The reuse of public sector information, in the spotlight in FICOD 2009

Despite starting late, Spain is now on the correct path to Open Government. And it is not the only one: all European countries still have a long way to go before reaching a real open government. That was the conclusion we could draw from the roundtable ""O-gov: creating value through the reuse of public sector information", which was held last November 19 in the International Forum of Digital Contents, FICOD 2009, and where, as we told you, Euroalert.net was one of the guests.

Juan Pelegrin, Chris Corbin, Carlos de la Fuente, Jaime Gómez Obregón, and Angel Maldonado Arce Valentín debated along with José Luis Marín, our director, and they extracted a number of interesting conclusions about the current outlook for open government in Europe and in Spain in particular.

Chris Corbin, financial analyst PSI Platform, stressed that Europe has still a long way to reach real open government. Reuse of content is pre-Internet use, but today, advances in telecommunications make redistribution of public sector information much easier than it used to be.

Corbin underlined that one of the things that most improves the quality of information is the actual use: the more people reuses it, the more likely is that useful and interesting to other people or institutions cases generate. In fact, according to British analyst, it is often the same public who just picking up the information that initially came out of it, so a continuous cycle of information with added value increasing appears.

Juan Pelegrin offered an European perspective of the phenomenon, saying that Spain is becoming an example for other countries in relation to the reuse of content from the public sector, thanks to initiatives such as the Aporta project. Anyway, despite the rapid progress that Europe has seen recently, the gap with the United States regarding Open Government is still important.

Reuse, according Pelegrin, is a tool for economic growth. The representative of the Unit of Access to Information of Directorate General Information Society, stated that the European Commission will ensure that the Directive on the reuse of public sector information is being properly implemented, because although it has already been transposed in all Member States, the laws are not correct in many cases.

The Commission takes it seriously, as demonstrated by the public consultation on reuse. It has launched infringement proceedings against Poland, Sweden and Italy, and it will enhance the study of indicators for better understanding of the evolution of their implementation and investigating the exclusivity agreements that limit citizens its right to access the information, which are illegal.

As for Euroalert.net, Jose Luis Marín described the way we approach the public information of the European Union to end users in several European countries, explaining how our technology brings added value to the contents generated by the Community institutions as well as information about tenders and public procurement contracts and project funding opportunities.

As regards to the statement of our director, Corbin wanted to emphasize that public data that we use are public, and therefore the information issuers entities should not try to control the way that those who reuse its information harness it, and this is a purely cultural fact.

Thanks to all who followed the round table in the room or through FICOD TV (where you can still see the video if you did not had the chance to do it), or live-commented on Twitter our activity! It was a great pride to represent all the community that makes possible Euroalert.net in such an important forum.

Commercial opportunities with european Multilateral Organizations in Euroalert.net

We are really proud to announce you the recent launch of a new section which will provide you with information about commercial opportunities available in European multilateral organizations, because this actually means that Euroalert.net keeps on growing and adding new contents and information.

Thanks to the strength of this Community you are all part of, and to the confidence you keep on putting on us despite these times of crisis, we can offer you an even better Euroalert.net, with higher quality, more contents and new sections with daily information.

Over the last years multilateral organizations have become a very important target for companies seeking commercial opportunities within their strategy to internationalize their products and services. Winning a contract with one of those organizations is a great opportunity to enter a market or to expand business activity in one country or region. Moreover, trade promotion institutions all over the world have put in place different initiatives within their programmes for internationalization in order to facilitate access to these companies to international tendering procedures.

Euroalert.net couldn't be alien to the growing interest for this market, especially having the opportunity to take advantage of the expertise that our colleagues from the Gateway, S.C.S. Consultancy Division can bring to us. This experience is backed by the qualification granted to provide consultancy services to companies within the ILI Programme of the Spanish National Council of Chambers of Commerce (whose official award announcement in the OJEU was, of course, published by Euroalert.net).

Although tender forecasts, as well as their full tender announcements, awards, corrigenda, etc., were already published in Euroalert.net public procurement and commercial opportunities section, with this new structure we will provide companies with a quick access to the information related to tender procedures in different multilateral organizations, offering a new useful tool to succeed in this quite competitive market.

To give place to this new section, Euroalert.net website heading has been fully reorganised and a new section called EU Funding now replaces the traditional EU Programmes and Calls for Proposals. All the contents related to funding opportunities for projects available under the different European Union programmes and initiatives have been organized within this new tab.

As a complement to introduce the Multilateral Organizations monitored by Euroalert.net, we have also published a page with general information related to International Tendering in European Multilateral Organizations, which will be broaden as this section grows. In addition to general information about how this market works, there is also an overview about the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as well as the European Commission Co-operation Office – EuropeAid, which are a complement to the specific pages where commercial opportunities with these organizations are published:

• Tender procedures and contracts issued by EuropeAid
• Tender procedures and contracts issued by the European Investment Bank
• Tender procedures and contracts issued by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
  

Euroalert.net directly from Brussels

We have one more in our team! We would like to present to you Macarena Rodríguez who has involved herself in the editing team of Euroalert.net from Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union's principle institutions. From there she will send us hot information on everything that is coming out of the European Union first hand through her articles.

As you already know, we work continually to improve the services the Euroalert.net provides and now we are looking at the section Current news from the European Union.

From now, thanks to the addition of Macarena to the team, we will be able to offer a greater number of news articles about the European Union everyday. Her first contribution was an article on the Official Launch of the Single Euro Payments Area which we hope will be the first of a long series of articles from Brussels.

Macarena is qualified as Bachelor of Arts Degree in Journalism & Media and also in BA in Humanities from the University of Salamanca. She did a MA degree in European Journalism at the Haute École Galilée (IHECS) in Brussels. On a professional level Macarena has accumulated a huge amount of experience throughout her youthful career and has been, amongst other things, delegate of press in the both community institutions the European Parliament and the European Commission. Furthermore is the author of the EU blog La Oreja de Europa.

Besides from tell you all a bit about her we would like to take the opportunity to welcome Macarena to the Euroalert.net team.