Since a few weeks ago, a constantly updated reference dashboard on the quality state of European portals is available on the European Data Portal - EDP: up to date, the Trentino Open Data catalogue ranks first for resource accessibility and use of machine-readable datasets. Some work is still to be done as far as the compliance to the DCAT-AP standard is concerned; we are currently working on it.
The analysis is based on three criteria
99% of the datasets on dati.trentino.it fits the European standards according to the first two criteria. Up to date,we are first in Europe next to relevant and active players in the landscape of European Open Data (such as, for example, Zurich, data.gov.uk and London). This result is a reason of great satisfaction for the work being carried out together with the whole system of the Trentino public administrations. Here follow some considerations and some suggestions for further analysis.
The accessibility of distributions and their machine-readability are the two preconditions to any further development starting from open data. This is what we tried and were able to explain to our colleagues over the years. As a matter of fact, this is a fundamental step to understand how the world is changing thanks to data-driven economies and public administrations. Data can have an economic value as far as they can easily become raw material for new market models in a safe and sustainable way. Technological innovation changes the world inside and outside public offices. Computing ability is an internal and external resource. Producing machine-readable data means to guarantee their update and to support the chain of data enhancement.
The added value of this dashboard on the European portal, checking and weekly ranking the quality of data in local catalogues, is not that of compiling rankings, but rather of promoting a "data quality culture" around Europe. This means to indicate to the various European players the basic conditions upon which to build a European Digital Single Market with the data of each and every administration, even of the smallest municipality. A place, hence, where the information asset of each public administration can be enhanced by developments, applications and analytic abilities not only within local markets, but also on European ones.
At the basis of the excellent result are the activities of several players:
There is also the possibility to view a dedicated analysis for each catalogue - here you can find the one for dati.trentino.it - but, in this case, it needs to be considered that this analysis is only based on the DCAT-AP-compliant-resources. On our portal, these are around 277 - soon, we will have the extention DCAT_AP_IT, which we, along with the CKAN national community, will be able to use to improve the quality of our catalogues.