By Winnie Kamau
Data fraternity has all streamed down to Madrid in Spain for their Annual pilgrimage, International Open Data Conference (IODC) which began today with participants drawn from over 100 countries of the world.
The 4th International conference is organized by the Open Data in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Energy and Toursim through the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Information Society.
IODC16 is currently the most important annual event on open data in the world and debuts the first meeting in Europe with Spain seeking to retain its apex position in International Open Data.
The event dubbed Encuentro Aporta was opened by the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Information Society, Víctor Calvo-Sotelo, who thanked the joint efforts of the Administration to make the event a success “Spain holds an important position in the international benchmarking. Public sector data make a quality asset that generates new opportunities for value creation in a digital society as is the case with the smart cities or the promotion of human language technologies”.
One of the side events taking place at the IODC is The Africa Open Data Day organised by the African Open Data Conference is set to highlight some of the recipients of the Award won during the biannual Africa Open Data conference which was held for the first time in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in 2015. The Africa Open Data day will also show case some of the gains and achievements made by civic actors who use creative innovations when faced with tough problems.
The reuse of Data has become an increasingly closer resource for citizens, who use them in applications to help them in everyday life. Medialab-Prado will host the Open Cities Summit, whose objective is to comprehend how cities and their citizens are implementing open-data-driven measures. Finally, closing the pre-event agenda, the Spanish National Library will host an Open Data & Culture pre-event, which will discuss the obstacles faced by cultural institutions to launch the European directive of PSI Re-use, which extends the scope of action for libraries (including college libraries), museums and archives.
IODC brings together thousands of participants drawn from 80 countries of the world from over 24 sectors including health, environment, journalism, agriculture, education, transport or smart cities, among other cross-cutting topics such as standardization, capacity building and learning, problem solving, and open data measuring and assessment mechanisms. Open data is seen as a valuable tool to provide solutions in key sectors such as agriculture, nutrition, education or health services; but they also make a real impact on job creation, the provision of citizen-adapted services and the development of innovative solutions.
The European Commission report Creating Value Through Open Data demonstrates that data re-use allows saving 7,000 lives every year by improving sanitary response, reducing energy consumption by 16%, or reducing the accident rate in European roads by 5.5%.
