Workshop on raising citizen awarenness on Open Data


The  workshop "Raising awareness and engaging citizens in re-using PSI" was held within the SHARE PSI 2.0 conference in Timisoara, Romania on March 17, 2015.  The workshop was co-chaired by Daniel Pop, West University of Timisoara and Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean.  The workhop touched upon ways to enhance citizen participation and engagement in reusing open governmental data.  





Several experiences to boost opendata uptake by citizens and entreprises were presented and discussed, resulting in a set of proposed "ways":





Way #1:
Give them a "home"


An open
data portal has to offer the ability to citizens / users to create and maintain
a profile





Way #2:
Make them customers / Create an Open Data marketplace


When a
citizen cannot find the dataset he is looking 
for, he can put a request that is channeled to the appropriate
administration





Way #3:
Make them opendata publishers


Allow for
upload of datasets by users





Way #4:
Allow working on datasets / make them curators


A dataset
can be processed by a user and then republished as a new version.  Datasets can be visualised, extended, linked
by users





Way #5:
Give them incentives


- Measure
and publish popularity of the users, based on their activity.


- Give
incentives for data usage / utilisation (e.g. free tickets to community events,
free parking, to most prominent users)


-
Organisation of competitions / datathons with prizes for the best applications


-
Organisation of data journalism competitions 
for users





Way #6:
Involve them upfront


Organise
meetings of interest groups (e.g. finance, environment, etc) among interested
citizens and entreprises. Use questionnaires, for initial screening of ideas
and people.





Way #7:
Provide specific support for entreprises


Companies
have different viewpoint than citizens: they need data quality, availabiliity,
support, etc.  So, provide something like
that for companies and utilisation will be higher.





Way #8:
Promote the creation of journalism teams


People
might want to “tell a story” acting like data journalists within the local
communities, but they might not have the skills needed


So, make
small groups among citizens to work around open data, generating small or
larger stories.





Way #9:
Provide training


Citizens
without the proper knowledge cannot take advantage of incentives targeting more
advanced people.































































So, invest
in training citizens on basic digital skills (make a web site, work with a
dataset, write a story, etc)





A slideset of the main outcomes can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/ways-to-boost-utilisation-of-open-data-by-citizens while a full description will be available in the SHARE PSI 2.0 project open database of best practices. 










The workshop panel. From left to right: 


André Lapa, AMA, Portugal (rapporteur)


Noël Van Herreweghe, CORVe, Belgium


Chris Harding, The Open Group, UK


Jan Kučera, University of Economics, Prague


Daniel Pop, West University of Timişoara, Romania (co-chair)


Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean, Greece (co-chair)


Peter Winstanley, Scottish Government, UK


Robert Ulrich, KIT, Germany


Petya Bozhkova, Balkan Services, Bulgaria


Szymon Lewandowski, DG Connect, European Commission