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 presents its Social Media Newsroom

In order to make the cooperation with press, media and others interested parties easier, Euroalert has created a Social Media Newsroom with specific material published. In this section of our website, we provide you a Press Kit for Media, different ways to contact us and, among other interesting things, the social media that we use to communicate our services of information about the European Union and our competitive intelligence products on public tenders. In addition to this, we also provide you a sample of our  past participation in different media.

A few months ago, Euroalert presented its extension into the Google+ circles. This network is one of the ways to contact us to know more aboutour products and to potential collaborations. Other social networks that Eurolert commonly uses, are also included in our Social Media Newsroom. 

Euroalert is open to all kinds of collaborations with the media and other stakeholders. For example, did you know that Euroalert provides EU breaking news through a widget? We offer this personalized service for only €30 a month. For this service and many others that may be of your interest, you can phone us +32 2 318 03 01 or use our Contact page. We hope our Social Media Newsroom is useful for you and we thank you in advance to help us to improve it.

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.

Euroalert.net lends an Ear to Europe!

Over the past nearly 4 years, Euroalert.net Official Blog has been one of the channels where we have been telling you all the news and developments related to our business and services, which go beyond the daily track of EU news and activities. It has also been the way for you to give us your feedback about these changes, which has been indeed of quite a help for us. It is easy to follow Euroalert.net's evolution over this time in its Blog, as it has been the channel to announce new features in our services – widgets, public procurement and government contracts alerting services, on-line store, etc.; the launch of new sections with more contents in our web – such as EU Law, or commercial opportunities and public procurement in multilateral organizations, etc.; Euroalert.net's mentions in the press, or Euroalert.net's participation in open data events where we have been contributing with our experiences in re-using public sector information.

However, no announcement has made us more excited as the one we are bringing you today: Macarena Rodríguez, from La Oreja de Europa, will join us as new Euroalert.net Editor in Chief from 1 April!

As Macarena needs no introduction among all followers of European Union matters, let us just tell you that she is coming with a bag full of new projects and new energy to bring you every day all the most relevant contents about the day-to-day activity of the European Union and its institutions.

We are sure that her contribution to Euroalert.net's Team will make it an even more useful site for all of you, and will also allow us to move faster in our goal to build the first pan-European platform to aggregate public procurement and tenders from the 27 Member States in the European Union.

La Oreja de Europa ("Europe's Ear") will of course keep on listening to Europe, and will not disappear or be part of Euroalert.net corporation. It will remain a personal project run by Macarena Rodríguez, who will keep on devoting as much effort as before to create a space for reflection and opinion on EU issues. Euroalert.net, will of course be very happy it remains so.

Welcome to Euroalert.net Team, Macarena!

Euroalert.net has a brand new look!

Throughout the last weekend we have been publishing the new versions of the different websites which make Euroalert.net. The main change you will perceive is the new look of all sections of Euroalert.net, whose main objective is to improve the overall clarity in the presentation of these contents.

We really hope you will like these changes but, above all, what we really hope to have achieved is our goal to improve the presentation and allow you to better read the contents on the most relevant news about the European Union that we publish every day. As always, your feedback is very much appreciated, so send us all your comments and opinions through Euroalert.net twitter channel!

A few weeks ago we already announced the launch of a new Public procurement alerting service, a service that you can also try and test for your business thanks to the 7-day free trial you can get by registering in Euroalert.net website. This alerting system is one of the services that will make up the wide range of products and services Euroalert.net will be launching during 2011 as part or its strategy to become the first pan-European platform to aggregate all public tenders and public procurement contracts in the European Union.

Following this same trend to create business services based on public sector information, Euroalert.net has also launched over the last months the service to provide customized newsletters on European information, as well as the new section on European Union legislation, where for the moment you will find the legal provisions published in the L Series of the OJEU, but that will be expanded very soon.

In the coming weeks you will be noticing more changes as more new features will be added in order to improve the content we offer you every day as well as the services we provide based on this information. But, before anything else, we will be making the announcement you are all waiting for, the name of the person who will be the new Euroalert.net Chief Editor from 1 April...

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.

The EU policies and EU funding, described in Euroalert

As all those who follow us already know, Euroalert.net is a primary source for keeping abreast of developments in EU funding regarding to both calls for proposals and European programmes, as we publish daily all information concerning the policies adopted by the EU in our EU Funding section.

To finance these policies, the Union relies on EU Programmes and Initiatives that are later developed in the form of calls for proposals. Euroalert has been maintaining and publishing for more than ten years a comprehensive database in which you can find over 400 European Programmes and Initiatives published since 1972 and over 1,500 calls for proposals. In addition, we are continually updating the quality of such contents.

Well, besides putting these tools for searching funding opportunities at your disposal, in Euroalert we want to improve our section of EU funding and so we have published new pages on which we explain in detail the ins and outs of EU funding: where it comes from, how it is managed, to which areas it is addressed...

• On the one hand EU funding sources explains where the EU obtains the necessary funding to develop its policies, what it does spends these funds on, and how it develops its budget.
• In addition, we dedicate a space to programmes and initiatives that fund the policies of the European Union, and to explain it, you can find four groups of programmes: instruments of cohesion and regional development, instruments of common agricultural and fisheries policy instruments, cross-border cooperation programmes, transnational and interregional and other instruments or policies.
• Finally, the section Calls for proposals describes how these funding opportunities generated for the development and implementation of the various community policies are disseminated.
  
  

Moreover, if you want to know which Euroalert category covers a singular policy of the EU, or the policies covered by each category, you can consult the table that we have developed and which is also available along with a description of EU policies, in the same Euroalert EU Funding section.

Thus, Euroalert keeps on moving its mission of becoming an authority on electronic information about the EU, joining in a single source all the relevant information on EU funding. Soon, we will announce a major step in this line that we are preparing for the whole Euroalert community.

2009: a great year for Euroalert.net community

An important year for Euroalert.net reaches its end. In 2009, the Euroalert community has established itself throughout Europe and this year has also been full of achievements that we have wanted to share with you from this blog, because our success is also yours.

We began the year announcing you that Euroalert.net had become a case study in the book Web 2.0: The Business Model. . This book on business models in Web 2.0 by U.S. publisher Springer devoted the chapter "Doing business by selling free services" to Euroalert, to describe the innovative features of our business model that allow us to offer you daily and free of charge the best information contents about the European Union.

This has not been the only time that Euroalert.net has served as an example or case study: in autumn and we gave you the news that, invited by the spanish Ministry of Industry, we were participating in a round table on Open Government that took place in FICOD 09 , the International Forum of Digital Contents. "O-gov: creating value through the reuse of public sector information" was the title of the round table in which José Luis Marín talked about how in Euroalert.net we approach public information generated by the community institutions to the user in several countries in Europe , processing it and redistributing it through our innovative technology.

In June, we changed the appearance of Euroalert.net to accommodate it to a new service: the section on trade opportunities with European Multilateral Organizations, with which Euroalert.net continued growing in information contents. Since then, Euroalert.net also offers tenders and contracts published by EuropeAid , publishes business opportunities and contracts of the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the EBRD Tenders and Contracts.

In summer, we boosted our corporate social responsibility while announcing that we became sponsors of the football team of the Colegio La Salle de Valladolid, who wears sweaters with the logo of Euroalert.net. But this announcement came shortly before a trip that was very important for us: the one we did in October to attend the Open Days 2009 in Brussels, where we had the opportunity to cover numerous events and met a good number of community members of Euroalert.


The fact is that this year we have travelled a lot. We wanted Euroalert.net services to be known throughout Europe, and that is why we did not only go to Brussels to attend to the biggest event in European cities and regions, but we've been almost every month in the Belgian capital for various reasons, including our assistance to the Information Day Objective 1.2 ICT in FP7 of the European Union, with the aim of promoting the participation of Euroalert.net in some of the consortia that were being formed for Call 5 of the Seventh Framework Program.

The portuguese capital has been another of our stops. Shortly before leaving for the Open Days, we told you that we were going to Lisbon as well as to promote the services of Euroalert.net and visiting multiple subscribers, as part of the business delegation of Castile and Leon who accompanied Juan Vicente Herrera on his trip to our neighboring country and participated in business meetings organized by ADE International EXCAL, the Junta de Castilla y León agency for external promotion.

In fact, the result of this trip was another achievement of Euroalert.net this year: the agreement for the distribution of Euroalert.net services in Portugal through Infosistema Company.

On the other hand, if last year and created our Facebook page, this year we took the leap to Twitter, where you can follow updates from all contents of Euroalert, although so far only for the international version.

Our successes are your successes. Thanks for all you've got with us this year, and we sincerely hope that next year you will continue giving us many more successes. We have many surprises and new servives ready to make Euroalert even more useful for you all in 2010.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

Euroalert.net, ready for the panel on open government in FICOD 2009

The International Forum of Digital Contents, FICOD 2009, the biggest event for the digital content industry, has already started at the Palacio de Congresos Juan Carlos I in Madrid. Euroalert.net participation in the roundtable on reuse of public sector information is closer!



"O-gov: creating value through the reuse of public sector information" is the title of the panel in which Euroalert.net will participate as a speaker, and it will analyze the importance of reuse public sector information, an activity that moves in Europe between 26 and 47 billion euros.

José Luis Marín, director of Euroalert.net, will participate in this round table along with several experts in the field of reuse from both public and private sector. The full list of speakers is already available, and it is composed by:

• Juan Pelegrin - Unit of Access to Information of Directorate General Information Society, European Commission
• Carlos de la Fuente - Area Director of Technology CTIC Foundation and representative on the W3C advisory Comitee
• D. Chris Corbin - - Financial Analyst PSI Platform
• Angel Maldonado Elvira - Founder Legalsolo.com
• Carlos Alonso - President of ASEDIE
• Jaime Gómez Obregón - Responsible for El Precio de la Gasolina

David Cierco Jimenez de Parga, Director General for Development of Information Society of the spanish Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism Affairs, will chair the debate on the economic importance of Public Sector Information, where Euroalert.net will explain how it adds value to information about business opportunities and financing projects to create innovative services to all of you.

We wait for you on Thursday November 19 at 15:30 pm in Room 2. You are still in time to get registered in the web of FICOD for free!

Euroalert.net as a case study

We want all of you to be part of a small but significant achievement for Euroalert.net, which is also due to its community, in other words, to all of you.

A few months ago, the particular and innovative features held by Euroalert.net, made us being invited to describe them and contribute a chapter for a book about Web 2.0 business models. The book has now been published by US publisher Springer under the title Web 2.0: The Business Model, which has been made up with different contributions from prestigious researchers from universities and companies worldwide.

Euroalert.net is the case study for chapter 6 entitled "Doing business by selling free services", where some of the business models which have emerged in the Internet's Web 2.0 era are characterized. Euroalert.net mixes their characteristics in order to offer you every day free and updated contents about the European Union, namely, Calls for proposals to fund projects, EU Programmes and initiatives, EU News and Public Procurement opportunities. If you can read in Spanish you will also find out a little bit more about the book in the blog Open Economy.

This a shared success from all Euroalert.net community, so... many thanks to all of you for making it possible!!!

Euroalert participates in the GOMC with UEMC

Thanks to Miguel de Cervantes European University (UEMC), in Euroalert.net we have the opportunity to participate in the GOMC, in other words, the Google Online Marketing Challenge. This challenge or competition which has been launched by Google to all universities around the world, will require teams to use 200 dollars to create and market his own publicity campaign with Google AdWords (designed for real business).

The marketing competition comprises of the development and running, by the teams of students from the University together with heads of small businesses, of an online marketing campaign for three weeks between February 10th and May 24th 2008.

If you had not have guessed, the role of Euroalert.net in GOMC would be that of the real business through which a group of students from UEMC would realise their ideas. To this opportunity, that the university has been so kind to offer us, we have responded with our utmost enthusiasm and aim provide all the resources that we possibly can to our team so that they can really sink their teeth into the challenge.

The results of the challenge will be published by way of a series of recommendations which will be useful in future development of online marketing strategies on Euroalert.net. Furthermore, the real task that our team are certain to complete, will be to help us spread our services to many more people and expand the Euroalert.net community. We also hope to be able to give real work experience to the students and aspire that the time will be useful for their own academic trainning.

We warmly welcome María, Helena, Rita, José y Borja, our team from UEMC, so that together we get the best possible result and why not, perhaps they can come with us for a week to the Googleplex in Mountain View (California). In any case, the prize that is guaranteed is the knowledge we will gain about online marketing and of course the taking part.

About the euroalert.net blog

In the past few days the new international version of Euroalert.net was born and, as with the launch of any new services, there has been little time to stop and think and even less to write. Now that all its vital signs are stable, although being a basic version, we have been able to start the euroalert blog in English.

As you can imagine, this is the classic opening post for a blog. A declaration of our intentions which we probably won´t complete, despite trying, and a great speech describing the trials and tribulations that have brought us to this point (the reality of this is that the first paragraph has done nearly all of that for us without realising!). However, don´t worry everything to come will be much more interesting.

For now, we will start with a simple task. The blog articles will mainly focus on improvements to services and new characteristics which we are including in euroalert to avoid having to find them on the off chance. We will describe new options so that you understand their potential uses and also that any suggestions you wish to make, may help us improve them further. We thank you for all your feedback. Send us your criticisms as well. To start off, we ask you to subscribe to the euroalert.net newsletter and to our blog.

Our aim is that euroalert.net is the most useful and practical tool for your work with programmes and initiatives from the European Union. Although you may not be traveling to Brussels every week, this will be a good point of contact for being up to date with Calls for proposals and business opportunities (calls for tenders) which are announced at an European level.

For the future we are feeling rather ambitious and hope that this blog becomes somewhat of a "ecosystem" through which you can exchange ideas and opinions about subjects such as research and development, education, regional development, citizen, cooperation, etc. Who knows, perhaps forge new relationships that will give place to winning future projects.

However, all this will take place at little further in the future. It has been your confidence and loyalty to euroalert.net, these past ten years, that has made all this possible. Welcome to all newcomers and to all others, we hope that you stay with us.