Towards Public, Free and Quality Information, Zaragoza (Spain) May 10th 2013 . Post for EPSI Platform.

Last Friday the 10th of May 2013 the Zaragoza Town Hall organized a full day event with the following title:

“Towards free and qualitative public information".

("Hacia una información pública, libre y de calidad").

This is my guest post of that event for ePSI Platform.

The main objective of this event was to showcase the importance of Opening up data and the evolution that this concept has been having during the recent years.


The event began with a welcoming message from Ricardo Cavero, Director of Science and Technology of the Zaragoza Town Hall.

Cavero, confirmed that public information that is free and qualitative is basic and crucial for any action that is carried out by a Public authority. Moreover, the quality of the information is not to be given for granted it implies a significant effort to be made on the technological side and more importantly it calls for an internal transformation in the Public Authorities themselves.

More transparency is economically profitable. Article at L'Econòmic.

(Here there is a Spanish translation of this post)

On Saturday, February 16th, L'Econòmic published an article of mine about the much-needed transparency in our political parties.

L'Econòmic is a Catalan weekly economic newspaper, so I tried to relate the transparency, or the lack of transparency, as a problem not only political but also economic.

There is a very clear correlation between the countries with the highest income per capita and those with more transparency (in all areas of society).


Here I've translated the original article to English language:

Opening data in Spain - legal situation

(Here there is a Catalan translation of this post)

A few days ago, people from a European-wide technology project, asked me to draft a short article about the legal status of open data in Spain.

I copy this article here for those who might be interested.

Presentation of #da12data in the #OpenData Week of Nantes (France). #ODWNantes

Last Friday I was on Nantes, I presented the #da12data initiative in the OpenData Week of Nantes (France).

This was my presentation and my speech.

If you have any question, please comment it here.

Thanks.

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The presentation

Presentation of #da12data initiative in the Open Data Week, Nantes

View more PowerPoint from Marc Garriga

Presentation of #1OdataLicenseEU in LAPSI 6th thematic seminar. #OpenData

(Here there is a Spanish translation of this post)

This Thursday I will be on Budapest, I will present the #1OdataLicenseEU initiative at the LAPSI 6th thematic seminar about licensing of public sector information.

If you want to know what is #1OdataLicenseEU initiative (and sign it) you must click here.

In the rest of this post, there are my presentation and my speech on this Thursday.

If you have any question, please comment it here.

Thanks.

Smart Fun Cities

(This is an English translation of this original post in Spanish)

According to United Nations' data, provided by the World Bank, at the end of 2009 more people lived in cities than in rural areas for the first time, and the trend is for the urban population to keep growing.

It's clear, therefore, that we need to manage cities more and better, we need creativity, innovation, ideas to break the mould of urban management today.

In this regard, in recent months a new concept has been taking root in organizations (public and private) involved in city management.

This is the concept of a smart city. It is a concept that has a lot of definitions depending on what you want to emphasize.

Wikipedia says:
“A city can be defined as ‘smart’ when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic development and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance.”

In other words, a smart city is one where city management is based on real time data provided by information and communication technologies, ICTs. That information is processed to act in accordance with the main lines of action.