Open Data Maturity in Europe 2021

The Open Data Maturity Report in Europe is produced annually by the European Data Portal since 2015. This report assesses the level of maturity in open data of the EU Member States, together with the countries belonging to the EFTA (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), helping them to identify possible areas for improvement and facilitating their comparison with other countries.

In the 2021 edition, Spain holds third place in the global ranking, placing it in the group of Trend-Setters.

Of the four dimensions analysed, Spain stands out especially in the "Impact" dimension, where it achieves the highest score.

The ‘Political Impact’ indicator of this dimension highlights the Aporta Initiative, which conducts an annual national survey asking public bodies, from national, regional, and local institutions about the monitoring of their data usage. The results of the survey serve to confirm the answers for data.europa.eu’s annual Open Data Maturity landscaping exercise.

The report also highlights the Spanish publication "Open data and artificial intelligence, tools for gender equality", explains the concept of gender equality with the current influence of new technologies in our society and policies. A team of female journalists coordinates a volume of interviews with ten women with in-depth experience.

The “Policy Indicator” highlights the hybrid data governance model of the Spanish Government. The coordination of different data initiatives, at the ministerial and regional government, takes place through sectoral groups (top-down). In parallel, the government is proactive towards requests of local entities and events hosted by organisations closely linked to citizens, such as the association of infomediary companies (ASEDIE).

Regarding the ‘Transparency’ indicator of the ‘Portal’ dimension, Spain becomes an example as it offers an elaborate overview of user requests, responses, and statuses. Their national portal provides an overview of the incoming request, organised by category and status of the request. Users can monitor data requests by other users, and these requests are allocated to the public body responsible for publishing this dataset. That body will respond to the request and update its status, which is all visible to the user.