Open Data Monitor: One Year On

Partners of the OpenDataMonitor project reflect on a successful first year and prepare to launch its demonstration platform

The ODI is one of six partners in the OpenDataMonitor (ODM) project. This collaborative FP7-ICT-2013 project started on 1 November, 2013 and will run for two years. ODM will provide users with a monitoring, analytics and visualisation tool, enabling greater understanding of the available open data resources throughout Europe.

Some of the insights provided by the platform include: the number of catalogues and datasets, their development over time, the percentage of machine processable data, the percentage of coverage, information on licensing of the data, metadata provision and which organisations and countries publish the data. This helps to build a rich picture of how open data is developing.  As increased amounts of open data continue to be released by both the public and private sectors, the demand for – and benefits of – the ODM tool are becoming more widely recognised.

The ODM platform will cater to the needs of various individual and business users. For example, the platform helps the following users answer the following exemplar questions:
- Open data owners/publishers: What is the state of the art in open data publishing practices, eg what data formats and licences are being used? Which data is published by equivalent organisations in my policy field?...