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Europeana and partners are inviting talented developers and designers across Europe to the 2012 edition of
the Hack4Europe! competition. In each location local developers are introduced to the Europeana data collection and invited to create applications using that data. Applications can address aspects such as mobile, mash-ups, social curation, user annotations, and the theme of World War I.

The road show will include 4 hackathons:

Hack4Europe!Poland, 26-27 May 2012, Warsaw
Organised by the National Audio-Visual InstitutePoland and the Poznan
Supercomputing and Networking Center(PSNC)
http://hack4europe2012-waw.eventbrite.com/

Hack4Europe!Latvia, 26-27 May 2012, Riga
Organised by the National Library of Latvia in cooperation with
TechHub Riga
http://hack4europe2012-riga.eventbrite.com/

Hack4Europe!Germany, 5-6 June 2012, Berlin
Organised by the Europeana Collections 1914-1918 project
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz in co-operation
with the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum
für Film und Fernsehen and the Europeana Inside partner Institut für
Museumsforschung SMB-PK.
http://hack4europe2012-berlin.eventbrite.com/

Hack4Europe!Belgium, 13-15 June 2012, Leuven
Organised by Europeana and Poznan Supercomputing and Networking
Center(PSNC)
http://hack4europe2012leuven.eventbrite.com/

See the individual pages for more information on the development themes, categories, prizes and reimbursement.

On 16 and 17 May the Moldova ICT Summit is taking place in Chisinau. The summit is part of the open innovation week, that also incorporates training for data journalists, and a hack camp "Apps for Moldova".

The Moldova cabinet took an active interest in the summit, holding a special cabinet meeting by the Prime Minister and other Ministers on the country's ICT strategy until 2020 at the conference. The evening before the summit the deputy minister for ICT welcomed the international field of speakers to the conference during a reception.

As part of the Smart Government track sessions took place on Open Government, Open Innovation Ecosystems and Open Data, with contributions from Beth Noveck, Andrew Stott, Alex Howard, Al Kags and many others, sharing their experiences from across the world.

The ePSIplatform's community steward Ton Zijlstra, at the invitation of the Moldova e-Government Center and the World Bank, gave the key-note presentation for the Open Data session, titled "Why Open Data Is Important to the EU".

Showing how over the last years there has been an acceleration in open data initiatives across Europe, currently resulting in a new EC proposal to amend the PSI Directive and the presentation of a European Open Data Strategy.

As many real barriers to implementing open data exist, both for government bodies as well as for citizens using data, community building are an important part of making the transition. Beyond the clear economic potential and transparency benefits of open data, many other fields of value exist for data, e.g. participation, journalism, self-empowerment, new knowledge and also efficiency and effectiveness improvements for government bodies themselves. Taking open data forward means is best served by addressing real issues, questions and problems, and seeing how (not yet) available open data can play a role in addressing them.

The slides of the presentation have been embedded below.

Moldova ICT Summit Open Data SessionView more presentations from ePSI Platform.

The Italian regional government of Lazio today will vote on an open data law.

Key elements of the regional law are the opening of regional archives, increasing transparency through digitization and stimulate more active participation by citizens. The politicians who are sponsoring the law argue that the data has already been paid for by citizens through their taxes, and thus rightly belong to them. They position opening up data as a revolution for the relationship between citizens and their government.

The Apps4Italy competition has announced its longlist of finalists. The national Italian open data competition (that was open to entries from across the EU), has yielded many interesting submissions.

The 35 finalists, selected out of a much wider range of 188 entries, contain 15 applications, 5 data sets, and 10 ideas.
Ranging from mapping to taxi tariffs, from parliamentary transparency or public budgets to linked open data tools, there is a wide variety and diversity amongst the selected finalists.

The winners of the competition (with a total prize money of 40.000 Euro) will be announced on 19 May.

The lovely Isle of Man set the scene for two days EReg Plenary Board meeting & Annual Conference. The EReg is the Association of the European Vehicle and Driver Registration Authorities. Currently the Association has 27 members, which all have the legal status of central vehicle registration and/or driver registration authority in their country. Obviously, these public sector bodies are the holders of a very rich source of PSI, like vehicle registrations, all sorts of transport data, intelligent transport systems etc.

Where the PSI Directive will impact the business model of these organisations, the EReg chairman, Mr Hans van der Bruggen, had kindly invited the ePSI Platform (represented by Marc de Vries) to present the substance and impact of the proposal for a new PSI Directive. After his presentation a quite vivid debate demonstrated the high relevance of this issue for these authorities, as parts of their income result from (allowing) PSI re-use. All participants agreed that they will follow the negotiations in the Council and Parliament closely and likely it will be on the agenda again next year when EReg will have its conference in Bern.

Asking questions in your peer network is of course a good way to gain more insight into open data. That is why we have a "Ask an expert!" section in our platform. If you have questions on matters concerning open data and the re-use of public sector information, you can ask them, and we'll look for people to help you get answers. All questions and answers get posted to the platform, so that you can respond, augment and discuss what is already there.

The most recent question coming in was from a platform member on where to find in national law the regulations concerning PSI re-use and the PSI Directive. The answer is now on-line.

Got questions? Ask them! Got better answers to what is already there? Add them!

The Moldovan government is organizing a week long series of events designed to stimulated open government in Moldova, as well as stimulate citizens to make use of the available data.

A full description of the event can be found on-line (also on the Moldovan Community for Open Data Development site). Next to conferences looking at open government and open government data, also a two day hack event is taking place. The week is being co-organized by the e-Government office of the government of Moldova, the World Bank and others.

Follow the proceedings on-line through the Twitter tag #Apps4MD, and the mailing list for Apps for Moldova.

Ton Zijlstra of the ePSIplatform team will be present to discuss the European open data strategy.

The French railway company SNCF has been running an idea competition for re-use of its data sources on public transport. The winners of that idea competition have now been named.

Over 2000 ideas were submitted, of which 117 were selected.

The winner of the public voting price is Appli Fit' that tracks the number of steps you take and calories you burn, while walking from train to train and through railway stations.

The winner of the jury price is Transifoule that provides you statistics for your planned trip on things like the number of passengers normally for that train. This way you can find out if it is smarter to take a different train, that is less crowded for instance.

Two favorable mentions go to the application ideas Nice to Meet You, and Faut Y Aller. Nice to Meet You calculates for two people where the optimal meeting point is in terms of travel time for both. Faut Y Aller (It's time to go!), warns you when it is time to leave for the railway station, and how to best get there.

The next stage of the SNCF open data competition is a hackathon on 8-10 June.

The Dutch Province of Flevoland is organizing a hackday on 2 June 2012.

Citizens and civil servants are jointly working on making data available in the province, and putting that data to good use. A regional data portal is being planned, and existing policy issues have been identified where open data usage might be helpful.

On 2 June all that has been done is being put to the test, when coders go to work on data sets.

Over the course of six months Flevoland is hosting 4 of these events, to experiment with, collaborate and co-create around open data.

Participation is free, registration is required.

Following political discussions last fall, open data plans in the city of Hamburg are now shaping up.
According to a blog post by a local politician, the following steps are foreseen:

• A data portal for Hamburg to be launched this year (2012)
• More data releases from the treasury department
• The publication of geodata on the announced portal
• Adopting Creative Commons licenses for the data sets to be released.

Hamburg is following other local open data initiatives in cities like Berlin and Munich, and states like Baden-Württemberg.

In our legal section we keep track of legal cases around the world concerning the re-use of government data. We recently published two new case descriptions.

A Dutch court case where a private company sought to prevent the release of the Dutch national road database as open data.

A Canadian pending case on making available a database with postcodes. Postcodes have triggered various court cases (e.g. UK and the Netherlands), and this case is a new episode in the 'continuing saga'.

Are you aware of open data related court cases or complaints in your country? Let us know! We are happy to create and add case descriptions to the ePSIplatform.

The Danish Ministry for Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs has published an article it commissioned which aims at giving a fundamental insight into the dynamics and dilemmas when balancing the financing of public key registers (including spatial data, public reference data etc.) against broader societal values. In the article the developments in The Nederlands and in Denmark with respect to a system of "Key registers" are compared.

The title of the article is “Funding of a system of key registers in a PSI-conomics and contemporary perspective - the Dutch experience in a Danish context”. The article can be found on the Danish ministry’s website, and is attached for download.

Extended use of authoritative basic data from public key registers is considered as a potential high value area in the Danish national strategy for digitalisation for 2011-2015. It is also recognised as a challenge to set up a financial scheme that, on the one hand, ensures a sustainable funding of these and, on the other hand, allows public data to be widely shared within public administrations and enterprises. Hence the paper aims to give decision makers an insight into the dynamics and dilemmas when balancing the financing of public key registers against broader societal values. The author of the paper is Marc de Vries, an independent Dutch consultant, who has many years’ experience on the legal and economic aspects of public sector information, and is currently a member of the ePSIplatform team.

The article is also available in our Report section.

On 2-4 July the Samos Summit is taking place in Greece, on open data and interoperability for governance, industry and society. The event website states:

The Samos 2012 Summit on Open Data and Interoperability is co-organised by the University of Aegean, the Greek Interoperability Centre of the National Technical University of Athens, the ENGAGE eInfrastructures project (managed by European Commission) and the ENSEMBLE Support Action (under the auspices of the Future Internet Enterprise Systems cluster), in order to foster international cooperation and strive for a new research and practice agenda in open data, collaborative governance, enterprise interoperability and future internet systems.

With an emphasis on Open Data, Enterprise Interoperability and a new participative governance model for the public sector, the enterprise and within a connected, inclusive society, the Samos Summit will be a first-class opportunity to see, interact with and influence cutting-edge European ICT research projects and initiatives.

The Samos 2012 Summit on Open Data and Interoperability, aims at bringing together policy makers, industry representatives, research and academia to actively interact, share best practices and contribute in shaping the European Union agenda.

On May 10 and 11 the annual conference of EReg will take place on the Isle of Man, UK. EReg is the European association of vehicle and driver registration authorities. As PSB's and data holders of a key register the PSI Directive is of importance to EReg's members.

The 2 day conference offers a varied programme including presentations on “International Data Exchange”, "Re-registration of Vehicles", "ITS" and “Driving Licences”. Demonstrating the increasing importance of re-use of car registrations, a session has been reserved specifically on the proposal of the new PSI Directive, which will be introduced by Marc de Vries, member of the ePSIplatform team, inter alia highlighting the impact the new Directive may have on the organisations concerned and their users.

The program of the conference is attached as PDF.

As announced in January the Finnish government is opening up its geodata for free re-use. Officially as of 1 May 2012 all geodata is being made available free of charge for all re-use purposes. Starting 9 May material will be available for download.

Jarma Ratia, Director General Central Administration, "This also allows attaining one of the most substantial strategic objectives of the NLS, to use topographic data as widely as possible. Hundreds of millions of euros have been invested during the last decades in the digital databank. We believe that making the data available provides the society with the most considerable total economic benefits of these investments."

In part geodata such as place names and basic maps had been available as of last fall. The May release also contains elevation data, fixed points, aerial photos and orthophotography and the topographic database.

(also see this study on the impact of open geo data for Finnish SME's)

During the BarCamp Graz event this coming weekend in Graz, Austria, an open data hackathon will take place on Friday 11 May.

With the launch of the Austrian national data portal in April of this year, new data sets have become available for re-use. The aim of the event in Graz is to take a closer look at the data in the national portal, and identify opportunities for re-use.

The hackathon is part of a BarCamp that joins 5 related events: Politcamp (on the impact of social media, crowdsourcing etc on politics and political engagement), Wissenscamp (on web2.0 for knowledge management), Geocamp (on geo data and geo information), Designcamp (on concept and product design), and icamp (on mobile technology development). All take place during the weekend of 11 through 13 May 2012 at the FH Joanneum in Graz.

All key information on all these events that make up BarCamp Graz 2012 can be found on the event website.

The deadline for submitting entries to the Apps for Italy competition has passed on 30 April. The organizers are impressed with the response the competition has generated. With 200 entries, and 70 ready-to-use applications the jury now has to do the hard work of selecting the winners in four categories: project ideas, applications, datasets and visualizations. The total prize money to be divided is 45.000 Euro.

The winners will be publicly announced on May 19 during the Forum PA 2012 event that is taking place 16 to 19 May in Rome.

The European Journalism Centre and fjum (the forum for journalism and media in Vienna) are inviting journalists and media professionals to a two-day data journalism event in Vienna, Austria on 14 and 15 June.

A one day conference is followed by a second day of workshops. The program is focussed on how to get started with data driven journalism, and how to develop the skills needed.

Registration is now open, and the deadline for registration for the workshops is on 20 May.

Workshops will take place on data literacy, data analysis, data collection, and data visualization. The conference will look at why data journalism is important, why newsrooms should introduce it, and how data journalism teams can get started.

More information on registration, the program and confirmed speakers can be found on the event web page.

A public on-line discussion has been launched to collect and discuss ideas on implementing the Italian Digital Agenda.

People can contribute ideas, as well as discuss and vote on ideas. The discussion is grouped in various working groups, such as Smart Cities and Communities, Infrastructure and Safety, Research and Innovation and e-Commerce. Of interest to this platform is the e-Government and Open Data group, where open data and PSI re-use are being discussed. Nearly 70 ideas around opening up government information have thusfar been collected.

Harvard University has released over 12 million catalog records from its university libraries. These records contain bibliographic information on books, videos, audio recordings, images, maps, manuscripts etc.

All this metadata is being released under a Creative Commons 0 license, effectively putting the data in the public domain.

The catalog records are available for bulk download from Harvard, and are available for programmatic access by software applications via API's at the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).
The bulk download contains over 3GB of data. The data can be found at http://openmetadata.lib.harvard.edu/

More information on the data and how to get access to it in the FAQ published by Harvard University.