data Portal into a single, coherent core component of the public sector data infrastructure that has been set up by the European Union, its institutions and Member States. Like its predecessors, it will offer three key pillars:
- Access to public data resources across Europe via the single point of contact, which is the portal itself, offering over 1 million datasets across 36 countries, 6 EU institutions and 79 other EU bodies and agencies
- Support to EU institutions and Member States via the set-up of communities of practice of national open data portal and policy owners, training and consultancy to improve, sustain and document data publishing practices
- Evidence of the socio-economic benefits of re-using public data resources and various stimuli to foster and showcase uptake and value creation.
The goal of Data.Europa.EU is to leverage this three-pillar approach to support the creation and improvement of processes, products and services re-using public data resources to create economical, societal, political, and environmental impact. The more this impact is documented and understood, the further access, discoverability and data uptake will increase. The latest Capgemini Invent study published in 2020 as part of the European Data Portal project estimated a value between 199 and 334 billion euro in market size for open data in Europe in 2025.
“Since the original PSI Directive in 2003, European Institutions and countries started making data resources available to the public, accelerating the open data movement. Today, the maturity and the expectations around data quality, interoperability and impact creation have evolved. Over the next six years, we will enable a new leap forward, taking down barriers and increasing value creation through open data in Europe,” says Volkmar Varnhagen, Managing Director for Capgemini Invent, Northern and Central Europe and North America.
Beyond delivering improvements to the pre-existing two services, the agreement will continue including the measurement of open data maturity in Europe and the socio-economic impact of open and shared data in Europe in light of the current and planned developments. Assistance will be given equally to European countries where specific attention should be paid to improving the discoverability of data and improving data portals, to foster re-use of public data resources within each respective country and community.
Capgemini Invent leads the project’s Consortium, in partnership with INTRASOFT International, including Fraunhofer FOKUS, OMMAX, con terra, 52°North, Agiledrop, Timelex, the Lisbon Council and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
