Open Data in Italy is being established very slowly within the Public Administration (PA) and only a few companies are taking their first steps in this area by making their data: available. This is a turning point in our country, considering how companies are reluctant to release sensitive information. Open Data, is a key concept brought by the new E-Government and E-democracy revolution, and is based on a model of exploitation of information assets, using public data to create innovative solutions and services for citizens and consumers. Open Data is directed towards sharing public data in open format, for the purpose of providing full access and unlimited use, integration and reuse.
Open Data in Public Administration
The Open Data is a philosophy that is established to enable the public authorities to use new technologies to be open and transparent to citizens through the data sharing. The main objective is to increase the transparency and the involvement of citizens, institutions and other stakeholders, improve the market and encourage technological innovation, development and new applications and solutions deployment. A turning point in the spread of 'Open Data in Italy has had with the release of the Italian Open Data Licence (IODL) v 1.0. that favors the free consultation, extraction, reproduction and reuse of data and information.
In Italy at the moment are only a few institutions have started interesting projects in this area, particularly in Piemonte and Emilia Romagna Regions and ISTAT.
Open Data in companies
In Italy when very few companies have decided to provide a transparent reporting of their activities, even though the opening of Enel may bring major consequences and impose a new standard.
In Italy, Enel, in fact, was the first company to move in this direction by making public on the corporate website the consolidated financial data, the Report and Financial Statements and Sustainability, allowing you to reproduce, distribute, and display to the public, modify, even for commercial purposes, with the constraint of giving credits to the author of the work according to the Enel specifications. In addition, you can download the data made available in xls (Excel tables), csv and XML (eXtensible Markup Language, a markup language that enables applications to process the data).Enel Open Data adopt Creative Commons licenses.
The content will soon appear on Google Fusion Tables, to allow the use and display using the tools offered by Google.
Open Data - what standards?
The Data publication according to the Open Standard requires disclosure of data on the web, using an open license. The data must be organized, and available through non-proprietary formats (eg CSV instead of Excel). In addition the standard Open imposes the use of URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) to be connected to the data.The main licenses that can be taken are:
1. Open Knowledge Foundation Licence
- Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) - Public Domain for data / databases
- Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) - Attribution for data / databases
- Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODC-ODbL) - Attribution Share-Alike license for data / databases
2. Creative Commons License
- CC Zero
- By CC - Attribution
- CC SA - ShareAlike
- CC BY-SA - Attribution and share alike
3. Italian Open Data License (BY-SA) 1.0 - the new version of the license is characterized by being:
- Share-Alike License (you must keep derived works under the same license or a license compatible)
- Compatible license (one way) and with ODbL both CC-BY-SA 3.0
- License mainly addressed to the Public Administration
Open Data and Semantic Web
The Open Data is a philosophy that also opens the way for the new Semantic Web.In fact, through the creation of linked data, people and machines can browse the network data. The use of URIs to identify the content makes them easily traceable and linkable to other data in order to create a semantically relevant information.
