What are the most demanded datasets?

The Aporta initiative, in its desire to promote harmonisation and seek synergies between the various publishers of open data in our country, has launched an initiative to find out which datasets are most in demand among those offered in open format according to standards that facilitate their reuse.

To this end, we share a questionnaire and invite different public organisations to identify up to 10 datasets that from their point of view meet the aforementioned characteristics, preferably published on datos.gob.es. In this article we will focus on the responses provided by the Autonomous Communities.

Nine Autonomous Communities took part in the questionnaire: 

As can be seen in the links above, all of them have consolidated and sustainable open data portals in place. They have also shown their commitment to the openness and reuse of public data through various strategies and action plans included in the IV Open Government Plan.

You can see the specific results of the questionnaire in the following infographic:

Click here to see the infographic in full size and in its accessible version.

It can be seen that the datasets that stand out as a priority are those related to the public sector: budgets, expenditure, hiring, subsidies or organisation charts showing jobs and roles in the administration, among others. Public employment offers and the official gazette of each community also stand out.

Secondly, environmental datasets, such as weather forecasts or air quality data, which are very necessary when it comes to making predictions that allow us to fight against climate emergencies, stand out. Closely linked to this category we also find rural environment datasets, such as the Geographic Information System for Agricultural Plots (SIGPAC), with information on agricultural plots declared by farmers and livestock farmers and through which farmers and livestock farmers must make applications for aid.

Datasets related to the economy and employment, where we have included fundamental sectors for our country such as commerce or tourism, complete the top 3 most demanded thematic categories. Job offers, training courses, tourist establishments or beach guides are just some of the examples of datasets included in this category.

Transport data, such as road conditions or those related to public transport, also stand out. And those linked to education and health. Given the current global pandemic situation, it is not surprising that the autonomous communities have also highlighted the importance of COVID data, which are essential for decision-making. These data have been among the most in demand in recent months due to the health situation.

It is worth noting that the work carried out by ASEDIE in promoting the opening of the datasets of associations, cooperatives and foundations (an action they have come to call top 3 ASEDIE) has borne fruit, as the majority of the communities participating in the questionnaire have not only opened them, but have also indicated that they consider them to be a priority.

With this questionnaire, we have learned about some of the datasets considered a priority by the Autonomous Communities. The challenge now is to promote their harmonisation, so that the different bodies publish the same information structure in a way that facilitates their interoperability. Whenever possible, access to data should also be facilitated by means of APIs, with priority being given to data provided in real time or with a very high update frequency.

Do you agree with the highlighted datasets? Let us know what you think in the comments.