The Center for Data Innovation | Open Data In the G80

Open Data in the G8:
A Review of Progress on
the Open Data Charter

Daniel Castro
Travis Korte

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

1

From creating a modern, evidence-based health caresystem to building sustainable, energy-efficient cities,
data is increasingly a critical component in many
initiatives to make the world a better place. In the
coming years, the collection, analysis, and use of
massive amounts of data will have the potential togenerate enormous social and economic benefits, but
successfully capitalizing on these opportunities will
require public policies designed to allow data-driven
innovation to flourish.
The Center for Data Innovation is the leading think tankstudying the intersection of data, technology, and public
policy. Based in Washington, DC, the Center formulates
and promotes pragmatic public policies designed tomaximize the benefits of data-driven innovation in the
public and private sectors. It educates policymakers andthe public about the opportunities and challenges
associated with data, as well as technology trends suchas predictive analytics, open data, cloud computing, andthe Internet of Things. The Center is a non-profit, nonpartisan research institute proudly affiliated with theInformation Technology and Innovation Foundation.

2

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

2

Open Data in the G8: A Review ofProgress on the Open Data Charter
March 2015

In 2013, the leaders of the G8 signed an agreement committing to advance
open data in their respective countries. This report assesses the current stateof open data efforts in these countries and finds substantial variation in theirprogress. Moving forward, countries have many opportunities to enhance theiropen data capabilities, such as by increasing international collaboration,better educating policymakers about the benefits of open data, and working
closely with civil society on open data initiatives.
INTRODUCTION
On June 17-18, 2013, leaders of the G8 (now G7) countries met in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland forthe thirty-ninth G8 summit. During the summit, the G8 member countries—Canada, France, Germany,
Italy, Japan, Russia (which exited the group in 2014), the United Kingdom, and the United States—
signed on to the G8 Open Data Charter, an agreement that both recognizes the important role ofopen data in promoting innovation and government transparency and that commits each nation to
five key principles concerning open data. These principles are:
1. Release open data by default
Government agencies should release all public data in open and machine-readable formats
unless there is a compelling reason not to, such as national security or privacy concerns.
2. Ensure high quality and quantity of data
Government agencies should release a broad range of data sets that have been adequately
vetted and cleaned.
3. Make data usable by all
Government agencies should standardize metadata (i.e. data that describes other data) forall data sets, use open licenses, and ensure general accessibility.
4. Release data for improved governance
Government agencies should share best practices on open data internationally, releasecertain “key data sets” specified in the charter, and seek input from civil society.
5. Release data for innovation
Government agencies should release data sets considered “high value” by the charter, as
well as engage with developer communities and fund open data startups.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

3

This report reviews the progress each of the G8 countries (the G7 countries plus Russia) has madetowards each of the five principles in the Open Data Charter. In addition, since the open data
movement has its roots in freedom of information policies, it provides a brief summary of thefreedom of information laws in each country and the extent to which they provide reasonable
response times, accountability mechanisms, and appeal processes. 1
The report also notes whether each country participates in the Open Government Partnership, a U.S.led international organization to improve various aspects of open government in member countries,
including open data. The term “open government” typically connotes a larger category of bestpractices around governance than “open data” does, including priorities such as public access togovernment information systems, public participation in government, and web accessibility forpeople with disabilities. In addition, while the Open Government Partnership includes some priorities
about releasing data for business value, releasing data for the sake of transparency is a larger focus.
This has been a source of friction for countries such as Russia, which had initially sought to join theOpen Government Partnership with an eye toward opening data for innovation, but which withdrew
its application to avoid making strong commitments around opening data for transparency. The Open
Government Partnership, while not directly related to the G8 Open Data Charter, shares numerous
priorities with the charter concerning open data and offers insights into how participating countries
have dealt with open data in the international community. Most countries participating in the Open
Government Partnership have also participated in third-party progress reports, which offer a useful
overview of countries’ performance on certain open data priorities, such as creating robust national
data portals and facilitating data reuse through open licensing.
To compile the information in this report, the Center for Data Innovation reviewed existing literature,including government documents and third-party assessments, and interviewed experts in each of
the G8 countries.

SCORESCountries were scored based on how well they met each of the five principles in the G8 Open Data
Charter. Countries could receive a total of 20 points per principle for a maximum of 100 points. As
shown in Figure 1, the United Kingdom received the highest rank, Canada and the United States tied
for second place, and France followed closely behind. Italy, Japan, and Germany fell in the middle ofthe pack, and Russia lagged with the lowest score. Figure 2 provides a more detailed breakdown ofscores.
Country

Total Score

United Kingdom
CanadaUnited States
FranceItaly
Japan
Germany
Russia

90
80
80
65
35
30
25
5

Figure 1: Total score by country

4

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

4

CanadaFranceGermany

Italy

Japan

Russia

UK

US

10

0

0

10

0

0

10

20

5

0

0

10

0

0

5

10

5

0

0

0

0

0

5

10

20

10

10

10

10

0

20

20

Above average (20), Average (10), Below Average (0)

20

10

10

10

10

0

20

20

3. Make data usable by all

20

20

5

15

0

5

20

15

10

10

0

5

0

0

10

10

Yes (10), Sometimes (5), No (0)

10

10

5

10

0

5

10

5

4. Release data for improved governance

10

15

10

0

10

0

20

15

5

5

5

0

5

0

10

5

5

10

5

0

5

0

10

10

20

20

0

0

10

0

20

10

10

10

0

0

10

0

10

10

Yes (10), No (0)

10

10

0

0

0

0

10

0

Total

80

65

25

35

30

5

90

80

Principles
1. Release open data by default
Does it have an open by default policy?
Yes (10), Yes, nonbinding (5), No (0)Does it release data by default in practice?
Yes (10), Sometimes (5), No (0)2. Ensure high quality and quantity of data
How do its open data releases compare to its peers?

Does it use standardized metadata?
Yes (10), Sometimes (5), No (0)Does it use an open license?

Has it released key data sets?

Yes (10), Scheduled to release (5), No (0)How much does it engage with civil society?
High (10), Partial (5), Low engagement (0)5. Release data for innovation
Has it substantially promoted data innovation?
Yes (10), No (0)Has it funded data innovation efforts?

Figure 2: Detailed scores by country5

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
Although every country has published an Open Data Action Plan (see Appendix 1), countries varied
widely in their progress against their commitments to the Open Data Charter and the state of theiropen data efforts. Some countries, such as the United States and Italy, have created policies withstrong commitments to releasing data openly by default, while others such as Canada and the UK
have only adopted voluntary guidelines. France, Germany, Japan and Russia have not committed tothis principle.
All eight countries have established a national data portal. Although the number of data sets is by nomeans a precise measure of a data portal’s value since countries may represent the same data in
different ways (e.g., one country may release a single combined data set whereas another may
release multiple disjoint data sets), it gives some indication of the level of activity. As shown in Figure
3, some countries, such as Canada and the United States, have released relatively large quantities
of high-quality data on their open data portals, while other countries with newer portals, such as
Russia and Italy, have released relatively few data sets. Of the G8 countries, Canada has released
the most data sets in total, the vast majority of which are geospatial data sets, such as map
projections or coordinates. The United States has released the most non-geospatial data sets,
approximately 48,000 (compared to approximately 8,000 by Canada).
Country

Number of Data Sets

CanadaFranceGermany
Italy
Japan
RussiaUK
United States

214,033
13,967
9,799
9,031
12,8002,424
20,505
137,601

National Data Portal
http://open.canada.ca/en
https://www.data.gouv.fr/en/
https://www.govdata.de/
http://www.dati.gov.it/
http://www.data.go.jp/
http://data.gov.ru/
http://data.gov.uk/
http://www.data.gov/

Figure 3: Number of data sets on national portal, as of January 2015

Countries also run the gamut in terms of the usability of the data, with the UK originating a now
widely-used metadata standard, Canada rapidly adopting that standard, France offering nocommitment to adopt such standards, Japan not even offering licensing information on some of thedata sets on its national portal, and other countries falling somewhere in between. Some countries,
such as France, have consulted vigorously with civil society organizations to prioritize data releaseand map out the future of their open data programs, while others, such as Russia, have made few
attempts to engage with such groups or release data to improve government services andaccountability. All countries have engaged with developers in some capacity, but few countries areactively funding open data startups and only the UK and the United States are making
comprehensive efforts to prioritize data release according to private-sector demand. As shown in
Figure 4, five of the eight countries participate in the Open Government Partnership (OGP). This isindicative of the extent of commitment to make data sets open as the average number of data setson the national portal is approximately 79,000 for nations in the OGP versus 8,000 for nations not in
the OGP.

6

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

6

Country

Open Government Partnership

CanadaFranceGermany
Italy
Japan
RussiaUK
United States

Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes

Figure 4: Country’s membership status in the Open Government Partnership

Based on our analysis, the Center for Data Innovation has categorized these countries into three
categories (strong, intermediate, or weak) indicating their level of commitment to the Open Data
Charter and efforts to meet those commitments (see Figure 5). The categorization should notnecessarily be taken to indicate the progress on open data in the country generally, which may
include local efforts not captured in this analysis, but rather progress with respect to the Open Data
Charter commitments.
Country

Classification

CanadaFranceGermany
Italy
Japan
RussiaUK
United States

StrongIntermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Intermediate
Weak
StrongStrongFigure 5: Classification of open data efforts

In general, metadata standards and licensing issues remain the most problematic areas in mostcountries, while nearly all countries are making meaningful progress in improving the quality andquantity of data sets released on national data portals. Several countries are split on theircommitments to releasing data for improved governance and releasing data for innovation, and are
only fulfilling one of these commitments. This may be due in part to differing motivations behindreleasing data from country to country. For example, France’s open data efforts have been informed
primarily by a desire for greater government transparency and place less emphasis on releasing datafor innovation, while Russia’s efforts sideline transparency almost entirely and focus on theeconomic benefits of publishing open data.

THE BENEFITS OF OPEN DATA
The potential benefits of open data are considerable. A 2013 McKinsey Global Institute report
estimated that open data could add over $3 trillion annually in total value to the global economy. 2
The G8 Open Data Charter sought to encourage participating countries to expand their open data
efforts in order to capture this economic value along with other, less tangible societal and cultural
benefits. Taken together, the benefits of releasing open data can be grouped into three mainOpen Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

7

categories: economic growth; improving government services; and reducing fraud, waste, and abusein government programs. There have been numerous examples of national governments using open
data to reap these benefits in the G8 and beyond.
First, nations are investing in open data for its potential economic impact. The U.S. National Weather
Service alone supports a private weather industry estimated to be worth $1.5 billion annually. 3
Denmark's open register of addresses has yielded €62 million ($71 million) in value for its wide
range of users on an investment of just over €2 million ($2.3 million) as of 2010. 4 A similarly wide
range of users of geospatial data from the UK's Ordnance Survey was predicted in 2013 to generate
an impact on Great Britain’s GDP of £13-£28.5 million ($20-$44 million) annually by 2016. 5
Second, nations benefit from open data through improved public services. In response to the 2011
nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the private sector website atmc.jp began pulling open datafrom the country's Nuclear Regulatory Authority to visualize changes in radiation levels over time
across the country. Agencies at various levels of government can use this visualization to plan andprovide health and emergency response services. 6 In the Philippines, the Department of Transportand Communications is collaborating with the World Bank in an effort to create open data on public
transportation routes and road safety that will be used to provision traffic monitors at the mostdangerous intersections and create new bus routes along underserved metropolitan corridors in two
major cities. 7 In South Africa, the Centre for Higher Education Transformation has developed an open
data platform with institution-level information that public higher education researchers can use to
inform funding and other policy decisions. 8
Third, countries are using open data to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse within government. In 2014,
the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published a large data set of claims data,containing physician-level information on payments from the public insurer, which journalists quickly
analyzed to discover potentially fraudulent transactions and physicians who issued
disproportionately large bills for their fields and geographic areas. 9 The Canada Revenue Agency
opened its data set of charities' annual information returns, filings in which charities disclose theirreceipts and other information, following a series of investigations into tax fraud in the philanthropic
sector. 10 Some of Italy's recent anti-corruption efforts were spurred by a journalistic effort known as"Money to Parties”, which digitized and opened data on political contributions that had been publicly
available but not searchable. 11 The online database has been a major catalyzing force for the open
data movement in Italy.

COUNTRIESThe following sections examine each country’s overall data policy background and adherence to the
G8 Open Data Charter principles.

8Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

8

CANADADATA POLICY BACKGROUND

Canada’s freedom of information laws date to 1983, the year when the Access to Information Act
and the Privacy Act were introduced. 12 The Access to Information Act gave Canadians the ability toaccess a range of government documents and other information and specified a time period inwhich they could expect to receive that information. The act applies to federal agencies only,
excludes contractors and other federally-funded private organizations, and permits agencies tocharge fees for information retrieval. Two key classes of information are excluded from the Act:cabinet records and records relating to federal-provincial affairs. The Privacy Act grants individuals
access to certain types of their own information that is held by the government, and forbids thegovernment from disclosing individuals’ personal information or using that information for purposes
other than that for which the information was originally obtained, without the individuals’ consent.
There have been various efforts, both successful and unsuccessful, to reform the Access toInformation Act since it became law. 13 In 2006, the Federal Accountability Act expanded thecoverage of the Access to Information Act to include additional government bodies. 14 The PublicServants Disclosure Protection Act of 2007 amended the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act,and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to narrow the timeframes
under which agencies could deny information requests. 15
PRINCIPLE 1: OPEN DATA BY DEFAULT

Canada has committed to the principle of open by default. While the country does not currently havean “open by default” law on its books, it has affirmed its commitment to the concept in forwardlooking plans. In its Action Plan on Open Government, an outline of its planned participation in theOpen Government Partnership, the Canadian government declared its intention to promote an “openby default” approach in a forthcoming Directive on Open Government, which will be created by thefederal Treasury Board but will apply to the entire federal government. The directive will issue
guidance to federal agencies on publishing open data and establishing data standards, publication
priorities, and other information on publication. 16 In addition, a bill proposed by the Canadianparliament would amend the Access to Information Act to promote openness by default, noting thatexceptions to data access should be “rare, limited, and specific.” 17
PRINCIPLE 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITY

Canada’s Open.canada.ca data portal has published over 200,000 data sets, more than any othernation. All but approximately 8,000 of these are geospatial data sets, such as the geospatial vector
data used in geographic information system software. The federal data portal suffers some quality
and completeness issues. For example, a recent review by the Open Government Partnership foundthat the government had reported releasing around 35 percent more data sets than were actually
hosted on the portal. 18 In addition, agencies have failed to release a number of high-value data sets,
including inventories of data from the federal human resources and skills development agencies,and data sets related to government accountability, employment insurance, homelessness, seniors,
health, and aboriginals. 19 While many of the available data sets have been improved byOpen.canada.ca’s efforts to standardize metadata, some data sets, such as collections of geospatial

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation9

information, actually carry less complete metadata on the federal portal as a result ofstandardization than they do in the repositories of the agencies that created them. 20
PRINCIPLE 3: USABLE BY ALL

Canada has made considerable progress in advancing data usability, particularly in licensing
efforts. 21 The federal government adopted the UK-developed Open Government License in 2013,
which allows for data modification and reuse freely and without limits beyond attribution. 22 The
license has since been adopted by three provinces and several municipalities. 23 Canada’s national
data portal is available in both English and French. The federal government also began using its
updated Web Experience Toolkit, which provides modular components for websites that areaccessible for people with disabilities, in the data portal and other information sites in 2013. 24
However, some data users report difficulties obtaining public data that has not yet been publishedopenly by Open.canada.ca. For example some freedom of information requests have taken months
or years longer to process than initially promised or are too expensive. 25
PRINCIPLE 4: RELEASING DATA FOR IMPROVED GOVERNANCE

The Canadian government has made modest efforts to increase government transparency aboutdata collection and to involve the public in decision-making. In the Open Data Action Plan, which
outlines the government’s agenda for its commitments to the G8 Open Data Charter, the Treasury
Board said it plans to enhance the exploration tools it offers for federal budget and expenditure data
by December 2014. 26 It also expects to release “high-value” data sets, such as bankruptcy records,
company registry information, and international development assistance commitments information,in open formats by December 2015.
In its Open Data Action Plan, the Treasury Board states that it will consult with citizens through“multiple channels” by December 2014. 27 One such channel is a working group organized as part of
Canada’s participation in the Open Government Partnership, which has provided direction andleadership for federal open data efforts. 28 In the process of developing its Open Government Action
Plan, federal agencies undertook several public and intra-governmental consultations, including a“Twitter Town Hall”, a meeting with legislative clerks at all levels of government, and a public-private
Advisory Panel on Open Government. 29 However, these forums had low participation and thegovernment parties involved did little to raise awareness. 30 To date, there have been no in-person
public hearings on the topic of the Action Plan on Open Government, and it is critical that the Open
Data Action Plan not suffer the same neglect.
PRINCIPLE 5: RELEASING DATA FOR INNOVATIONThe Canadian government has made considerable efforts to organize initiatives to encourage thepublic to use its data for innovative new applications and to engage with individuals interested indeveloping applications based on government data. The Open.canada.ca portal’s “Developer’s
Corner” provides comprehensive support and documentation for developers, as well as plainlanguage starter-guides for the public, including thorough instructions on using APIs in multiple
programming languages and visually aided explanations of different data formats. 31 In the spring of2014, the federal government hosted its first countrywide hackathon, the Canadian Open Data
Experience, in which over 900 civic hackers participated. 32 Finally, the federal government devoted

10

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation10

$3 million in 2014 to the Canadian Open Data Institute, a public-private partnership to coordinate
and advance open data use domestically. 33
CONCLUSION

Overall, Canada has performed strongly in its commitments to the Open Data Charter. The country
has made a great deal of progress in increasing access to and promoting innovation with open data.
It has also made some progress toward realizing “open by default” standards. However, its data
portal still suffers from some completeness issues, and it should release certain high-value data setsthat could be used to improve governance.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

11

FRANCEDATA POLICY BACKGROUND

The origins of France’s freedom of information policy date back to the founding of the French
Republic in 1789. That year, the Declaration of the Rights of Man decreed that citizens have theright to request a description of public officials’ duties as well as rights to information about
taxation. 34 The Constitution of the Fifth Republic, adopted in 1958, further codified freedom of
information rights concerning the government budget, granting citizens the right to accessinformation on how taxes are spent. 35
The constitution paved the way for more general freedom of information legislation, which came in
the form of the Act No. 78-753 of July 17, 1978. That act allowed citizens to request a copy of any
administrative document and established an agency to facilitate the request process. 36 The law
applies not just to documents created by the government, such as memos and communications, butalso to documents merely held by the government. 37 In addition to making standard exemptions for
information with national security significance, the law also exempts some major agencies, including
the State Audit Office, the parliamentary assemblies, and the judicial Council of State. 38 In addition,
the law does not specify a timeframe for government agencies to comply with requests. 39 The law
was amended by Act No. 321 (April 12, 2000), which broadened the law’s mandate to include
territorial and local authorities. 40
Over the past decade, the nation has developed its open licensing laws for public data. Order No.
2005-650 modified the 1978 law to establish that public information is freely reusable. 41 In 2010,
the French Ministry of Justice developed an open license pursuant to this order. 42 However, thelicense is stricter than open data licenses in many other European countries, such as the UK and
Italy, forbidding data users from “deteriorating” the contents of the information or changing themeaning of words. 43
Recent efforts have focused on open data. The national Department of Public Service had yet torelease an action plan as of October 2014. 44 The previous May, France announced the creation of anational Chief Data Officer position, making it the first European country to do so. 45
PRINCIPLE 1: OPEN BY DEFAULTFrance’s commitment to a policy of “open by default” is among the weakest in the G8. The country
currently lacks any laws containing that language and has committed only to “moving toward”
openness by default in its 2014 Open Data Action Plan. 46
PRINCIPLE 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITY

Data.gouv.fr, the national data portal, contained nearly 14,000 data sets as of January 2015,
placing it in the middle of the G8 in terms of data quantity. 47 In its Open Data Action Plan, France
committed to making its data machine readable “to the greatest extent possible.” 48 While thisfalls short of a firm commitment (i.e., mandating that all data must be published in machinereadable formats), only a very small fraction of data sets available on Data.gouv.fr are notmachine-readable. 49

12Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

12

France is the only G8 country besides the United States to make a concrete commitment to releasingdata in bulk, not simply through public APIs. 50 A strong commitment to releasing bulk data can be aboon to startups hoping to make use of large amounts of government data.
PRINCIPLE 3: USABLE BY ALL

France has made some efforts to ensure that its data is usable by all. For example, the country has
committed to making its open data available under the “License Ouverte”, an open license thatmeets internationally accepted guidelines and requires only attribution on the part of the data
user. 51 The vast majority of the data sets on Data.gouv.fr carry this license or another open license. 52
However, more than a third of these data sets are offered in the proprietary .viz or .shp file formats,which are generally used for mapping and other visualizations. 53 While both of these formats can be
opened and manipulated with nonproprietary software, offering this data in fully open formats could
ensure that the information will be usable without restrictions indefinitely.
In addition, Etalab, the French Prime Minister’s data authority that wrote the action plan, has notmade a strong commitment regarding free access to data. Despite acknowledging that it would
attempt to foster free reuse and committing to make “essential public data” available free of charge,
the action plan states only that the Prime Minister has made some progress towards a regime of freereuse, such as setting up a task force to assess existing royalty fees. 54 Meanwhile, Frenchauthorities are still charging for nominally public data sets such as gas stations’ daily price reports,
for which access costs €3,000-38,500 annually, including for non-commercial use. 55
PRINCIPLE 4: RELEASING DATA FOR IMPROVED GOVERNANCE

Etalab has made considerable efforts to work with civil society organizations in prioritizing data forrelease. The action plan commits to holding a series of public debates to identify high-value data
sets and points to the country’s efforts to publish its best practices in multiple languages for aninternational audience. 56 However, there may be policy obstacles to using open data to improvegovernance. The Commission on Access to Administrative Documents (CADA), the agency tasked
under the 1978 freedom of information (FOI) law to administer the process of FOI requests, has alimited mandate, and it cannot compel agencies to adopt its recommendations on fulfilling
requests. 57 Moreover, the agency is not required to raise public awareness of freedom of information
issues, unlike similar agencies in other countries, such as the Information Commissioner’s Office inthe UK.
PRINCIPLE 5: RELEASING DATA FOR INNOVATION

Although business use has not been the central focus of past French open data efforts, France has
begun some important efforts to release data for innovation. In early 2015, the French Deposits andConsignments Fund, a public financial organization, announced that it would invest €2.5 million($2.8 million) in open data projects and released a call for proposals that will be reviewed forinvestment by June 2015. 58 In addition, Etalab runs Dataconnexions, a competition to develop
projects using public data, and hosts a series of networking events for the open data business
community. 59 Data.gouv.fr has begun to showcase innovative applications for open data, as stated in
the country's action plan commitments. 60

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

13

CONCLUSION

Overall, France has performed at a relatively strong level in its commitments to the Open Data
Charter. While the country has shown solid commitments to data quality and releasing data for
improved governance and innovation, it has not performed as well in ensuring that data is usable
and creating a policy of openness by default. With greater oversight capabilities, Etalab and CADA
could counteract such shortcomings and maximize the benefits of France's freedom of information
laws in the country’s efforts to improve governance.

14

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

14

GERMANYDATA POLICY BACKGROUND

Freedom of information law in Germany originated in the Basic Law, the constitution for West
Germany adopted by World War II’s allied powers in 1949. The law, which came to apply to all ofGermany following the nation’s reunification in 1990, states that every person shall have a right to“inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources.” 61 Subsequent sector-specificfreedom of information legislation, such as the Environmental Information Act of 1994, granted freeaccess to information about the environment that federal, state-level, and local authorities
possessed, and the Consumer Information Law of 2007, which gives citizens the right to request
information on food and consumer goods from public authorities. 62 Similarly, the 2008 Geodata
Access Act established a right of access to geographic information held by the federal government,
while the Geodata Usage Ordinance of 2013 introduced free commercial and non-commercial usage
rights to this data. 63
Until 2005, however, German citizens did not have a general right of access to government records.
That year, the Freedom of Information Act elaborated on the Basic Law to grant citizens the rightto access government information and set up procedures for requesting information that are
generally in line with international standards. 64 The act also required the federal government tomake certain documents available to the public on a designated website. 65 However, the law
contained several broad exceptions, including information from regulatory authorities on financial
and business competition, as well as information that would harm the “fiscal interests of thefederal government.” 66
In 2005, the German legislature also passed the Information Reuse Law, which focused on theeconomic aspects of data reuse, in particular placing a ceiling on charges the federal government
can levy for reusing public sector information and forbidding private-sector bodies from entering into
exclusive arrangements with some individual data users at the expense of others. 67 The law
implemented and closely followed the EU’s 2003 directive on the reuse of public sector information,
which has since been adopted by a number of other European countries. 68
PRINCIPLE 1: OPEN BY DEFAULT

Germany has lagged behind most other G8 countries in implementing the principle of “open by
default”, in part because openness by default has been a low priority of the current government. 69
The open data action plan of the office of the Federal Ministry of the Interior states that Germany
will implement this principle only “step by step over the long term.” 70 Instead, the Ministry committed
to issuing an ordinance to make federal data open and machine readable that will apply to “asmany government data (sic) as possible.” 71 However, such an ordinance would miss the point of theopen by default principle, which is meant to place the onus on government data holders to justify
not releasing data rather than simply accepting that some data sets are not appropriate to
publish openly.
PRINCIPLE 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITY

Germany has been somewhat proactive about releasing large quantities of high-quality data,
although there is room to improve regarding metadata and certain high-value data sets. GovData,
the nation’s data portal, contained around 9,700 data sets as of January 2015. 72 While this is not on

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

15

par with other major European data portals such as Data.gov.uk and Data.gouv.fr, GovData
only launched in 2013, whereas the English and French portals launched in 2010 and2011, respectively.
In its action plan, the Ministry of the Interior made a strong commitment to publish a wide variety of
key data sets by the end of 2015, and offered one of the most comprehensive publication plans of
any G8 country. However, some critical data sets, such as information on federal contract recipients,
are noticeably absent from the plan, and the commitment to publish at least two data sets from eachfederal agency is weak. 73 Moreover, the data sets the Ministry of the Interior plans to release do notcorrespond with the data sets most highly prioritized by civil society organizations. 74
Finally, while GovData does not currently offer its data sets with uniform metadata, the action planstates that the Ministry of the Interior is seeking legislation that will standardize metadata ofgovernment data sets and plans to work with state and local authorities to implement the metadata
standards. 75 While Germany lags some other G8 countries in this area, this commitment is still astep in the right direction and may be implemented in future versions of the GovData site, which was
unfinished as of January 2015. 76 The Ministry of the Interior has established consistent metadata asa priority in its work on open data and efforts in this area are moving forward more quickly than mostother aspects of open data in Germany. 77
PRINCIPLE 3: USABLE BY ALL

Germany’s open data efforts in the area of usability have fallen considerably short, but recent efforts
to promulgate a single standard license could help matters. As of November 2014, GovData hosts
data sets carrying a bewildering array of licenses, and over a quarter of the data sets do not carrya license considered “open” 78 Having a large number of different licenses discourages reuse
because users unfamiliar with a particular license may feel uncertain about what they can do withdata that carries it. 79 In addition, because of the way GovData displays its data sets’ formats, there isno easy way to determine how many data sets are available only in non-machine-readable or
non-open formats.
Change may also be on the horizon with the creation of a new German data license that conforms tointernational standards for openness. 80 Although the license is not yet widely adopted, federal
agencies and other stakeholders are expected to use it increasingly in the near future. 81
PRINCIPLE 4: RELEASING DATA FOR IMPROVED GOVERNANCE

Despite the aforementioned absence of certain key data sets on the GovData portal, Germany has
made some commitments to releasing data with an eye toward improving governance. In particular,
it clearly states in the open data action plan its commitments to engaging with civil society andsharing its lessons learned with the international community. 82 The Ministry of the Interior islaunching its flagship attempt to engage with civil society on open data issues in January 2015. 83
This project will convene a variety of stakeholders to advise the Ministry of the Interior on its open
data strategy. However, while German officials have been proactive about sharing open data insights
with other countries in the German-speaking world, their presence has been less pronounced inlarger international forums. 84

16Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

16

PRINCIPLE 5: RELEASING DATA FOR INNOVATION

Germany has made some positive if slightly vague commitments to releasing data for innovation in
its action plan, mentioning plans to increase engagement with the developer community, promote
public-private partnerships focused on open data, and prioritize data set releases based on
demand. 85 However, while the private sector has been active in promoting data reuse andinnovation—e.g., the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Code for Germany events—government officials
have not been closely involved. 86
CONCLUSION

Overall, Germany has performed relatively weakly on its commitments to the Open Data Charter.
While Germany has made commitments to involve civil society groups and the developer community
in its open data efforts, and offered a detailed release schedule for key data sets, the country’s
commitments in the areas of openness by default and usability have been sorely lacking. In addition,
Germany delayed releasing its action plan by nine months, and it was the last of the G8 countries tosubmit a plan. 87 Coupled with the current German government’s staunch refusal to join the Open
Government Partnership, these facts call into question how seriously Germany is taking its Open
Data Charter commitments.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

17

ITALYDATA POLICY BACKGROUND

Italy’s history of information freedom has been relatively short compared to that of other G8
countries. However, in recent years, the nation has adopted a number of information freedom
policies with an eye toward combatting corruption.
Italy’s recent progress began with the Anti-Corruption Law no. 190 of 2012, which entered into force
in November of that year and established a new national anti-corruption authority, the Independent
Commission for Evaluation, Integrity and Transparency (CiVIT). 88 CiVIT is authorized under the anticorruption law to require government agencies to publish data, official papers, and other information
for the purpose of auditing. The law also made substantial changes to the national Code of Public
Contracts, requiring agencies to publish their contract-awarding process on their respective websites.
Also in 2012, the cabinet-level Council of Ministers issued Decree no.179, which modified thenational Code of Digital Administration to make it easier for the public to access and share publicdata by mandating that agencies create dedicated pages on their websites to serve as datarepositories. That decree also introduced an explicit policy of “open by default”, stating that agencies
must justify failing to publish data or using any licenses or data formats other than open ones. 89 The
decree also established a new Agency for Digital Italy, which facilitates information sharing acrossagencies and is specifically charged with promulgating open data standards.
In 2013, the Italian government took a major step toward open data with its Decree no. 33,“Reorganization of the rules concerning the obligations to disclosure, transparency anddissemination of information by public authorities”. That decree, issued by the cabinet-level Councilof Ministers, broadens public access to information about how the government spends taxpayers’
money and requires publication of information on the assets of people holding public office. 90
Decree no. 33 also elaborated on Decree no. 179’s open data obligation, requiring agencies tocreate a website where they will publish all public data online and in non-proprietary, machinereadable formats. However, despite the aforementioned public access provisions, the decree does
not specify additional data sets or data types that should be considered public in the future. Also in
2013, Decree no. 91 established open access to data from publicly funded scientific research,requiring funding bodies to make research and data available publicly within six months of initialpublication. 91
Although Decree no. 33 is a step in the right direction for information freedom in Italy, it contains a
number of gaps that make it difficult for Italians to access and use government information. 92 For
example, the decree does not include a guaranteed maximum response time to information
requests, and offers limited means for the public to appeal request denials. 93 Without a freedom of
information framework that includes these internationally accepted provisions, open data efforts inthe country will continue to face practical challenges to accessing information despite thegovernment’s efforts to promote open data.
PRINCIPLE 1: OPEN BY DEFAULT

Italy was one of the earliest adopters of the “open by default” principle. Decree no. 179 of 2012,
which applies to all national agencies in Italy, established the principle for disseminating all public

18

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation18

information. 94 However, Italy’s Open Data Action Plan for its G8 commitments makes only vague
reference to its plans for publishing high-value data sets. 95 Experts interviewed for this report notedthat the new government under Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has done little to implement the policyof open by default during the government’s transition into office, which began after national
elections in February 2014. Italy could strengthen its commitment to being open by default by
issuing a schedule for publishing high-value data sets and creating prioritization mechanisms for
future releases.
PRINCIPLE 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITY

Italy has made substantial efforts to improve the quality of its national open data portal, Dati.gov.it,
but it lags behind countries such as Canada and the UK in publishing an inventory of all data sets. As
of January 2015, the portal contained around 9,000 data sets. 96 Italy’s Ministry for Simplification of
Public Administration, which oversees the data portal, implemented a data harvesting system similar
to that deployed in the United States and other countries, enabling it automatically to consolidate
data sets published on local and regional data portals and offer them on the national portal. 97 The
ministry has also firmly committed to standardizing the metadata of these data sets, which will help
promote data quality, but it has not yet published an inventory of existing data sets. 98 A data
inventory can help citizens and external evaluators determine how much of Italy’s data has actually
been made open. Without such an inventory, it is difficult to get a clear picture of the country’s
performance on releasing data.
PRINCIPLE 3: USABLE BY ALL

The Italian government has made mixed progress in improving data usability, with strong
commitments around open licensing but weaker commitments around making data available free ofcharge. Decree no. 179 of 2012, which established the open by default principle, also defined open
data as data that is available for commercial re-use and that is available free of charge. 99 Combinedwith the Council of Minsters’ strong commitment to open licensing, this lays a healthy foundation for
widespread usability. Given these facts, it was somewhat surprising that the Department of Public
Administration and the Agency for Digital Italy, which created the G8 Open Data Action Plan, issued arelatively weak commitment to making data available free of charge. 100 The agencies wrote only that
there are regulatory limits for charging data users and that the government has created theconditions to support free use of data. Since prior legislation has given agencies the legal authority
to offer data freely, there is nothing stopping the Department of Public Administration and the
Agency for Digital Italy from making a more concrete commitment to this effect.
PRINCIPLE 4: RELEASING DATA FOR IMPROVED GOVERNANCE

Italy has made limited progress in releasing data for improved governance. The Department of Public
Administration, the Agency for Digital Italy, and other Italian agencies have held numerous
consultations on data policies with businesses, civil society organizations, and local and regional
administrators, but the Italian government is not well-coordinated with the private sector regarding
data demand. 101 Moreover, the Italian government has failed to address civil society groups’
suggestions for a mechanism to prioritize high-value data sets and for a stronger freedom of
information framework. 102 A robust freedom of information framework is a prerequisite for using

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

19

open data to improve governance, so these consultations will have been held in vain if 65 percent of
Italian public information requests continue to be met with “mute refusal”, as was reported in an
April 2013 survey by Access-Info Europe. 103 This may be due in part to a lack of awareness about
freedom of information policies among some government officials. 104 Even so, the Agency for Digital
Italy has made some positive efforts in this regard, publishing a website with government agencies’
experiences implementing open data initiatives in an effort to share successes and best practices
internally.
PRINCIPLE 5: RELEASING DATA FOR INNOVATION

Italy has made some progress in releasing data for innovation. Most importantly, the National
Institute of Statistics and the Interregional Center for Geographic Information Systems and Statistics(CISIS), the national mapping authority, have committed to publishing their high-demand national
statistics and national maps data in open formats by the end of 2014 and 2015, respectively. 105 In
other areas, however, the country’s progress is somewhat less certain. Although the Open Data
Action Plan makes a strong commitment to make open data available through APIs, it omits any
mention of making data available for bulk download. 106 In addition, the national open data
innovation competition Apps4Italy was discontinued in 2013. 107
CONCLUSION

Overall, Italy has performed at an intermediate level in its commitments to the Open Data
Charter. Despite its short tradition of information policy, the country has made considerable progressin terms of usability, data quality, and open by default policies. However, its unsatisfactory
engagement with civil society groups and its reticence to adopt a robust freedom of information
framework have imposed obstacles to citizens obtaining and using data. If it is to make good on its
forward-thinking policies, it will need to connect them with practice as soon as possible.

20

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

20

JAPANDATA POLICY BACKGROUND

Japan’s engagement with freedom of information law began in 1999 with the passage of the Act on
Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs. 108 That law gave members of the public theright to request paper or electronic documents held by national agencies and directed agencies to
respond to such requests within thirty days, a standard met in the vast majority of cases. 109
Since then, most of the policy work around information access has been non-binding, in the form ofguidelines and strategies. For example, in 2004, the national Chief Information Officer’s officeissued a set of guidelines directed at agencies for releasing public information online. 110 Since then,several official documents, including the New Strategy in Information and Communications
Technology, the Basic Action Plan for the Promotion of e-Government, and the Policy on Reforming
Regulations and Systems for Promoting the Use of Telecommunications Technologies (all adopted inby the Prime Minister’s cross-agency IT Strategic Headquarters in 2011), offer best practices forvarious aspects of maximizing the reuse potential of public government data. 111 Finally, in 2012, the
IT Strategic Headquarters released the Open Government Data Strategy, a non-binding documentthat outlines some fundamental principles around releasing open data in Japan, including releasingdata in machine-readable formats, releasing data for business and public value, and releasing data
in a timely manner. 112
PRINCIPLE 1: OPEN BY DEFAULT

Japan’s Open Data Action Plan, authored by the Minister of Information Technology Policy, statesthat the government will “actively release public data,” but it does not require that data be “open by
default.” 113 Specifically, it is unclear whether the government considers agencies that actively
release certain data sets but not others to be compliant. Promoting openness by default is not seen
as a priority among government officials at present. 114
PRINCIPLE 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITY

Japan’s national open data portal, Data.go.jp, is moving in the right direction in terms of quantity but
is still a work in progress in terms of quality. 115 As of November 2014, the portal contained over
12,000 data sets, comparable in quantity to national data portals in the UK and France. 116 However,Japan’s portal contains a much higher proportion of data sets in PDF and HTML formats than thosein other countries, with about 6,300 and 5,200 data sets in those formats, respectively. 117 These areformats are designed for human-readability, not machine-readability, which limits further dataprocessing. 118 Because of the way data formats are indexed on Data.go.jp, it is difficult to tell exactly
how many of these data sets are only available in PDF or HTML formats, but this appears to be thecase for a significant fraction of the data sets. 119 However, this may improve in the future, as theInformation Technology Policy Ministry has committed in its Open Data Action Plan to expanding
machine-readable data releases within three years. 120
The Open Data Action Plan makes no mention of the capability to download data sets in bulk or of
granting users access to data through APIs. Without offering bulk downloads, Data.go.jp users will be
restricted in the range of applications they can create, and without API access, less experienced
users could find it too difficult to work with government data.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

21

PRINCIPLE 3: USABLE BY ALL

The Information Technology Policy Ministry has made a preliminary commitment to open licensing,stating that it plans to post new data sets on Data.go.jp under a Creative Commons license. 121
However, the commitments still leave a number of gaps around licensing. For example, thiscommitment does not apply to data sets previously released under proprietary licenses. 122 In
addition, Data.go.jp provides poor licensing information, among the worst in the G8. 123 Users cannot
search by license and sometimes the license is missing. The lack of standardized metadata means
data sets do not always carry a metadata field specifying the license under which the data can beused. There is no commitment in the Open Data Action Plan around standardized metadata or
making data available free of charge. 124 However, officials at the Information Technology Policy
Ministry consider metadata and licensing standards to be a priority internally and are currently
working to develop a blanket license that can apply to all data on Data.go.jp. 125
The Data.go.jp website has also suffered uptime issues and was inaccessible for several months in2013 and early 2014 due to budgetary issues. 126 Although it has been accessible since January
2015, the possibility of downtime on a national data portal could discourage companies fromreusing the portal’s data for mission-critical applications.
PRINCIPLE 4: RELEASING DATA FOR IMPROVED GOVERNANCE

Japan’s commitments to releasing data for improved governance are generally encouraging but
incomplete in some areas. The Open Data Action Plan commits to releasing data sets considered key
in the G8 Open Data Charter, such as election information, budgets, and important national statistics
data sets. 127 The plan also offers concrete deadlines for releasing these data sets. 128 Japan’s Action
Plan also makes a strong commitment to international collaboration, in particular committing to post
examples of success stories and best practices on Data.go.jp. 129
However, Japan has taken some civil society organizations’ priorities into account when releasing
data. 130 While the Open Data Action Plan mentions engaging with civil society organizations throughits recurring E-Government Open Data Executive Meetings, government agencies are primarily
motivated to release open data for innovation; in some cases, civil society interests have been asecondary priority. 131
PRINCIPLE 5: RELEASING DATA FOR INNOVATION

Japan has made strong commitments to releasing data for innovation. Notably, the Open Data Action
Plan commits to releasing data considered “high-value” by the G8, such as a company registry,
national education data, and data concerning the country’s foreign aid contributions, along withconcrete deadlines that make Japan’s commitment in this area among the best in the G8.
Japan also commits to engaging with the developer community, committing to “actively participate”
in activities such as hackathons but not mentioning whether these events will be nationallysponsored. National agencies have partnered with private-sector organizations on hackathons andapp contests in the past, as well as holding consultations with the private sector around data
demand as specified in the 2012 Open Government Data Strategy. 132

22Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

22

CONCLUSION

Overall, Japan has performed at an intermediate level in its commitments to the Open Data Charter.
The country has made the most rapid progress toward open data of any G8 country. While there isconsiderably more work to do in the areas of licensing, open formats, and “open by default”
provisions, Japan has made some encouraging headway in other areas. In particular, Japan’scommitments to releasing key and high-value data sets are encouraging and show promise for the
future of the country's burgeoning open data program.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

23

RUSSIADATA POLICY BACKGROUND

Following an exceptionally closed government information climate during the Cold War, Russia hastaken some steps toward greater openness in recent years. These include a variety of measures
focusing on open government that began in 2012, such as appointing the country’s first cabinetlevel Special Minister for Open Government and hosting a large conference around open government
in Moscow. 133 In addition, the country adopted its first freedom of information law in 2009. 134 Thatlaw contains provisions for responding to information requests and some regulations concerning
information to be released on official websites. 135 Finally, between May 2012 and September 2013,
the Russian central government issued twenty-four orders containing provisions on public access tovarious kinds of government information. 136
However, not one of these orders specified that the public should be able to access this information
as open data. 137 An independent evaluation of the government’s activities regarding open data fromthe National Research University in Russia concluded that this shortcoming resulted from the factthat lawmakers did not consult with the agency in charge of open government when drafting ordersthat affect public access to information. 138 Moreover, even though there is a freedom of information
law, government officials have low awareness of the law and limited accountability for following it,
which often keeps private individuals from being able to access information in practice. 139
PRINCIPLE 1: OPEN BY DEFAULT

There is no “open by default” provision in Russian law, and it is not expected to be a priority for thegovernment in the near future. 140
PRINCIPLE 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITY

At the federal level, Russia has made preliminary efforts toward releasing large quantities of highquality data. Data.gov.ru, the federal open data portal managed by the Russian Ministry of Economic
Development, is small compared to most other G8 countries’ portals, containing 2,303 data sets asof November 2014. 141 To the ministry’s credit, the vast majority of these data sets are in the open
and machine-readable CSV or XML formats. 142 However, five of the top six agencies contributing toData.gov.ru were local or regional governments, and all contributing federal agencies other thanRosstat, the national statistics agency, released fewer than 100 data sets each. 143 Moreover, an
independent investigation from the National Research University found that dozens of the Rosstat
data sets are merely different views of a single consumer price index data set. 144
Still, while the results have been somewhat meager, the Ministry of Economic Development has
been somewhat proactive around setting goals for increased open data disclosures. The ministry
established the Open Data of the Russian Federation Roadmap in 2012, which set targets for
expanding the federal government’s open data presence. For example, it set modest goals for thenumber of agencies with open data sections on their websites and the number of total federal data
sets released. The aforementioned National Research University report, which also detailed Russian
agencies’ progress on the roadmap, found that agencies were on average 75 percent compliant withthe goals set in the document, which the otherwise critical report found to indicate “a fairly
responsible attitude toward open data.” 145

24Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

24

PRINCIPLE 3: USABLE BY ALL

Although Russia has not released a large number of data sets on Data.gov.ru, the Russian Ministry of
Economic Development appears to have made some efforts to ensure that the data the portal does
contain are available for reuse. The portal does not carry data set-specific metadata on licensing orreuse rights, but the portal offers a blanket definition for open data as that which can be freely used
for any “appropriate lawful purposes,” and this principle seems to apply to all the data sets hostedon the portal. 146 At present, it is ambiguous what license applies to the Russian government’s
open data. 147
PRINCIPLE 4: RELEASING DATA FOR IMPROVED GOVERNANCE

Russia’s efforts in releasing data for improved governance are lacking. 148 Certain key data sets, suchas those concerning transportation infrastructure, are unavailable. 149 In addition, some key data sets
are available but not yet machine readable, such as the company register, election results, andenvironmental pollution information. 150 This may improve in the future with the presence of therecently created Open Data Council, an advisory group comprised of representatives from publicauthorities, academia, and the private sector that helps Russian authorities prioritize data sets
for release. 151
PRINCIPLE 5: RELEASING DATA FOR INNOVATIONThe Russian government has made limited efforts to engage with entrepreneurs about releasingdata for innovation. 152 Recent private-sector hackathons, such as the Apps 4 Russia programming
contest, and the Hackathon for Urbanists and Financiers, did not have any Russian federal
government support. 153 In addition, while officials expressed interest in assessing the demand foropen data by the business community, they have not yet conducted such a study. 154
CONCLUSION

Overall, Russia has performed weakly in its commitments to the Open Data Charter. The country’s
administrative barriers to openness loom large in the shortcomings of its open data efforts. In
particular, the country has a long way to go before it lives up to the G8 Open Data Charter’s
principles around the principle of “open by default” and its efforts to engage with civil society and theprivate sector to prioritize data releases.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

25

UNITED KINGDOMDATA POLICY BACKGROUNDThe UK did not have strong freedom of information laws until 2000. That year, the UK passed theFreedom of Information Act (FOIA), which establishes the public right to access paper or electronic
copies of government-held information from all public authorities, excluding personal information
about individuals and information that relates to national security or that is held by intelligencedepartments. 155 The Environmental Information Regulations law of 2004 provides a mechanism of
public and electronic access, specifically to environmental information, similar to that provided forother information in the Freedom of Information Act. 156
In 2012, the Cabinet Office, an agency charged with supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet,
released a white paper outlining its vision for open data, including a schedule for openly releasing
high-value data sets from various departments. 157 The Cabinet Office also published its 2012 Public
Data Principles, a set of guidelines for how national government agencies should publish open data,such as using standard features like machine-readability, open formats, and open licenses. 158
PRINCIPLE 1: OPEN BY DEFAULTThe UK committed to mandating an “open by default” policy in its first Open Government Action Plan.
While it has made some progress by creating non-binding guidelines and codes of practice, it has not
yet mandated “open by default.” 159
The UK has created four non-binding commitments to open by default. First, the 2012 Public Data
Principles state that public data should be open without caveat or exception. 160 Second, theSecretary of State’s 2013 Code of Practice, which provides guidance for public authorities on
handling FOIA requests, reinforced this sentiment, noting that authorities releasing data under theact must, as far as is reasonably practical, provide it in a machine-readable format, with the UK Open
Government License as the default licensing model. 161 Third, the Information Fair Trader Scheme, astandards-setting body at the National Archives that public agencies can voluntarily commit
themselves to, recommends that most government information should be made available free ofcharge or at marginal cost. As of January 2015, eighteen public bodies, including major data holders
such as the Met Office, the Companies House, the Environment Agency, and the Ordnance Survey
have joined the scheme. 162 Fourth, the Cabinet Office’s 2012 Open Standards Principles forsoftware interoperability and data formats state that government bodies must require IT solutions
that comply with open data standards. 163
Occasional technological and cultural barriers, including legacy IT systems’ inability to produce data
in machine-readable formats and some government departments’ reticence to release data, havesometimes stymied further progress in releasing open data by default. 164 Some current effortssquarely target these barriers. For example, in February 2014, the Cabinet Office announced about£1.5M ($2.5M) in funding toward projects related to open data in government, including one projectwith the explicit goal of advancing a culture of “open by default” by providing open data training to
public servants. 165

26Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

26

PRINCIPLE 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITYThe UK is one of the global leaders in open data quality and quantity. The UK claimed the top spot on
the World Wide Web Foundation’s 2015 Open Data Barometer, eclipsing the United States in termsof data on the basis of the greater availability and quality of UK company registration and landownership data. 166 The UK has since made additional efforts toward company transparency, with theCompanies House pledging in July 2014 to make all of its digital information available openly. 167
As of January 2015, the UK’s data portal contained approximately 20,000 published and over 4,000
unpublished data sets, and government agencies publishing data through Data.gov.uk havegenerally been proactive in releasing large amounts of high quality data. 168 This total trails theUnited States’ Data.gov and Canada’s Open.canada.ca in terms of quantity of data sets. The portal
offers several unique components, including a joint effort from the Cabinet Office and Data.gov.uk
developers to identify and fix broken links in data sets and a feature that lets users view certain
metadata of those data sets that agencies have included in their data inventories but have not yet
published. 169
PRINCIPLE 3: USABLE BY ALL

The UK has been a global leader in ensuring its public data is usable by all, in part for having
completed its commitments around open licensing ahead of schedule. The Open Government
License, first published in 2010, permits free and unlimited reuse with modification, subject only toattribution. 170 The license covers approximately three-quarters of published data sets on data.gov.uk
and is widely used by English and Welsh local authorities in addition to federal agencies. 171
PRINCIPLE 4: RELEASING DATA FOR IMPROVED GOVERNANCEThe UK has made substantial progress on releasing data for improved governance, including input
from data users, but there is still room for improvement. 172 The government has undertaken efforts
to engage with civil society to prioritize data releases. 173 However, a 2013 study evaluating theimpacts of the UK’s open data efforts found that while open data had increased government
accountability in some cases, it had done little to increase public participation. 174
Certain key data sets for improved governance have licensing and timeliness problems. The UK
Electoral Commission’s election data, for example, do not carry an open license and in some cases
may not be freely reused. 175 In addition, legislative data are not available for bulk download. 176
Government agencies have resisted releasing certain high-value data sets, such as those underlying
policy statements and official surveys, in a timely fashion. 177
PRINCIPLE 5: RELEASING DATA FOR INNOVATIONThe UK has made considerable progress in releasing data for innovation, convening private-sector
stakeholders to prioritize data sets for release, offering funding for data-driven startups, and hostinga variety of hackathons and other events to promote data use.
The Cabinet Office has instituted feedback mechanisms with private sector stakeholders through theOpen Data User Group (ODUG), an independent advisory group representing data users that provides
recommendations on funding for open data initiatives and that conducts public consultations to
identify and prioritize data sets for open release. 178 ODUG has also released a set of fifty casestudies of businesses that make extensive use of open data, in an effort to demonstrate data

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation27

demand to agencies and spur more innovative business ideas in the private sector. 179 The non-profit
Open Data Institute (ODI) also works to promote open data release within the government andinnovation in the private sector, convening experts, publishing open data use case studies, andoffering training courses. Regarded as a successful model for encouraging open data innovation, theOpen Data Institute has expanded to include eleven branches in other cities around the world, and it
has been replicated in the United States as the U.S. Open Data Institute. 180
Public and private-sector efforts have been made to engage the developer community directly. The
Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills has tried to spur open data innovation through its
Technology Strategy Board. The board operates an open data innovation voucher program, whereby
startups can receive grants of up to £5,000 ($8,300) for open data consulting and services. 181 The
Open Data Challenge Series, administered by the Open Data Institute and innovation charity Nesta,
hosts challenges to encourage open data innovation in the private sector and offers £400,000($660,000) in prizes annually. 182
Finally, local and regional governments have been proactive in engaging with developer communities
to promote open data innovation. Agencies have hosted hackathons and challenges around issues
such as mental health care, flooding, and food security, and new events are regularly announced. 183
CONCLUSION

Overall, the UK has performed strongly in its commitments to the Open Data Charter. The country is
one of the world leaders in open data, and it has delivered on most of its Open Data Charter
commitments. Areas to improve include increasing consultation with civil society groups to identify
gaps in data releases, ensuring that as much data as possible fall under open licenses, and fully
implementing its “open by default” policy.

28

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

28

UNITED STATESDATA POLICY BACKGROUNDThe United States established its first freedom of information law in 1966, and its efforts havespurred numerous other governments to pass similar legislation. The nation was also among thefirst, through the 2013 Executive Order on Open Data, to promote a national open data policy.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), passed in 1966, established the foundations for government
information disclosure by requiring agencies to answer requests for public records. 184 Numerous
acts since then have amended it, including the Privacy Act of 1974, which gave individuals accessand amendment rights to their own government-held information; the Government in the Sunshine
Act of 1976, which established exemptions to FOIA, including information pertaining to national
defense and information relating to ongoing investigative proceedings, among other protectedcategories; and the Electronic Freedom of Information Act of 1996, which required that agencies
make certain information available in electronic formats. 185
Agencies have not developed a consensus for how to fulfill the requirements of FOIA. A nonbinding
2009 memorandum from the office of the Attorney General encouraged agencies to achieve themaximum possible information disclosure given restrictions on releasing information that could havenational security or privacy implications. 186 However, officials have challenged this approach,including in a 2001 memorandum encouraging agencies to take advantage of legal exemptions toreleasing information. 187 Future administrations may also change these guidelines.
Finally, in 2013, President Obama’s executive order on open and machine-readable government
information, and the Office of Management and Budget’s memorandum on open data policy formally
introduced the principle of “open by default”, requiring agencies to begin releasing data in open andmachine-readable formats, and offering guidance for agencies to implement open data initiatives. 188
PRINCIPLE 1: OPEN BY DEFAULTThe U.S. government has made a strong commitment to the principle of openness by default. The
2013 executive order explicitly contains language calling for open data to be “the new default” forgovernment information. 189 To help agencies rapidly expand their capabilities to be open by default,
the White House launched Project Open Data in 2013 as a collection of resources including code,
case studies, and standards information. 190
PRINCIPLE 2: QUALITY AND QUANTITYThe United States is one of the world’s leaders in terms of releasing large quantities of high-quality
data, but there is still room for improvement regarding certain kinds of data. 191 Data.gov, the UnitedStates federal data repository, hosts the second-most numerous data sets of any national platformin the G8, trailing Canada, with 137,601data sets as of January 2015.
In addition to quantity, agencies can use the volume of FOIA requests they receive as a metric of
success for open data. While this is a relatively new approach to measuring open data efforts, somestate agencies, such as New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, have found that
opening key data sets can substantially reduce FOIA requests. 192 Federal agencies such as the FoodOpen Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

29

and Drug Administration have also made efforts to take FOIA requests into account in open data
releases, but it will take time to determine if this approach is successful. 193
PRINCIPLE 3: USABLE BY ALL

The United States has made progress in ensuring that open data is usable by all, particularly in thearea of offering machine-readable information on Data.gov, although many data sets hosted on the
portal are in proprietary formats. In addition, the country still has room to improve with respect toopen licenses and public data inventories.
The United States has made strong commitments to releasing data under open licenses, and thevast majority of data sets on Data.gov are in the public domain. However, some data sets not directly
created by the federal government may carry a more restrictive license. In addition, some data setsscheduled to be released as part of the U.S. Open Data Action Plan are only available for noncommercial purposes. 194 Federal government policy requires agencies to describe data sets withstandard metadata. 195 Unfortunately, this standard does not include mandatory licensing
information. As a result, approximately 70 percent of the datasets on Data.gov do not have licensing
information. 196
One area where the United States’ commitments to the G8 charter are unclear is in the area of freeaccess to open data. Paragraph 20 in the charter indicates that open data should be available freeof charge to encourage the most widespread use, and paragraph 22 states that member countries
will offer free access to data where possible. 197 However, the U.S. action plan contains nocommitment to provide data free of charge, despite the fact that every data set listed in the plan’sselected examples of data releases is available free of charge. 198 Making a firm commitment tooffering data free of charge could help ensure that this precedent continues to be upheld.
In addition, the charter specifies that each country will create a data catalog, an inventory of data
sets including both released and to-be-released information. Although all executive branch agencies
in the United States are required to publish a machine-readable data catalog, the requirement does
not apply to agencies outside the executive branch, and many agencies do not have such public
facing inventories. 199
Making an explicit commitment to release data freely when possible and offering detailed data
inventories from all agencies would help move the United States forward on its G8 charter
commitments to usability.
PRINCIPLE 4: RELEASING DATA FOR IMPROVED GOVERNANCEThe United States has released some data for improved governance, including federal grants dataand stimulus funding information. However, important gaps, such as corporate registration data,
which can be used to fight crime and corruption, remain. 200
The United States lacks a federal repository for corporate registrations, and policies on corporate
licensing differ from state to state. 201 One of the nation’s commitments to the Open Government
Partnership was to increase transparency of legal entities formed in the country, which would mean
making information on corporate ownership more broadly available. Despite the Obama
Administration’s support for the 2011 “Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance

30

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

30

Act”, which would have required greater transparency in corporate ownership, no bills in this area
have become law, and there has been little legislative focus in this area since 2011. 202
Congress has had more success with regard to other areas of open data, passing the Digital
Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) in 2014, which will standardize and publish federal
financial reporting information. 203 The bill, which passed unanimously in both the House ofRepresentatives and the Senate, demonstrates the bipartisan appeal of open data in the UnitedStates.
The United States has also made substantial progress in releasing other kinds of data for improved
governance. For example, stimulus spending information is publicly available on the federal
Recovery.gov website and federal grants and contracts are documented on the Treasury’s
USAspending.gov. 204
In general, U.S. efforts to release open data for improved governance have been promising, but moreworks remains. While many agencies have released key data sets, some have found political andcultural barriers to certain releases. For example, doctors’ groups such as the American Medical
Association opposed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ 2014 publication of physicianlevel insurance claims data. 205
PRINCIPLE 5: RELEASING DATA FOR INNOVATION

Many U.S. federal agencies have been proactive about releasing data for innovation, and innovationis one of the major focuses of the U.S. action plan. The United States made a relatively strong
commitment to releasing data sets considered “high value” under the G8 Open Data Charter,
offering in its Open Data Action Plan a schedule for releasing a number of such data sets. 206 Several
federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department ofEnergy, and the Department of Transportation have hosted “datapaloozas”, conference-hackathon
hybrids that connect developers with government officials around open data. 207 The White House’s
Project Open Data offers a template for other agencies hoping to host similar events. 208 The
Department of Commerce and the Department of Agriculture have already participated in roundtablediscussions on this topic hosted by New York University’s GovLab, and ten more plan to participate in
the future. 209 Other agencies have explicitly prioritized their open data releases to correspond withprivate-sector demand. The Food and Drug Administration, for example, prioritized its OpenFDA data
releases according to the frequency with which data sets were requested under FOIA. 210 The UnitedStates is on schedule with regard to its commitments to release data for innovation.
CONCLUSION

Overall, the United States has performed strongly in its commitments to the Open Data Charter. The
country has made great strides in releasing data for innovation, ensuring an ethic of “open by
default”, and releasing large quantities of high-quality data. The country has made some progress inensuring that open data is usable by all and releasing data for improved governance, but there ismore work to be done in these areas.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

31

RECOMMENDATIONSGiven the high degree of variation in countries’ progress at fulfilling commitments to the Open Data
Charter, each country has its own unique challenges. However, our analysis has revealed certain
underlying themes in terms of most countries’ next steps, including a need to collaborate
internationally; a need to generate political will and visibility around open data issues; a need toprovide support, education, and training to agency officials tasked with releasing open data; and aneed to undertake more meaningful interactions with civil society to develop open data initiatives in
the long-term.
To the extent that countries still face technical barriers to open data release and use, such as
metadata and licensing issues, international collaboration is important. There is no need forcountries to develop their own licenses when a number of adequate ones exist, including the UK’s
Open Government License and various Creative Commons licenses. It is also unnecessary forcountries to build their national data portals from scratch when robust and internationally supported
open source data publishing platforms such as CKAN exist, as well as commercial solutions. While
there may be some utility in developing country-specific metadata schemes to reflect differing
governance structures from country to country, this is also an area where governments with lessexperience can learn from countries with more mature metadata efforts.
Interviewees in several countries cited a lack of political will and visibility around open data issues as
the primary impediment to progress on Open Data Charter commitments. The reasons for these
conditions, however, varied from country to country. In Italy, a series of government transitions has
interrupted civil society’s momentum around open data; while in Germany and Russia, thegovernments have strongly resisted international influence around their open data priorities.
Similarly, potential solutions differ from country to country. While international encouragement might
help remind Italian leaders of the importance of open data, German and Russian civil society groups
will likely need to take the lead on improving open data’s visibility in those countries.
Where political will and public awareness of open data issues are relatively high, such as in the UK,
government priorities have begun to shift from simply publishing data to creating strong user
communities and maximizing government data’s reuse value. The country’s influential Open Data
Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to advancing the use of open data, was recently
replicated in the United States with its U.S. Open Data Institute, funded by the Knight Foundation; it
offers an excellent model for supporting and coordinating open data efforts between government
agencies, civil society groups, and the private sector. In addition, the UK’s Open Data User Group, anadvisory council that reports to the country’s Cabinet Office, represents a good approach toincorporating civil society and private-sector perspectives into government decision-making aroundopen data. While not all countries have access to the same levels of expertise on open data as the
UK enjoys, the notions of a unified civil society authority working to improve a country’s open data
initiatives and a government group of external open data experts could be helpful for all Open Data
Charter signatories as they plan the way forward.

32

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

32

APPENDIX 1: OPEN DATA ACTION PLANS
All of the G8 countries have produced an “Open Data Action Plan.” The following table contains links
to these plans.
Country

URL of Open Data Action Plan

CanadaFrancehttp://open.canada.ca/en/g8-open-data-charter-canadas-action-plan
https://www.etalab.gouv.fr/en/frenchprimeministerreleasestheg8opendat
acharteractionplanforfrance
http://www.verwaltunginnovativ.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/Pressemitteilungen/nationaler_aktionsplan_open_data_englisch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=1
http://www.funzionepubblica.gov.it/media/1104831/piano_azione_g8_o
pen_data.pdf
http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/it2/cio/dai53/plan_en.pdf
http://opendata.open.gov.ru/upload/iblock/996/9963ee33cc3b315533
b2b4917edde11e.docx
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/g8-open-data-charternational-action-plan
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/us_open_d
ata_action_plan.pdf

Germany

Italy
Japan
RussiaUK
United States

Figure 6: URLs of Open Data Action Plan, by country

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

33

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For information on open data initiatives, the Center for Data Innovation consulted with the following
experts. Any errors or omissions are the authors’ alone.

CANADA
Mary Francoli, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, Carleton University
James McKinney, Executive Director, Open NorthFRANCE
Kat Borlongan, Co-Founder, Five-by-Five and Open Data Institute Paris
Jean-Marie Bourgogne, Director, Montpellier Open Data Project, Co-Founder of OpenDataFrance

GERMANY
Christian Heise, Board Member, Open Knowledge Foundation Germany
Joern von Luck, Director, The Open Government Institute, Zeppelin University

ITALY
Giorgia Lodi, Consultant, Agency for Digital Italy
Maurizio Napolitano, Head of Digital Commons Lab, Fondazione Bruno Kessler

JAPAN
Soichiro Takago, Research Fellow, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo
Tomoaki Watanabe, Coordinator, Open Knowledge Foundation JapanRUSSIA
Ivan Begtin, Ambassador, Open Knowledge Foundation Russia, Director, Information Culture
Evgeny Styrin, Researcher, the Institute for Public and Municipal Administration, National Research
University Higher School of Economics

UK
Harvey Lewis, Research Director (Data), Deloitte
Jeni Tennison, Technical Director, Open Data Institute

UNITED STATES
Waldo Jacquith, Director, U.S. Open Data InstituteMatt Rumsey, Policy Associate and the Director of the Advisory Committee on Transparency, theSunlight Foundation
Sean Vitka, Federal Policy Manager, the Sunlight Foundation
Rebecca Williams, Senior Engagement Liaison, Data.gov, U.S. General Services Administration

34

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

34

REFERENCES
1.

“International standards: Right to information,” Article 19, April 5, 2012,
http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/3024/en/international-standards:-right-toinformation.

2.

James Manyika et al., “Open Data: Unlocking Innovation and Performance with Liquid Information,”
McKinsey Global Institute, October 2013,
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/open_data_unlocking_innovation_and_perfor
mance_with_liquid_information.

3.

"The Open Data Economy: Unlocking Economic Value by Opening Government and Public Data,"
Capgemini, February 7, 2013, 8, http://ebooks.capgemini-consulting.com/The-Open-DataEconomy/files/assets/basic-html/page8.html.

4.

"The Value of Danish Address Data," Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority, July 7, 2010,
http://www.adresse-info.dk/Portals/2/Benefit/Value_Assessment_Danish_Address_Data_UK_2010-0707b.pdf.

5.

John Carpenter and Phil Watts, "Assessing the Value of OS OpenData™ to the Economy of Great Britain Synopsis," UK Ordnance Survey, June 2013,https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/207692/bis-13-950assessing-value-of-opendata-to-economy-of-great-britain.pdf.

6.

Heather Timmons, "Monitoring the spreading radiation from Fukushima, in real time," Quartz, September
5, 2013, http://qz.com/121562/monitoring-the-spreading-radiation-from-fukushima-in-real-time/.

7.

Travis Korte, "5 Q’s for Transportation Economist Holly Krambeck," The Center for Data Innovation,
March 6, 2014, http://www.datainnovation.org/2014/03/5-qs-for-transportation-economist-hollykrambeck/.

8.

Francois van Schalkwyk et al., "Case study: Open data in the governance of South African higher
education," Open Data Research Network, April 2014,
http://www.opendataresearch.org/content/2014/710/case-study-open-data-governance-south-africanhigher-education.

9.

Reed Abelson and Sarah Cohen, "Sliver of Medicare Doctors Get Big Share of Payouts," The New YorkTimes, April 9, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/business/sliver-of-medicare-doctors-getbig-share-of-payouts.html.

10.

David Eaves, "Case Study: How Open data saved Canada $3.2 Billion," Eaves.ca, April 14, 2010,
http://eaves.ca/2010/04/14/case-study-open-data-and-the-public-purse/.

11.

Delphine Reuter, "Open Data: Fighting corruption in Italy and beyond," International Journalism Festival,
May 1, 2014, http://www.journalismfestival.com/news/open-data-fighting-corruption-in-italy-andbeyond/.

12.

“Access to Information Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. A-1),” Government of Canada, accessed March 4, 2015,
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/A-1/page-1.html; and “Privacy Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. P-21),”
Government of Canada, accessed March 4, 2015, http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P21/index.html.

13.

Kristen Douglas, Elise Hurtubise-Loranger, and Dara Lithwick, “The Access to Information Act andProposals for Reform,” Parliamentary Information and Research Service, June 6, 2012,
http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2005-55-e.pdf.

14.

“Federal Accountability Act (S.C. 2006, c. 9),” Government of Canada, accessed March 4, 2015,
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/F-5.5/.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

35

15.

“Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act (S.C. 2005, c. 46),” Government of Canada, accessed March
4, 2015, http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-31.9/.

16.

“Canada's Action Plan on Open Government,” Government of Canada, accessed March 4, 2015,
http://data.gc.ca/eng/canadas-action-plan-open-government.

17.

“Bill C-613: An Act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act and the Access to Information Act(transparency),” Parliament of Canada, June 11, 2014,
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx.

18.

Mary Francoli, “Independent Reporting Mechanism: Canada Progress Report 2012-2013,” Open
Government Partnership, 2014,
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/Canada_final_2012_Eng.pdf.

19.

Janet Davidson, “How open is Ottawa's new 'open data' website?” CBC News, June 19, 2013
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-open-is-ottawa-s-new-open-data-website-1.1373680; andMary Francoli, “Independent Reporting Mechanism: Canada Progress Report 2012-2013,” Open
Government Partnership.

20.

Author interview.

21.

Ibid.

22.

“Open Government License - Canada,” Government of Canada, accessed March 4, 2015,
http://data.gc.ca/eng/open-government-licence-canada.

23.

Mary Francoli, “Independent Reporting Mechanism: Canada Progress Report 2012-2013,” Open
Government Partnership.

24.

“Web Experience Toolkit,” Government of Canada, October 1, 2012, http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/wsnw/wa-aw/wet-boew/index-eng.asp; and Mary Francoli, “Independent Reporting Mechanism: Canada
Progress Report 2012-2013,” Open Government Partnership.

25.

Author interview.

26.

“G8 Open Data Charter – Canada's Action Plan,” Government of Canada, July 11, 2014,
http://data.gc.ca/eng/g8-open-data-charter-canadas-action-plan.

27.

Ibid.

28.

Author interview.

29.

“Open Government Consultation Report,” Government of Canada, March 26, 2012,
http://data.gc.ca/eng/open-government-consultation-report.

30.

Mary Francoli, “Independent Reporting Mechanism: Canada Progress Report 2012-2013,” Open
Government Partnership.

31.

“Developer's Corner,” Government of Canada, accessed March 4, 2015, http://open.canada.ca/en/sitestructure/developers-corner.

32.

“About CODE - Canadian Open Data Experience,” Government of Canada, accessed March 4, 2015
http://data.gc.ca/eng/about-code-canadian-open-data-experience.

33.

Nick Waddell, “Why Open Data was the best $3-million investment in Canada’s 2014 budget,” Cantech
Letter, February 12, 2014, http://www.cantechletter.com/2014/02/open-data-best-3-millioninvestment-canadas-2014-budget/.

36

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

36

34.

“Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789,” Yale Law School, accessed March 4, 2015,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp.

35.

“Transparency & Silence,” The Open Society Justice Initiative, 2006,
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/transparency_20060928.pdf.

36.

“France: International Focus,” University College London Constitution Unit, September 30, 2011,
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/research/foi/countries/france.

37.

“Overview of Member States' National Legislation Concerning Access to Documents,” The European
Commission Secretary General, October 9, 2000,
http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/access_documents/docs/apercu_en.pdf.

38.

“Transparency & Silence,” The Open Society Justice Initiative.

39.

Ibid.

40.

“Better Regulation in Europe: France,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2010,
http://www.oecd.org/gov/regulatory-policy/45706697.pdf.

41.

“Licence « conditions of the reuse of public information that is freely reusable »,” Repertoire desInformations Publiques du Ministere de la Justice, accessed March 5, 2015,
http://www.rip.justice.fr/conditions_of_the_reuse_of_public_information_that_is_freely_reusable.

42.

Ibid.

43.

Ibid.

44.

“France Plans to Join OGP, Will Become 64th Member,” Freedominfo.org, April 24, 2014,
http://www.freedominfo.org/2014/04/france-plans-join-ogp-will-become-64th-member/.

45.

“Open government data: France creates the role of State Chief Data Officer,” Etalab, May 21, 2014,
http://www.etalab.gouv.fr/en/open-government-data-france-creates-the-role-of-state-chief-data-officer.

46.

James Kin-sing Chan, “G8 Open Data Charter Action Plan: Open data by default, but you may have topay,” The Sunlight Foundation, July 28, 2014, http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/07/28/g8open-data-charter-action-plan-open-data-by-default-but-you-may-have-to-pay-for-it/.

47.

Data.gouv.fr, accessed October 23, 2014, https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/.

48.

“Action Plan for France: G8 Open Data Charter,” Etalab, November 6, 2013
http://www.slideshare.net/Etalab/open-data-g8-action-plan-for-france-veng.

49.

Ibid.

50.

Ibid.

51.

“License Ouverte,” Data.gouv.fr, October, 2011,https://wiki.data.gouv.fr/images/0/05/Open_Licence.pdf; For more on open licenses, see “Conformant
Licenses,” Open Definition, accessed February 5, 2015, http://opendefinition.org/licenses/.

52.

Data.gouv.fr.

53.

Ibid.

54.

“Action Plan for France: G8 Open Data Charter,” Etalab.

55.

Guillaume Champeau, “Open Data: Les Prix des Stations Essence Restent Payants, et Chers,”
Numerama, March 15, 2013, http://www.numerama.com/magazine/25392-open-data-les-prix-desstations-essence-restent-payants-et-chers.html.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

37

56.

“Action Plan for France,” The Paris Conference, April 24, 2014,
http://www.laconferencedeparis.com/agenda.html; Francis Maude, “Francis Maude welcomes France to
the Open Government Partnership,” Gov.uk, April 24, 2014,
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/francis-maude-welcomes-france-to-the-open-governmentpartnership; and “Open data and democracy: answer by Henri Verdier, « Mr. Data » of the government,”
The Open Data Institute, August 21, 2014, http://theodi.org/blog/open-data-and-democracy-answer-byhenri-verdier-mr-data-of-the-government.

57.

“France: International Focus,” University College London Constitution Unit.

58.

“French Government to Invest €2.5m in Open Data,” ePSIplatform, January 27, 2015,
http://www.epsiplatform.eu/content/french-government-invest-€25m-open-data.

59.

“Dataconnexions, La Communaute de L'Innovation,” Etalab, accessed October 23, 2014,
http://www.etalab.gouv.fr/presentation.

60.

“Le concours Dataconnexions 5,” Data.gouv.fr, accessed March 4, 2015,
https://www.data.gouv.fr/en/dataconnexions.

61.

“Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany,” IUSCOMP, May 23, 1949,
http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/GG.htm.

62.

“Environmental Information Act,” Federal Law Gazette, July 8, 1994,
http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/UIG.htm; and “Law on Improvement of Health-Related Consumer
Information,” FAOLEX, accessed November 3, 2014, http://faolex.fao.org/cgibin/faolex.exe?rec_id=108292&database=faolex&search_type=link&table=result&lang=eng&format_n
ame=@ERALL.

63.

“Open Data Activities in Germany,” United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, May 2,
2014, http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/UNGEGN/docs/28th-gegndocs/WP/WP21_OpenData_Germany_item%209_UNGEGN-28_final.pdf.

64.

“Federal Act Governing Access to Information Held by the Federal Government,” Federal Law Gazette,
September 5, 2005,
http://www.bfdi.bund.de/SharedDocs/IFG/IFGBundesgesetzUndGebuehrenO/TextIFG_EN.pdf?__blob=publicationFile; and “International standards: Right to information,” Article 19, April 5, 2012,
http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/3024/en/international-standards:-right-toinformation.

65.

Ibid.

66.

Ibid.

67.

“Final Report: Public Sector Information (PSI): Identification of Potential Exclusive Arrangements (EA) In
Germany,” European Commission Information Society and Media Directorate-General, Digital Libraries
and Public Sector Information Unit, 2010, http://bookshop.europa.eu/es/public-sector-information-psiidentification-of-potential-exclusive-arrangements-ea-in-germany-pbKK0214219/.

68.

“European Legislation on Reuse of Public Sector Information,” European Commission, February 02,
2015, http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/european-legislation-reuse-public-sector-information.

69.

Author interview.

70.

“The Federal Government's National Action Plan to Implement the G8 Open Data Charter,” Federal
Ministry of the Interior, September 2014,
http://www.cio.bund.de/SharedDocs/Publikationen/DE/Aktuelles/20140918_nationeler_aktionsplan_
open_data_englisch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile.

38

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

38

71.

Ibid.

72.

GovData, accessed November 3, 2014, https://govdata.de.

73.

Miranda Neubauer, “Germany Releases Open Data Action Plan Amidst Grassroots Enthusiasm andPirate Party Turmoil,” TechPresident, September 22, 2014,
http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/25280/germany-releases-open-data-action-plan.

74.

Author interview.

75.

“The Federal Government's National Action Plan to Implement the G8 Open Data Charter,” Federal
Ministry of the Interior.

76.

Author interview.

77.

Ibid.

78.

GovData.

79.

“Joint Statement: Finally Setting the Standard to 'Open'!” Not Your GovData, accessed November 3,
2014, http://not-your-govdata.de/en/.

80.

Author interview; and Miranda Neubauer, “Germany Releases Open Data Action Plan Amidst Grassroots
Enthusiasm and Pirate Party Turmoil,” TechPresident.

81.

Author interview.

82.

“The Federal Government's National Action Plan to Implement the G8 Open Data Charter,” Federal
Ministry of the Interior.

83.

Author interview.

84.

Ibid.

85.

“The Federal Government's National Action Plan to Implement the G8 Open Data Charter,” Federal
Ministry of the Interior.

86.

Author interview.

87.

James Kin-sing Chan, “G8 Open Data Charter Action Plan: Open data by default, but you may have topay,” The Sunlight Foundation, July 28, 2014, http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/07/28/g8open-data-charter-action-plan-open-data-by-default-but-you-may-have-to-pay-for-it/.

88.

“Self Evaluation of the Italian Action Plan,” The Open Government Partnership, accessed October 12,
2014, http://www.opengovpartnership.org/country/italyself-assessment/self-assessment.

89.

Ibid.

90.

Ibid.

91.

Ibid.

92.

Guido Romeo, “Why Italy Needs a Proper Freedom of Information Law,” Open Society Foundations, May
22, 2013, http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/why-italy-needs-proper-freedom-informationlaw.

93.

Ibid.

94.

Andrea Menapace, “Independent Reporting Mechanism Progress Report Italy 2012-13,” Open
Government Partnership, accessed October 12, 2014,

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

39http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/Italy%20OGP%20IRM%20Public%20Comment%
20(Eng)_0.pdf.
95.

The plan states only that “Italy is committed to publishing, along with the key datasets, a number of highvalue datasets listed in the G8 Collective Action Plan.” James Kin-sing Chan, “G8 Open Data Charter
Action Plan: Open data by default, but you may have to pay,” The Sunlight Foundation.

96.

Dati.gov.it, accessed October 12, 2014, http://www.dati.gov.it.

97.

Author interview; and “Self Evaluation of the Italian Action Plan,” The Open Government Partnership.

98.

James Kin-sing Chan, “G8 Open Data Charter Action Plan: Open data by default, but you may have topay,” The Sunlight Foundation.

99.

Andrea Menapace, “Independent Reporting Mechanism Progress Report Italy 2012-13,” Open
Government Partnership.

100. “Open Data Action Plan,” Minister for Simplification of Public Administration, 2013,www.funzionepubblica.gov.it/media/1104831/piano_azione_g8_open_data.pdf.
101. “Self Evaluation of the Italian Action Plan,” The Open Government Partnership.
102. Andrea Menapace, “Independent Reporting Mechanism Progress Report Italy 2012-13,” Open
Government Partnership.
103. “The Silent State: Access to Information in Italy,” Diritto Di Sapere and Access-Info, April 2013,
http://www.dirittodisapere.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/TheSilentState_2013.pdf.
104. Ibid.
105. “Self Evaluation of the Italian Action Plan,” The Open Government Partnership.
106. James Kin-sing Chan, “G8 Open Data Charter Action Plan: Open data by default, but you may have topay,” The Sunlight Foundation.
107. “Open Data Action Plan,” Minister for Simplification of Public Administration.
108. Ministry of Justice, Government of Japan, “Act on Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs,”
Wikisource, April 1, 2009,http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Act_on_Access_to_Information_Held_by_Administrative_Organs.
109. “Freedom of information in Japan: promoting accountability in government”, Freedominfo.org, accessed
November 23, 2014, http://www.freedominfo.org/regions/east-asia/japan/japan/.
110. See “Basic Thinking Regarding Electronic Provision of Government Information,” in “Open Government
Data Strategy,” IT Strategic Headquarters, July 4, 2012,
http://japan.kantei.go.jp/policy/it/20120704/text.pdf.
111. Ibid.
112. Ibid.
113. “Japan Open Data Charter Action Plan,” Prime Ministry of Japan and His Cabinet, October 29, 2013,
http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/it2/cio/dai53/plan_en.pdf.
114. Author interview.
115. Data.go.jp, accessed March 4, 2015, http://www.data.go.jp.
116. Ibid.

40

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

40

117. Ibid.
118. “A Primer on Machine Readability for Online Documents and Data,” Data.gov, September 24, 2012,https://www.data.gov/developers/blog/primer-machine-readability-online-documents-and-data.
119. Ibid.
120. “Japan Open Data Charter Action Plan,” Prime Ministry of Japan and His Cabinet.
121. Ibid.
122. Author interview.
123. Data.go.jp.
124. “Japan Open Data Charter Action Plan,” Prime Ministry of Japan and His Cabinet.
125. Author interview.
126. Ibid.
127. “Japan Open Data Charter Action Plan,” Prime Ministry of Japan and His Cabinet.
128. Ibid.
129. Ibid.
130. Open Data Promotion Consortium, http://www.opendata.gr.jp/en/. (accessed March 5, 2015)131. Author interview; and James Kin-sing Chan, “G8 Open Data Charter Action Plan: Open data by default,
but you may have to pay,” The Sunlight Foundation.
132. Author interview; Julia Weatherell, “For the First Time, Japan's Government Hosts a Hackathon,”
TechPresident, February 7, 2013, http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/23470/first-time-japansgovernment-hosts-hackathon; “Meteorological Data Hackathon,” Open Data Promotion Consortium,
December 1, 2012, http://www.opendata.gr.jp/en/event/2012/000401/; and “Open Government Data
Strategy,” IT Strategic Headquarters.
133. “Conference 'Open Government,” December 13, 2012,
http://конференция.большоеправительство.рф/en/.
134. Inna Kremen, “Federal Law 'On Providing Access to Information on the Activities of Government Bodies
and Bodies of Local Self-Government,' No. 8-FZ, February 9, 2009,” The Freedom of Information
Foundation, July 27, 2010, http://svobodainfo.org/en/node/439.
135. Ivan Pavlov, “Freedom of Information and Open Data—Interaction and Contradiction: The Russian
Example,” The Freedom of Information Foundation, accessed November 14, 2014,
https://svobodainfo.org/en/system/files/Pavlov-presentation-22-05-13.ppt.
136. A.B. Zhulin, et al., “Implementing Russian Open Data Conception: Public and Local Government Bodies
Progress Report 2013” National Research University, September 25, 2013,
http://gos.hse.ru/downloads/2013/OpenDataReport_Russia2013.pdf.
137. A.B. Zhulin, et al., “Implementing Russian Open Data Conception: Public and Local Government Bodies
Progress Report 2013” National Research University.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

41

140. Author interview.
141. “What is Open Data,” Data.gov.ru, accessed November 15, 2014 http://data.gov.ru/chto-takoe-otkrytyedannye.
142. Ibid.
143 Ibid.
144 A.B. Zhulin, et al., “Implementing Russian Open Data Conception: Public and Local Government Bodies
Progress Report 2013” National Research University.
145 Ibid.
146 Data.gov.ru.
147 Author interview.
148 Ibid.
149 Ibid.
150 Ibid.
151 Ibid.
152 “Open Data Hackathon 2014: Hack for Piter,” Hackathon, accessed November 15, 2014,
http://www.hackathon.spb.ru; “Awarding winners of Moscow Government’s Open Data web portal
hackathon competition,” Moscow City Government, May 29, 2014, http://www.mos.ru/en/presscenter/themes/index.php?search_4=1700&view_mode_4=tag_search&view_module_4=anywhere&ref
er_id_4=29341&refer_module_4=news.
153 Author interview; “Apps 4 Russia,” accessed November 16, 2014, http://apps4russia.ru; and“Hackathon for Urbanists and Financiers,” Prototyping Center School of Economics, October 11, 2014,
http://labhsemati.timepad.ru/event/149923/.
154. Author interview.
155. “Freedom of Information Act 2000,” Legislation.gov.uk, accessed March 4, 2015,
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents.
156. “The Environmental Information Regulations 2004,” Legislation.gov.uk, accessed March 4, 2015,
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3391/made.
157. “Open Data: unleashing the potential,” UK Cabinet Office, June 28, 2012,https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-data-white-paper-unleashing-.
158. Farah Ahmed, “Public data - statement of principles,” UK Cabinet Office, November 21, 2012,
http://data.gov.uk/blog/public-data-statement-of-principles.
159. Kevin Dunion, “United Kingdom Progress Report 2011-2013,” The Open Government Partnership,
2013, http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/171165808-UK-IRM-Report.pdf.
160. Farah Ahmed, “Public data - statement of principles,” UK Cabinet Office.
161. “Secretary of State’s Code of Practice (datasets) on the discharge of public authorities’ functions underPart 1 of the Freedom of Information Act,” Ministry of Justice, July 2013,
http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/information-access-rights/foi/code-of-practice-datasets.pdf.

42Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

42162. “IFTS Members,” The National Archives, accessed January 28, 2015,
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/re-using-public-sector-information/iftsand-regulation/ifts-members/.
163. “Exceptions to marginal cost pricing,” National Archives, accessed March 4, 2015,
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/re-using-public-sector-information/iftsand-regulation/exceptions-marginal-cost-pricing/; Francis Maude MP, “Open Standards Principles: For
software interoperability, data and document formats in government IT specifications,” Cabinet Office,2012, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78892/OpenStandards-Principles-FINAL.pdf.
164. Author interview.
165. Heather Savory, “Release of Data Fund – New Funding Rounds,” Data.gov.uk, February 4, 2014,
http://data.gov.uk/blog/release-data-fund-–-new-funding-rounds.
166. “Open Data Barometer: Second Edition,” The World Wide Web Foundation, January 2015,
http://www.opendatabarometer.org.
167. Bryan Groom, “Companies House moves to transparency by making digital data free,” Financial Times,
July 15, 2014, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/15c339e4-0c1c-11e4-a09600144feabdc0.html#axzz3AxrJ6ehr.
168. “Tenth Report Statistics and Open Data: Harvesting unused knowledge, empowering citizens andimproving public services,” Public Administration Committee, March 2014,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmpubadm/564/56410.htm.
169. Matt Lloyd, “Fixing broken data links.” Data.gov.uk, June 4, 2014, http://data.gov.uk/blog/fixing-brokendata-links; and Rebecca Chao, “Entering a New Era of Open Data in the U.K.?” TechPresident,
September 17, 2013, http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/24342/new-era-open-data-UK.
170. “Open Government License for Public Sector Information,” The National Archives, accessed August 20,
2014, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/.
171. Kevin Dunion, “United Kingdom Progress Report 2011-2013,” The Open Government Partnership.
172. Ibid.
173. “UK Civil Society Perspectives on National Action Plan,” Open Government Partnership UK, April 16,
2012, http://www.opengovernment.org.uk/civil-society-perspectives-on-uk-national-action-plan/.
174. Ben Worthy, “David Cameron's Transparency Revolution? The Impact of Open Data in the UK,” Social
Science Research Network, November 29, 2013,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2361428.
175. Author interview; and “Countries / United Kingdom,” Open Data Index, 2011https://index.okfn.org/country/overview/United%20Kingdom/.
176. Ibid.
177. Kevin Dunion, “United Kingdom Progress Report 2011-2013,” The Open Government Partnership.
178. “Open Data User Group,” Gov.uk, accessed August 20, 2014,
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/open-data-user-group.
179. “£1.5 million funding to open up public data,” Cabinet Office, March 31, 2014
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/15-million-funding-to-open-up-public-data.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

43

180. “Data transparency effort – successful in U.K. – to be tested in U.S.,” Knight Foundation, October 28,
2013, http://www.knightfoundation.org/press-room/press-release/data-transparency-effort-successfuluk-be-tested-u/.
181. “Innovation Vouchers for Open Data Innovators and Inventors,” Technology Strategy Board, July 29,
2014, https://vouchers.innovateuk.org/data-voucher.
182. Jemma Insall, “Open Data Funding Programmes,” Data.gov.uk, http://data.gov.uk/blog/open-datafunding-programmes.
183. “Past Hack Day conferences in the UK,” Lanyrd, accessed August 20, 2014,
http://lanyrd.com/topics/hack-day/in/uk/past/.
184. “U.S. Code § 552 - Public information; agency rules, opinions, orders, records, and proceedings,” Cornell
University Law School, accessed March 5, 2015, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/552.
185. “Privacy Act of 1974,” U.S. Department of Justice, accessed March 5, 2015,
http://www.justice.gov/opcl/privacy-act-1974; “The Government in the Sunshine Act,” U.S. Government
Services Administration, http://www.gsa.gov/graphics/ogp/SunshineAct_R2B-x3-g_0Z5RDZ-i34KpR.pdf; and “Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 1996,” Library of Congress,
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c104:H.R.3802.ENR.
186. Eric Holder, “Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,” U.S. Office of the
Attorney General, March 19, 2009,http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2009/06/24/foia-memo-march2009.pdf.
187. “New Attorney General FOIA Memorandum Issued,” Office of Information and Privacy, accessed January
7, 2014, http://www.justice.gov/archive/oip/foiapost/2001foiapost19.htm.
188. “Executive Order—Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information,”
The White House, May 9, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/09/executiveorder-making-open-and-machine-readable-new-default-government-; and Sylvia Burwell, et al., ”Open
Data Policy—Managing Information as an Asset,” Office of Management and Budget, May 9, 2013,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-13.pdf.
189. Ibid.
190. “Project Open Data,” Project Open Data, http://project-open-data.github.io. (accessed August 21, 2014)
191. “Open Data Barometer: Second Edition,” The World Wide Web Foundation, January 2015,
http://www.opendatabarometer.org.
192. Troy K. Schneider, “Finding Savings in FOIA,” FCW, August 19, 2014,
http://fcw.com/articles/2014/08/19/finding-savings-in-foia.aspx.
193. Author interview; and “About,” OpenFDA, accessed September 25, 2014, https://open.fda.gov/about/.
194. See “Education” category under “Selected Examples of Data Releases,” U.S. Open Data Action Plan,
2014.
195. Sylvia Burwell et al., “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,” Executive
Office of the President Office of Management and Budget, May 9, 2013,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-13.pdf.
196. Author interview.

44

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

44

197. “G8 Open Data Charter and Technical Annex,” Gov.UK, June 18, 2013,https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-data-charter/g8-open-data-charter-and-technicalannex.
198. “U.S. Open Data Action Plan,” The White House, May 9, 2014,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/us_open_data_action_plan.pdf.
199. Ibid.
200. “Open Data Barometer: Second Edition,” The World Wide Web Foundation, January 2015,
http://www.opendatabarometer.org.
201. Ibid.
202. “Independent Reporting Mechanism: United States Progress Report, 2011-2013,” Open Government
Partnership, accessed September 25, 2014,
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/IRM100513-USA-Report-LIVE.pdf.
203. “Data Act,” The Data Transparency Coalition, accessed November 24, 2014,
http://datacoalition.com/issues/data-act.html.
204. “Independent Reporting Mechanism: United States Progress Report, 2011-2013,” Open Government
Partnership.
205. Mindy Yochelson, “Doctors Wary as CMS Policy on Releasing Medicare Pay Data Becomes Effective
Soon,” Bloomberg BNA, February 11, 2014, http://www.bna.com/doctors-wary-cms-n17179882230/.
206. James Kin-sing Chan, “G8 Open Data Charter Action Plan: Open data by default, but you may have topay,” The Sunlight Foundation.
207. “Health Datapalooza,” Health Datapalooza, accessed March 4, 2015, http://healthdatapalooza.org;“White House Energy Datapalooza,” Data.gov, accessed November 24, 2014,
https://www.data.gov/energy/white-house-energy-datapalooza; Paul Goddin, “Data Palooza Helps
USDOT Plan for Our Transportation Future,” Mobility Lab, May 14, 2013,
http://mobilitylab.org/2013/05/14/data-palooza-helps-usdot-plan-for-our-transportation-future/.
208. “Templates for open data community events,” Project Open Data, accessed November 24, 2014,
https://project-open-data.cio.gov/engagement/.
209. “Open Data Roundtables,” GovLab, accessed September 25, 2014,
http://www.opendata500.com/us/roundtables/.
210. “About,” OpenFDA, accessed September 25, 2014, https://open.fda.gov/about/.

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

45

About the Authors
Daniel Castro
Daniel Castro is the director of the Center for Data Innovation. He is also the vice president of the Information
Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). His research focuses on information technology policy including
data-driven innovation, privacy, information security, e-government, electronic voting, and accessibility forpeople with disabilities. Mr. Castro previously worked as an IT analyst at the Government Accountability Office(GAO) where he audited IT security and management controls at various government agencies. He contributed to
GAO reports on the state of information security at a variety of federal agencies, including the Securities andExchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). In addition, Mr. Castro wasa Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he developed
virtual training simulations to provide clients with hands-on training of the latest information security tools. He
has a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and an M.S. in Information Security Technology andManagement from Carnegie Mellon University. Follow him on Twitter @castrotech.

Travis Korte
Travis Korte is a former research analyst at the Center for Data Innovation specializing in data science
applications and open data. He has a background in journalism, computer science, and statistics. Prior tojoining the Center for Data Innovation, he launched the Science vertical of The Huffington Post and served as its
Associate Editor, covering a wide range of science and technology topics. He has worked on data science
projects with The Huffington Post and other organizations. Before this, he graduated with highest honors fromthe University of California, Berkeley, having studied critical theory and completed coursework in computerscience and economics. His research interests are in computational social science and using data to engage withcomplex social systems.

46

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation

46

Open Data in the G8 | Center for Data Innovation1