Euroalert iCal: Public holidays in the EU and in the European institutions for free on your mobile phone

In 2012, Euroalert published for the first time the information on the public holidays in the EU member states. This information is based on the national holidays calendar published annually in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) with data provided by the countries themselves.

This time Euroalert goes further by adding more data to this calendar, and by offering the possibility to get also for free the calendar with the public holidays in European institutions. This information is published in the OJEU in a format (PDF format) that is not useful either for businesses or citizens. For example, a SME that wants to expand its market to other European Union country will be interested to know in a fast and simple way, the public holidays in each EU country. On the other hand, European citizens that organize a vacation travel within the EU would also be interested in knowing in advance if their scheduled days coincide with a public holiday.

These are the reasons for the launching one year more an iCalendar format with the public holidays with an added bonus on this edition. The calendar containing the national holidays EU member states, it has been added the public holidays from the countries that also belong to the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), namely Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. You can add as an iCalendar format, a format that is available for example from Google Calendar or from many other calendar applications developed for SmartPhones, tablets or computers, the public holiday's calendar of the European institutions. This calendar contains the days that the EU institutions (Council, Commission, European Parliament, European Central Bank, etc..) are closed to the public in 2013 and in 2014.

In order to enjoy this calendar of public holidays in the EU, you only have to download it from Euroalert and, if you have any further question, you can contact us by email or via our Twitter profile and through the Euroalert Facebook page.

Euroalert participated at the Open Government Conference 'Committed to the future', and wishes you Merry Christmas

José Luis Marín, Euroalert's CEO, attended as speaker to the Conference on Open Government "Committed to the future", organized by the Club of Innovation in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Finance and Public Administration, and held on 18 December. During the event, we had the opportunity to show how important is for companies the 'Open Government', and especially, the opening of data by governments to carry out projects like Euroalert. Also, we presented our experience in this field and specifically focused in the use of open data in public procurement to generate products and services that provide an added value to SMEs and other organisations.

Euroalert, una compañía open data from euroalert

The Conference also was a networking event which brought together companies which re-use the information, associations and foundations working on transparency and open government, universities and governments. They all shared experiences and best practices, especially, among all types of public administrations (local and regional governments, including the Spanish Congress of Deputies) to implement in practice the 'Open Government'. Guzmán Garmendia, expert and responsible of the Open Government legislation from the Government of Navarra, stressed that "citizen participation can not be confused with social networks" and advised the governments "to believe on it first to build the Open Government from the bottom to up".

Rafa Rubio, professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, reminded to the governments that they may count on experts from the universities to launch Open Government projects. At the Conference, we could see examples of regional and local governments that have created portals to improve transparency. First we had the opportunity to listen to Marta Lopez Cuesta, who explained how the new Open Government portal of the Castilla y León Region was build and which consists of, and then, several representatives of the Basque Government presented Irekia, the Basque Government portal, which it is a model to follow for many of the other Spanish public administrations.

There was also time to listen to associations and foundations, including the Fundación CIVIO and Access Info Europe, who explained the importance of the 'Open Government' to improve transparency and citizen participation, and also the importance of open data for the "data journalism" for, as Mar Cabra explained at her presentation, “to convert the opened data into fundamental news to get better informed citizens".

We want to enjoy this occasion to wish all of you happy holidays and propose you to think about the importance of the 'Open Government' for citizens and companies during the Christmas period. Euroalert's team wishes you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Euroalert takes part at the UIMP Summer School as a company active in re-using public information

Over June 21st and 22nd we had the occasion to take part in one of the round tables of the Course on Open government and transparency in the knowledge society organized by Fundación Telefónica as part of the Summer School that the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo holds every year in Santander. This was with any doubt a unique venue to discuss about one of the issues we are really passionate about and to share all the challenges faced by Euroalert as an 'open data company' which uses public sector data in order to create value services for SMEs in all Europe.

After the opening conference which highlighted the decisive changes prompted by technology on the capacity citizens have nowadays to take active part in the activities carried out by public sector, the first panel of the course focused on a revision of the concepts of transparency and open government. Panellists reviewed the current situation of the proposal for a Spanish Law on Transparency, Access to Public Information and Good Governance, its virtues and weaknesses, and forecasted that this law should probably be approved by the beginning of year 2013. It was also underlined how transparency in public sector's activity is crucial to support the credibility and confidence required in order to boost economic growth, as well as the importance of citizens' involvement in generating such process of transparency.

The last session left the floor to the discussion about the potential wealth creation lying on the re-use of public sector data. This panel where Euroalert had the pleasure to take part, highlighted the role played by the analysis of data related to public sector activity as a tool to improve its own efficiency and policy assessment. As an open data company, Euroalert had the opportunity to present its own case as a company using data held by public administrations and bodies in order to create services such as alerts of government contracts published by public administrations in all the EU, lists of successful bidders in EU public procurement or market reports based of public procurement data which help companies of all types to access new business opportunities and make their businesses grow.

By closing the first day of the course, Euroalert acted as a link for a second day which was more focused on the technical aspects of Open Data. The need to open up as many sources of data as possible, the challenge to aggregate data in projects such as the one carried out by Euroalert to create the first pan-European public procurement platform, the importance of data contextualization and the difficulties lying in their management, storage and linkage, were some of the issues pointed out during this session which are all faced by Euroalert every day in order to bring you better and better services to help you in your activities and businesses.

The course ended up by setting a roadmap for open government and by highlighting the fact that, whilst the success of  this process for openness will strongly depend on the willingness of all those who are involved in it, it is with no doubt an opportunity for improvement and growth especially in difficult times.

You can download here the programme of the Course on open government and transparency in the knowledge society. We also share here the presentation we used in the Course (Spanish version only).

Aggregating public contracts data to generate information and value services for SMEs

See more Euroalert presentations

Euroalert releases and shares for free the calendar on public holidays in the whole EU in 2012

The European Union publishes every year in the EU Official Journal (OJEU) the national public holidays that take place in Member States with information provided by the countries themselves.

The calendar is published in a PDF format into the OJEU which is not as useful as it could for businesses or citizens. For example a SME that wants to expand its market to another EU country will surely need to know in advance, in a fast and simple way, the public holidays in each EU country. European citizens that organize a vacation travel within the EU would also be interested in knowing in advance if their scheduled days coincide with a public holiday. It is unlikely that in any of these cases, users would look for the information in the Official Journal.

For this reason in Euroalert, we have decided to transform this information into data that can be easily used or re-used, i.e. into an iCalendar that can be read from Google Calendar or from many other calendar applications developed for SmartPhones, tablets or computers. We'd like to thank you for your trust in our services and that's why we have released the EU Public Holiday Calendar with a license that allows you to use it completely for free.

In order to enjoy this calendar of public holidays in the EU, you only have to download it from Euroalert and, if you have any further question, you can contact us by email or via our Twitter profile and through the Euroalert Facebook page.

Euroalert experience at the Open Government event celebrated at the EOI

Last week, we had the opportunity to present our work as a company powered by open data, i.e. a company that uses data from public sector to create information services to companies across Europe.  As usual, we contribute with our experience to the first #RunOgov: "Open Government: Challenge and Opportunity" event held on 28 February at the "Escuela de Organización Industrial (EOI)" organized by the "Club de Innovación" and sponsored by Telefónica.

It was a pleasure to share a very interesting day with leading people in the Spanish open data community and with others who are bursting with strength and also, to help make the community more stronger -at least, a little more. Throughout the morning, we learned that, Neelie Kroes, Vice president of the European Commission answered in her blog to the campaign for a single Open Data licence in the European Union. Of course it was something very commented among the attendees, having regard that the campaign had its origin in Spain and it is a great example of Open Government.

At the event, it was also discussed very important issues as the announcement made by the Spanish government on its works in a Spanish Digital Agenda. Given Euroalert involvement in the European Digital Agenda, we look forward to it because it should mean a boost for our digital economy. Besides, it was also relevant the announcement made by the Director General of Analysis and Planning from Castilla y Leon (Spanish region), on the upcoming launch of an Open Government strategy for this region. Within this strategy, it will be launched an Open Data portal that we hope we can use it to extend the governments contracts data, that feed our international market intelligence services.

As usual, we provide you the presentation we made at the event.

Euroalert, una compañía open data

More presentations from Euroalert.

We also put at your disposal all the resources created by the “Club de la Innovation” about the event, such as the summary of the speakers presentations and the videos in the media library of the EOI (or in Youtube) since all sessions were streamed. There is also a photo gallery on Flickr and of course, you can check all what it what said at the event through Twitter at hashtag #runogov. We hope you find interesting all the material provided in order to learn more about Euroalert and the exciting world of Open Data.

Euroalert presents its experience at the Open Software World Conference 2012 and the W3C Day in Spain

Marc Garriga at the OSWC 2012

Last week, Euroalert experienced in Granada a few intense days during the celebration of the Open Software World Conference 2012 (OSWC2012), which it is organised every year by the Andalusian Regional Government in collaboration with the CENATIC and the Regional Government of Extremadura. It was intense because we had the opportunity to present our experience on two Open Data events, held during those days with very different approaches. In both events, we explain how we collect the data that we use as raw material for our business intelligence products based on a public procurement analysis.

On January 12, Euroalert participated in the W3C Day in Spain, to which we were invited by our friends from the W3C Spain Office – office which as you know is hosted by CTIC Foundation. Following a presentation on the OpenData initiative from the Andalusian Regional Government given by Cristina Puente, Carlos de la Fuente moderated a panel discussion which was provocatively entitled as follows "PSI re-use... is there anyone there?". On this panel, we could offer our views on issues such as the Spanish Royal Decree 1495/2011, the need for a transparency regulation or PSI re-use business characterization. Additionally to the consensus reached on the need to publish much more data, the main conclusion was the need to give some further steps to consolidate the Community Open Data in Spain. Euroalert certainly tries to contribute as much as possible to this aim. On the panel, we were accompanied by Emilio Garcia, from the Finance and Public Administration Ministry, Jorge Campanillas, from Iurismatica company, Alberto Ortiz from Open Data Euskadi and María Jesús Fernández, from Open Data Zaragoza. On the hashtag #diaw3c, there is much information on what it was said there.

On the other hand, on January 13 we contribute with our experience to the debate that was proposed in the "OpenData, an opportunity for business and competitiveness" panel, organised by the OSWC2012. The panel discussion was about the business opportunities that exist concerning the re-use of public sector information. It was moderated by Guzmán Garmendia, General Director of Open Government and New Technologies department from the Government of Navarre, and it was at the discussion Jose Antonio Recio from Fundecyt, Jesus María Alonso from AtoS and Marc Garriga, from the Barcelona City Council. The debate focused around the potential of public data to generate wealth and such as Guzmán Garmendia and Marc Garriga highlighted, the importance of the joint work of public administrations that release data and companies that intend to re-use them.

Throughout the conference we had the opportunity to talk with many members of the Spanish Open Data Community, and we were very proud to participate in the meeting organised by Open Data Sevilla. We were also kindly invited to bring our vision to this newborn group of proactive citizens in the development of open data initiatives, and we enjoyed the occasion to wish them all the luck in doing this work, which will benefit everyone.

In addition to the Euroalert photo album in the OSWC 2012, we want to share with all of you as usually, both presentation that we used in the Open Software World Conference:

Adding public procurement data to create value for SMEs

and the one we used on the W3C Day in Spain:

How does Euroalert use Spanish Open Data portals?

Euroalert presented as European Open Data initiative at the Digital Agenda Assembly

Last June 16th, we had the honour to make a presentation on Euroalert as leading Open Data company at European level in the Assembly of the Digital Agenda. As you know the European Digital Agenda 2020 is the EU strategy for the development of the digital economy in Europe, so the opportunity to make this presentation has been a great recognition of our work.
May and June, both months, have been very intense for Euroalert with regard to its participation in events in relation to Open Data. After participating in the Share-PSI seminar and the annual meeting of the Aporta project in Madrid, our participation to the Open Data workshop at the Digital Agenda Assembly has been a great culmination.
We are also excited to see how the Open Data community is keeping growing and it continues to arouse a great interest. The Open Data workshop was one of those who attracted more public and sparked more conversation on Twitter. The importance of the Open Data was also shown by the Open Data and Hack4Europe Challenge! competitions which awards were given at the Digital Agenda Assembly too by Neelie Kroes, Commission vice-president.
For those who could not attend or watch the event streamed, the Digital Agenda website put to your disposal all the presentations. We want to provide you here an extended version of the slides used to present Euroalert:Building a pan-European platform to aggregate public procurement data and deliver commercial services for SMEs powered by open data

We are very proud to have been part of this great event and we take this opportunity to thank you for your support. You are part of the Euroalert success in having the best information services with regard to the EU procurement services. From our side, we keep working hard for providing you the best service.

Euroalert will speak at the Digital Agenda Assembly

We are glad to share with you that Euroalert.net will be one of the speakers at the 1st Digital Agenda Assembly. We have been selected as a showcase of a European Open Data initiative to present our experience as a business that reuses EU daily contents and public contracts information. In particular, Euroalert will present at workshop nº 1: "Open data and re-use of public sector information".

Our director José Luis Marin will explain Euroalert experience in building the 10ders Information Services platform. With this platform, Euroalert intends to aggregate public procurement data from all over the EU and deliver added-value services primarily to SMEs.

We want to thank the European Commission for the opportunity that offers to Euroalert with this invitation. The workshop in which Euroalert participates, Open data and re-use of public sector information (hashtag #daa11psi), will take place on the 16th of June from 10h to 13h30 and will be streamed for those of you who will not be able to attend. If you want to have more information on the Euroalert participation, you can contact us via Twitter or by mail. See you in Brussels.

Euroalert will participate at the Aporta Project annual meeting on the Open Data initiatives in Spain: Challenges and Solutions

The meeting organized by the Aporta Project will take place on next Thursday 9 June in Madrid, just a year after of the last PSI Meeting 2010, which brought together European Open Data community with a great success. As occurred last year, Euroalert has been kindly invited to describe its business model which is based in the service that offers EU daily information adding value to the public sector information, such as calls for proposals to finance projects, the European legislation, daily European news and public tenders. Euroalert is glad to accept the invitation and it will attend to the event in order to support with its presence the advancement of Open Data culture in Spain.

The meeting will focus to the newest policies on PSI re-use, legal aspects of opening up public data, technical challenges on the way to open data, new business initiatives and new channels of participation and communication between authorities, entrepreneurs and citizens. Our director, Jose Luis Marin, will participate speaking on the Euroalert.net experience from 4 pm in the roundtable nº4, which focus on the "New business initiatives based on PSI reuse. What actions and measures can be promoted by governments to create the right conditions for innovation and new business based on PSI reuse? What economic value has the reuse of PSI?".

Of course, in the event's program there is detailed information on the topics to be discussed in the rest of the five interesting roundtables and the speakers who will take place in them. In addition, the event will be another opportunity to exchange views with the members of the Spanish Open Data community. Although registration is now closed, you can follow the event through Twitter, following the hashtag #SpainESdata and via streaming.

Euroalert wants to remind you that we will be from 8:30 am at the Auditorium of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade. C/ Capitan Haya, 41 - 28071 - Madrid. If you want to meet us in person, you can always contact us via Twitter or by mail. Moreover, it will be a great opportunity in order to prepare Euroalert's participation at the 1st Digital Agenda Assembly in Brussels next week. Keep posting to this blog for further information on this event.

Presenting Euroalert at the workshop Share PSI prior to the Digital Agenda Assembly

As previously announced, Euroalert participated on 9 of May with many members of the European Open Data community at the workshop “Removing Road Blocks to a Pan European Market for PSI Reuse”, organized by the initiative W3C and ETSI: SharePSI.

Our position paper, 'Euroalert.net: Building a pan-European public procurement platform to aggregate data and commercial services for SMEs Deliver powered by open data' was selected to be presented, along with other interesting examples of services feeded by public sector information, on the table "Use Cases I" moderated by Margot Dor from ETSI.

In our intervention, we explained Euroalert experience in building the 10ders Information Services platform, throughout reusing public information data. With this platform, we intend to add data procurement from all over the EU and of course, the added-value services that we provide primarily to SMEs based on tender data.

10ders IS is a simple idea but at the same time it supposes a challenge as EU public procurement represents about 18% of the aggregate GDP of all member countries.

Of course, we try to contribute to the workshop explaining the obstacles that we are finding at every step, but also the satisfaction that is providing services to organizations and companies from 15 different countries. Especially considering that we are still at the beginning of our way and therefore we have a long way to create services and information to process.

As usually, we put at your disposal the presentation used in the workshop and we recommend you visiting the excellent collection of resources on the sessions that ETSI platform has conducted, and the article that our director has posted on his blog with a summary of his impressions.

Building a pan-European platform to aggregate public procurement data and deliver commercial services for SMEs powered by open data

We will continue working hard in order to provide you the best information services and that Euroalert keeps be considered a leading company in the emerging market for information-based services in the public sector, a company powered by OpenData. Thank you all for helping us getting there.

Euroalert will present 10ders Information Services at the workshop "Share-PSI.eu" within the framework of the European Digital Agenda

The first workshop, “Share-PSI”, will be held in Brussels on the 10-11 of May and is organized in the framework of the “Big Idea” of the European Digital Agenda. This event brings together different actors who are related to the reuse of public sector information (PSI) and who will discuss and contribute with ideas on how to re-use "open data" of public administration. Among them, they are representatives of civil society, media, government organizations, representatives of academia and companies like Euroalert.

On behalf of Euroalert.net, our director will participate at the workshop in the round table on the presentation of case studies which demonstrates the potential of “Open Data”, i.e. the reuse of public information. As a case study, José Luis Marin, will presents the position paper: "Euroalert.net: Building a pan-European platform to aggregate public procurement data and deliver commercial services for SMEs powered by open data”.

As you already might know, Euroalert create value from these "open data" offering the best content daily information about the European Union, such as calls for projects, news and EU legislation. Although in this occasion, it is our project 10ders Information Services, which is aimed to build a pan-European platform that will aggregate the big data about public procurement information generated by hundreds of thousands of contracting authorities in the EU, which leads us to Brussels along with other relevant actors in the European Open Data Community. You can also take a look to some of our services based in 10ders IS in the Euroalert store online, as well as the alerts systems on Government contracts for SMEs or the 10ders Reports.

If you have time, we recommend you to attend to this event because there will be presented many interesting ideas. Euroalert will participate on May 10 and we will try to keep you informed of everything that happens through our Twitter. We would also like to remind you that you can take the opportunity to meet us and if you wish some more information about our services you can always send us an e-mail. Of course, you will find in our blog a complete summary of what happened in this event afterwards. Thus, keep reading Euroalert's blog.

Euroalert experience at the Open Data networking session at SICARM

SICARM 2011 event held in Murcia, closed last Friday with a session on Open Data: "The commercial reuse of public sector information: a new business opportunity for companies and funding opportunity for government against the crisis?”.

As we anticipated last week, Euroalert participated in this session, explaining its experience regarding reusing data administrations, both good and bad, and also showing some examples of the services Euroalert provide to companies and organizations throughout Europe.

We had a very interesting morning because we all learned many things about different aspects involved in the reuse of public sector information. Jose Manuel Alonso from CTIC Foundation, and professors Emilio Guichot Reina and Manuel Fernández Salmerón provided interesting information from the different angles of their respective areas of expertise. In order to know of what we are talking about, you can have a look to the Euroalert presentation paper, as well as CTIC Foundation presentation which explains the current state of play with regard to Open Data and the roundtable on the videos posted on the SICARM website.

Information Services Based on Reuse of Public Sector Information

Also, you can find more details regarding this event on the Jose L. Marín blog. We want to thank to everyone who came to the University of Murcia for its presence and to those who followed it through the Internet or Twitter.

Euroalert will participate in “SICARM 2011” event at Murcia Region

Euroalert.net keeps participating on events in which we can share experiences and learning to improve and to offer a better service. This week, we will travel to Murcia (Spain). There, it takes place the “XI Foro Anual Sociedad Información” «Information Society XI Annual Forum» and our director, José Luis Marín, will be one of the speakers in one of the panels in which he will describe how Euroalert uses opendata to offer more and better commercial intelligence services to companies from all over Europe adding an extra value to the information from the public sector.

«Information Society XI Annual Forum» has as its theme this year «The legal challenges of technological innovation in public administration». These workshops aim to "explore the legal implications of process innovation and openness that is demanded to the Public Administration by the society, so that satisfactorily meet the constitutional mandate to serve the general interest in accordance with the requirements and possibilities that technology offers to give effect to the principles of effectiveness, efficiency and participation because it has not yet been raised in an open debate about the enormous possibilities of modernization and, above all, innovation enabling tools available today".

There will also be in SICARM 2011, other great speakers, experts in the reuse of public sector information, as are many of the players in the Open Data community in Spain. These are some of the participants in this Forum, which we will have the honor to share the event:

• Fernando de Pablo, General Director for the Promotion of Electronic Administration of the Ministry of the Presidency. he called his speech: "Is it possible a new model of public administration based on innovation and technology?"
• Lorenzo Cotino Hueso, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia and Coordinator for ICT Network Law. His presentation will focus on "Legal and institutional problems of the Open Government".
• José Manuel Alonso, from the CTIC Foundation who will speak on "The reuse of the public information in Spain: current status and future prospects" and that will be in our same workshop.

In addition, there will be many other speakers that may be of interest for your activities so we recommend you to review the complete program of SICARM 2011.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic and you are in Murcia between 13 and 15 April, you can still register using this form. Moreover, registration is free. In concrete, presentations and workshops will be held in the Auditorium and Congress Centre of Murcia, 13 and 14 April and 15 April at the University of Murcia, Campus La Merced. Euroalert will participate on April 15 so if you want to meet us in person or more details on any of Euroalert's services do not hesitate to send us a mail or send us a DM via Twitter. See you there!

First (tender) announcement of the year... in Euroalert.net

2010 has been such a busy year for Euroalert.net that we didn't even realize to wish you all a Merry Christmas or to publish the traditional end-of-the-year post listing all the achievements and highlights of the last twelve months... Those of you who also follow Euroalert.net Twitter account of joined our Facebook page have already received our Christmas greetings, but for all who don't here the best wishes for year 2011 from all the Team who makes Euroalert.net, we hope it will be a year full of good projects and new opportunities for all of you.

The truth is that this year, in addition to Euroalert.net's usual activity which brings you every day all the information on EU News, funding opportunities and EU grants as well as government contracts and public procurement in the Union, we have started offering a daily update on the legislation published by the Official Journal of the European Union, and we have also inaugurated the new Euroalert.net on-line store.

But 2010 has been above all THE year for Open Data, a year which brought us the occasion to take part in all the events for open data community we managed to attend, even opening some of the data related to public procurement which are managed by Euroalert.net and releasing them in our project ShowMeTheTenders.net; a year in which we were also honoured to be one of the cases of PSI reuse to be mentioned by some of the most relevant Spanish media such as El País, Expansión or Cinco Días. This year Euroalert.net also contributed to Commission's public consultation on PSI Directive, as well as the consultation launched by the Spanish Ministry of Industry on the PSI-reuse Royal Decree. We are sure that all these common efforts will lead to a more favourable Open Data legislation quite soon.

This is not going to be a the detailed count of all 2010 achievements, not at all..., but just as an example of Euroalert.net activity over the past months, on 30 December - almost closing up the year, we launched the new tailored alerting service on public procurement 10ders Alerts - more details will follow in another post. This new service, together with some more in the pipeline, will complete over 2011 the most comprehensive tool kit of information services to help SMEs to access public procurement and government contracts.

In some countries there used to be some sort of traditional expectation about which would be the first TV commercial of the new year... as a “tender version” of such tradition, here comes the first announcement - tender announcement of course..., of year 2011: those interested in multilateral tendering, at your marks, first announcement of year 2011 is a EuropeAid forecast for a contract to provide support to the Kosovo Judicial/ Prosecutorial Council under funded an IPA instrument.

Happy 2011 to every one and good luck to all those bidding this year!!!

Euroalert.net at the announcement of the opening of UK Government public spending database

As many of you may already know, on 19 November the British Government announced the publication of the database with detailed data of all public spending over £25,000 for the last six months. Well, we are once more really proud to say that Euroalert.net had the honour to assist to this event where the UK Government made such a relevant step towards transparency and open data, which also counted with the presence of some real VIP as renowned as Sir Tim Berners-Lee...

Euroalert.net was kindly invited by the Open Knowledge Foundation to take part in this event organized within the framework of the Open Government Data Camp 2010, and had the opportunity to be part of this very special moment when sentences such as “we want to be the most open government of the world” were pronounced. We really feel very proud for it.

Besides, the nature of the data which have been released has also quite an important meaning for us, as they are very relevant data for Euroalert.net products and services in public procurement information, such as 10ders product reports on public procurement. Knowing exactly the data of companies which have received payments from British public departments and Government will allow Euroalert.net to offer more and better commercial intelligence services regarding public procurement market in the United Kingdom.


One of the most special moments was, without any doubt, when the case of a company which requested the opening of certain data regarding public procurement was mentioned to the audience; a case which, it seems, triggered Government's formal commitment to put this as a priority to become true by the beginning of year 2011. Without knowing so, Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude, was probably talking about Euroalert.net..., as we were the ones who took the case for mediation before the OPSI. This case was something we had the opportunity to talk about in detail at the PSI Meeting 2010 as was later referred at the blog Count Culture which gave some more elements about. You can have a look at some more details and materials we have released related to this case in our project ShowMeTheTenders. We are really glad to have contributed in some way to open these data and make them accessible in the near future.

We leave here for you this photo album of an event where we made one more step towards Euroalert.net objective to build up a pan-European platform for information services on public procurement which will help us to offer you more useful services for SMEs all around Europe.



If you want to have a more personal vision of how was the OGDCamp, you can also read the post published by our CEO in his personal blog, and also have a look at the Twitter hashtags #ogdCamp and #openUK.

Euroalert.net mentioned by Expansión economic daily in an article about the industry created by open data

And the story goes on: In July it was the Spanish newspaper El País that mentioned Euroalert.net in an article about Open Data, and a couple of months later, in September, the economic daily newspaper Cinco Días cited Euroalert.net experience it its analysis about economic opportunities generated by the reuse of public sector information. Now, economic daily Expansión has also published on 18 October its contribution to clarify the real value of the business sector created by open data from public sector. Once again, Euroalert.net is highlighted as one of the pioneering companies in Spain when it comes to take advantage of these opportunities and create value added services for companies all around Europe.

The article entitled "Access to public data, a labyrinth close to solution" (access to PDF full Spanish version) from Mercedes Serraller, gathers the opinions from different parties involved in the Open Data movement in Spain, such as Rafael Rubio, Professor of Constitutional Law at the UCM (Madrid), Nagore de los Rios, director of the Basque Government portal Irekia, or Alvaro Furilo from Pro Bono Público Association.

As always, Euroalert.net is again really proud to be considered as a reference service in the industry and to be contributing as far as we can to spread the culture of reuse. Creating in Spain a culture for open data which will lead to the release of more sources of data and allow companies to create value and build new services, will with no doubt revitalise our economy by creating new opportunities for innovation. Euroalert.net will of course be there.

For Euroalert.net it is being really exciting to be part of this process which is also allowing our community to benefit from the best possible products and services. For that reason, Euroalert.net will keep on making contributions to all possible initiatives, either with our presence (as we did at the Governamental Linked Open Data session at the ICT 2010), by sharing our experiences (as it was the case at FICOD 09 or the PSI Meeting 2010), or by providing resources in initiatives such as ShowMeTheTenders or the release of our own data on public authorities.

We have an exciting challenge ahead and these mentions in so relevant media such as El País, Cinco Días or Expansión, are a good encouragement for Euroalert.net objective to gather business opportunities representing around 17% of EU's GDP in one single pan-European platform on public procurement to provide information services for companies all around the world.

Spanish newspaper Cinco Días reviews economic opportunities of information reuse and turns its eyes towards Euroalert.net

Reached this point of year 2010, there is one thing which is quite clear by now: open data movement is a top value and it is here to stay. Throughout the whole year a lot of announcements have been made by administrations, businesses and citizen movements, which have all added efforts in order to make public sector information reuse to gain momentum. Today, it has been the case for the Spanish economic daily Cinco Días, which has published an article in its SME supplement making an overview of business opportunities brought by public open data in machine readable formats suitable for automatic processing (here you have a pdf version of the article – sorry, it is only available in Spanish).

In July, it was the newspaper El País who mentioned Euroalert.net as an example in its article about public open data, and now it is Cinco Días' turn to include Euroalert.net among the reference services regarding the creation of value from public sector information. We are really proud to be mentioned with companies such as LegalSolo or projects of great benefit to Catalan citizens as Rodalia.info, a group of excellent entrepreneurs with whom we share values and concerns. It was a real pleasure having the opportunity to meet them in person at the PSI Meeting 2010 organized by Project Aporta and ePSIplatform.

It is quite good news to know that not only Obama, Gordon Brown or David Cameron listened to the call from the web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee to flood the web with public data in order to create new products and services. Although Spain has still a long way to walk to reach the point of pioneer countries, the fact that financial newspapers show interest for the potential of the sector as a source of business opportunities, will certainly help to make improvements and maybe to create new political bets. For the moment we stick to two good examples of public initiatives mentioned in the article which have been put forward by the Government of the Basque Country (Open Data Euskadi) and the Government from the Principality of Asturias, as main Spanish references regarding public open data.

Once again, we really must thank you, all members of Euroalert.net community, for your daily support which is helping us to grow and gain relevance in on-line information about the European Union for companies and institutions. But above all, this recognition gives us more support to keep on working with even more determination in order for Euroalert.net to create the first pan-European platform for information services in international public procurement.

Euroalert.net will be at the Governamental Linked Open Data networking session at the ICT 2010

During the last week of September Euroalert.net will be at the "ICT2010: Digitally Driven" event, just the week before our next visit to Brussels for the Open Days 2010. Further to covering for all of you the most important European event for ICT research and innovation, Euroalert.net will be very specially present at the Networking session on Governmental Linked Data taking place on 28 September.

This will be the occasion for us to meet some of the members of the Open Data community we only know “digitally” for the moment, through the intense communication and collaboration we have been sharing over the past months. Besides “devirtualising” some people like Jonathan Gray from the OKFN, we will also meet some old friends like Jose Manual Alonso from Fundación CTIC.

As all of you know well, Euroalert.net has been trying to do its bit in the development of open data and the reuse of public sector information by participating in some major events related to it such as FICOD 2009 or by taking part in the PSI Meeting 2010. Euroalert.net keeps close contact with the most relevant actors within the Open Data community in Europe and is devoting an important share of time and resources to encourage the release of data in our area of activity and expertise: public procurement. As a contribution to the community, we document and release these experiences through the project Showmethetenders.net, open to collaboration from any stakeholder and interested party.

We are sure that the networking session at the ICT 2010 will be a quite valuable opportunity to learn from other experiences which are being developed in almost every corner in Europe. It will also be the occasion to meet people whose vision will help us to develop services more and more useful for the whole Euroalert.net comunity.

As for the 10,000 squere meters of exhibition and the three days of conferences, keep an eye on Euroalert.net Twitter account and to our web, we will bring you the most interesting things we see during the three days of the ICT 2010. For those of you who can't make it to be in Brussels, the hash-tag for the event will be #ict2010eu. And don't forget you can still register for the event if you are able to come to Brussels. Will be great to meet you there!

"Different and curious" Public Contracts of Euroalert.net that are Mentioned on the Article of El País

As all of those who follow us are already aware of, Euroalert.net tries to be very active in the public sector information reuse community in Europe. This is something that has been shown several times on the forums Euroalert.net has attended to talk about its experience in creating value from European public contract information.

For this reason, now, when one of Spain's national newspapers of biggest daily circulation like El País, echoes this phenomenon of Public Administration releasing public data and mentions Euroalert.net among the private initiatives dedicated to give it added value, we really feel very proud because of the recognition. Naiara Galarraga's article talks about the situation of the movement that pursues open data as part of the Open Government initiatives and cites opinions of relevant Spanish people like Alberto Ortiz de Zárate form Basque Government, Jose Manuel Alonso from CTIC Foundation, Aitor García from Asociación Pro Bono Público or Sebastián Muriel General Manager at Red.es, among many others. We had the opportunity to share with them the PSI Meeting 2010 that got European Open Data Community together in Madrid, called by Proyecto Aporta and ePSIPlatform.

So, with the same spirit of free information and data access, and due to the wave of emails received asking us to told them which were the calls for tenders mentioned by the article of El País, here you have a "public contracts' appetizer", some funny and others curious:

• Curious, for instance, is the call for tenders for the supply of berets to the French Army (up to now we don't know who has wined it and which is the total amount, so you will have to pay attention to Euroalert.net ;-)...)
• What is the purpose of the Danish Maersk Oil company with the publication of a public tender about Christmas tree supply is something we really don't know... The question is that not any thing is a Christmas tree..., it seems that the cpv was not right this time, or maybe is that the well-heads are to "decorate" the tree...?
• The UK Government Department for International Development awarded four contracts of supply of condoms to support a cooperation and prevention HIV contagion Program.
• And the jewel of the crown, the contract with the highest value: the award of a contract with a value of 3,359,928,000 GBP by Highways Agency, for hiring of construction works of highways and roads in the UK.

As you all know, more interesting contracts, more business and more opportunities in public tenders market in the European Union, always on the Call for tenders section on Euroalert.net.

Euroalert participates in PSI Meeting 2010 with the European open data community

As those of you who follow our Twitter channel already know, and as we announced on this blog a while ago, on June 9th we participated in the PSI Meeting 2010. We were gently invited by the organizers, the Aporta project and ePSIPlatform of the European Commission. It was a very interesting event in which we could increase our knowledge and share our experience with reuse of public sector information.

The day was mostly a discussion meeting on PSI reuse from their different perspectives: on its future, its challenges and changes that society and governments should take for their proper development. Our director, Jose Luis Marín, participated as a speaker at the second of the four round tables, sharing Euroalert's experience together with other companies that have also managed to create business models by adding value to data released by the public sector.

We also took this opportunity to announce the launch of our project showmethetenders.net where we collect the successes and failures of Euroalert in several European Union countries while trying to unlock public data on EU tenders. As you know, we are making a considerable effort, to which we invite you to join us, to try to collect this information, primarily available in Official Journals and procurement platforms in reusable formats. By the moment, we have had considerable successes in countries like Ireland and Belgium, where we have had the responsiveness of those responsible: we really appreciate their support and commitment to the community for the reuse of public sector information.

But we have also had very much-talked-about failures like the one that Chris Taggart has nicely described, due to the situation that occurs in the UK about the outsourcing of the management of public data. In these cases, the release of data which are public but managed by private companies with their own economic interests gets complicated, and only strong political support can provide a solution to this issue.

We've also included some very shocking cases as the Spanish Government Procurement Platform or the European Commission itself through the EuropeAid Cooperation Office, which has denied the release of the datasets contracts for development aid!!! Their reasons for this refusal, furthermore, are not strong at all, and of course especially in the latter case it is not consistent at all that the European Commission itself does not bet on leading by being an example in the implementation of the Directive. Especially considering that it is not feasible for small businesses or start-ups to embark on legal proceedings to try to defend a more open position and in line with the Directive, which it seems that can only be obtained when there is a political commitment.

Over 19 addresses of relevant experts coming from public governments (including the European Commission) and platforms, companies that reuse information and trade associations representing their interests and civil society organizations, the main issues, perspectives and initiatives in the world of Open Data were reaped.

First names of the world of open data, such as Javier Hernández Ros, Head of Unit of Access to Information of the European Commission, Chris Taggart, a member of the working group of the Open Knowledge Foundation dedicated to the opening of public sector information in the United Kingdom, Alberto Ortiz de Zárate, director of the service of Citizen's Attention of the Basque Government, from Open Data Euskadi, or Daniel Dietrich, president of the German nonprofit organization Open Data Network, participated in the four round tables.

Thanks to all who attended, those who see the event by the streaming, those who interacted and followed through Twitter contributions... Thank you once again because we can demonstrate that by sharing information and knowledge we all get further.