Category Archives: News

Some open data projects in Europe

May 25, 2022News, report, resourcesKarl Donert

A number of interesting European open data projects are being developed.

An Atlas of European Values

Based on the work being undertaken by the EVALUE Erasmus Plus project, an Atlas of European Values has been created based on the work of the European Values Study. The Atlas, published by Springer, has been launched on Europe Day (May 9th 2022).

The interactive online atlas is available on the EVALUE Web site at https://www.atlasofeuropeanvalues.eu/maptool.html. Here it is possible to select indicators, adjust the time period of the data, select specific response groups and compare maps. Some datasets are available from countries around the world.

The EVALUE Project offers teachers and students in secondary education interactive web tools and teaching materials that match curriculum need on contemporary topics like migration, democracy, solidarity, and tolerance. In addition, it provides strategies to develop their own teaching ideas.

European Court Human Rights open data

The European Court of Human Rights Open Data (ECHR-OD) project aims at providing formatted and standardised open data about the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in order to draw the attention of Data Scientists, Machine Learning practitioners as well as researchers on legal analysis and related areas.

ECHR-OD is guided by three core values: reusability, quality and availability.. To reach those objectives, each version of the database and datasets are carefully versioned and made publicly available, including the intermediate files, the integrality of the process and files produced are carefully documented, the script to retrieve the raw documents and build the database and dataset from scratch are open-source and carefully versioned, no data are manipulated by hand at any stage of the creation process.

Explore the European Court of Human Rights Open Data project https://echr-opendata.eu/

Sharing D3 with the Open Data Charter Community

April 30, 2022conference, News, project, reportKarl Donert

In January 2020 EUROGEO, as coordinator of the D3 (Developing Digital Data literacy) project applied for membership of the Open Data Charter Community. Find out more about this. EUROGEO duly became a member of the Community in April 2020 and has since regularly participated in meetings of open data experts and government officials.

In April 2022 members of the open data charter working groups shared projects they were involved in. Karl Donert, project coordinator of D3 and Vice President of EUROGEO, presented the work undertaken by the D3 project to more than 100 members of the Open Data Charter Community from around the world. The session held was online and bilingual English-Spanish.

The International Open Data Charter is a set of principles and best practices for the release of governmental open data. The charter was formally adopted by seventeen governments of countries, states and cities at the Open Government Partnership Global Summit in Mexico in October 2015. The initial signatories included the governments of Chile, Guatemala, France, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, South Korea, the United Kingdom and Uruguay, as well as the cities of Buenos Aires, Minatitlán, Puebla, Veracruz, Montevideo, Reynosa, and the Mexican states of Morelos and Xalapa.

The six principles are:
Open by Default;
Timely and Comprehensive;
Accessible and Usable;
Comparable and Interoperable;
For Improved Governance & Citizen Engagement;
For Inclusive Development and Innovation.

Members are engaging in promoting open data access and the core principles of the Charter.

The Charter has so far been signed by 83 Governments and 72 other organisations. The mission of the Charter is to make data open and freely available, while protecting the rights of people and communities. Included in the Charter. Find out more

In 2018 the European Union has launched an Open Data Charter Measurement Guide. This gives an overview on existing measurement tools for each Open Data Charter principle so that countries and regions can be compared in terms of their maturity and availability of open data. The purpose is to to compare the different indicators that are used in the five largest Open Data measurement initiatives.

Read about Open Data Maturity in Europe

Open data on climate change from OECD

April 1, 2022News, report, research, resourcesKarl Donert

On 31 March 2022, Ministers and high-level representatives from the OECD’s 38 member countries and the European Union, as well as Bulgaria, Croatia, Peru and Romania, committed in a formal OECD Declaration to intensify their work on climate and the environment including doing more to curb biodiversity loss, address plastic pollution, align finance with environmental objectives and accelerate climate change action.

The formal OECD Declaration includes working to curb biodiversity loss, address plastic pollution, align finance with environmental objectives and accelerate climate change action with a view to keeping the 1.5°C temperature rise limit within reach. Download a copy of the complete Ministerial Declaration.

One of the main issues is in obtaining and using relevant and reliable indicators for monitoring progress on mitigating climate change impacts. To address this, the OECD has a new platform for tracking trends in c climate change. It provides interactive information with data and trends across OECD countries. Play the short video to find out more.

Explore OECD data on climate change under the headings
– Drivers and emissions
– Impacts and risks
– Policy responses and opportunities

Interact with the OECD data at http://oe.cd/env-glance

D3 celebrates International Women’s Day

March 8, 2022News, project, resourcesKarl Donert

On the occasion of International Women’s Day we share a teacher’s story on using data in their work. The theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March 2022 is “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”.

Gender equality is one of the fundamental principles of the European Union and during the recent decades it is generally acknowledged that significant progress has been made in this area. However, the gap between women and men still exists and is particularly evident both in the labour market and in the political and decision-making arena.

Furthermore, although attitudes towards equality are evolving, even today’s younger generation is not free from stereotypes and gender inequalities. This StoryMap, created within the context of the D3: Developing Digital Literacy Erasmus+ Project, aims to focus on the issue of gender equality in the political scene of Greece and also the EU and be used as supplementary educational material by teachers in secondary schools.

More specifically, this story map addresses teachers of the 3rd grade (Junior High School – Hellenic Gymnasium) who teach History, Social and Civic Education or Modern Greek Literature, as it can be linked to individual, corresponding themes concerning the feminist movement, human rights and social racism.

Visit the StoryMap below to find out more
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A database of open data and visualisations

February 27, 2022News, resourcesKarl Donert

The D3 project has created and published a searchable information database of potentially useful open data, tools and resources readily available for teachers to access and use. These information and data sources were considered useful for lesson activities by teachers working with the project team.

Visit the database of useful resources

Open Data is based on the idea that some data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.

One of the most important forms of open data is collected and published by government institutions. The importance of open government data is based on it being a fundamental part of citizens’ everyday lives, down to the most routine/mundane tasks that are seemingly far removed from government. This government data is usually the basis on which decisions are made by policy makers.

The resources gathered by the zD£ project partners have been classified by their country of origin, the type of data and their main target groups.

For instance, many of the sources originate from the partner countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) and have been used with teachers there. Useful world resources are also available classified as International. They are considered to follow the principles of FAIR data, namely Finable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable.

The FAIR data principles imply the data is machine-actionable, that the data can be found, accessed, interoperated, and reused using computational systems, with no or minimal human intervention. This is because we increasingly rely on computer support to help deal with the huge volumes, complexity, and creation speed of data.

The D£ project coordinating organisation EUROGEO strongly supports the principles of open data. In 2019 the association became a signatory of the Open Data Charter. Find out more

The coordinator of the D3 project, Karl Donert, subsequently presented the significance of open data education issues to the international gathering of Open Data Charter signatories.

D3 Lesson Blueprints for Developing Digital Data Literacy now online

February 24, 2022News, project, resourcesKarl Donert

The D3 project has created a set of Lesson Blueprints for teachers to examine and use as part of their work with students on data literacy..

The Lesson Blueprints provide ideas for teachers to identify, access and implement open data in the classes and to engage their students in the real world of data. The Blueprints are very practical, relevant and ‘hands on’ allowing teachers to consider the significant opportunities to explore the data we come across and use in everyday life.

The Lesson Blueprints are classified using binary code as this is how digital data is represented. They start from 0001 Who am I? and continue through to 1111: What does the future hold for us?

The topics relate to everyday actions and activities where digital date is important and how the data and its collection affects citizens, their rights and responsibilities.

Access the Lesson Blueprints

European developments in Open Data

January 10, 2022News, resourcesKarl Donert

Europe has developed a strategy for data which focuses on putting people first in developing technology, and defending and promoting European values and rights in the digital world.

Data is described by the EC as an essential resource for economic growth, competitiveness, innovation, job creation and societal progress. According to the European Commission, “the European strategy for data aims at creating a single market for data that will ensure Europe’s global competitiveness and data sovereignty. Common European data spaces will ensure that more data becomes available for use in the economy and society, while keeping the companies and individuals who generate the data in control.”

Data driven applications are fundamental to improve living conditions for citizens and help businesses thrive. They can:

improve health care
create safer and cleaner transport systems
generate new products and services
reduce the costs of public services
improve sustainability and energy efficiency

Hence education efforts that increase digital data literacy like that undertaken by the D3 project need to be promoted as part of the EC data strategy as citizens need to be empowered to stay in control of their data, and establish common, open European data spaces.

A European strategy for data has been proposed that intends to deal with issues such as data governance, access and reuse. It will seek to make data more widely available by opening up high-value publicly held datasets across the EU and allowing their reuse for free. Of major importance but lacking however are education initiatives to support these developments.

The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) has been developed as an index that summarises relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU Member States.

It compares indicators for European countries across five main dimensions: Connectivity, Human Capital, Use of Internet, Integration of Digital Technology and Digital Public Services.

DESI data is free and available to download. Visit the DESI download area

Training course on digital data literacy

December 15, 2021course, News, resourcesKarl Donert

Partners in the D3 project have created a professional teacher development course focusing on competences related to digital technologies and data literacy.

Based on the framework of the research undertaken (a a review of open data, school curricula opportunities, qualifications and digital skills) at the start of the project and on DigComp (key competences for citizens) and DigCompedu (key digital competences for educators) as defined in Europe by the European Commission, a training course focusing on digital data literacy and its connection to critical thinking and democratic engagement has been created for use in initial and continuing teacher education and training.

The course deals with digital skills, open data as well as digital citizenship in empowering young people to engage in critical discussions and debates about issues that concern them.

In earlier work the YouthMetre open data tool based on EU open data on youth ;policies generated by the YouthMetre project has been used as the basis for the D3 development, applying it in school contexts in European curricula.

Five modules have been created:

Introduction – Digital Citizen
Information and data literacy
Digital content creation
Communication and collaboration
Problem solving – the 15 minute city

The training course has been produced as an open, online resource.

Explore the online training course.

Short course on disinformation

October 4, 2021course, News, projectKarl Donert

SMaRT-EU short course on disinformation available for all

The SMaRT-EU Project has the goal to create a Social Media Resilience Toolkit. SMaRT-EU is an intergenerational project providing tools, suggestions and resources to train young people, older people and also the intermediaries who work with them. The purpose is to inform and develop the intermediaries who work with these groups.

A short blended learning course has been produced on misinformation, fake news, algorithms, pedagogic attitudes, etc. The course is freely available to all and for participants to take the course at their own pace. Participants can follow only part of the course or all of it– choosing the topics that are most valuable for them. The course also offers the possibility to quickly get access to some theoretical concepts and/or to dive deeper providing extra exercises and tools.

The course content relies on many of the outputs and lessons learned from the SMaRT-EU project, as well as the experience and knowledge of partner organisations; for example from the workshops and focus groups conducted with educators, youngsters and elderly people.

The course has 5 modules:

“Introduction” a brief description of the topics that will be covered in the course, how the course works.
“What is fake news and why do people believe it”, some theoretical concepts on fake news, and why people believe news that is not trustworthy.
“What is the role of social media”, the mechanisms behind search engines and social media platforms.
“Different approaches for different groups”, working with elderly people or youngsters or intergenerationally.
“Our own power and responsibility” emphasises that each and every one of us can have an impact and play a role in this story.

Follow the course – select Curriculum to start

Monitoring Open Data

July 26, 2021News, researchKarl Donert

A number of tools and initiatives seek to analyse and present the development of open data across the world.

The Open Data Watch is an independent authority that seeks to ensure national statistical systems meet their obligations to provide open and complete development data.

It provides annual assessments of the coverage and openness of official statistics in countries around the world via an approach that is transparent, reproducible, and consistent with international standards. It was first launched in 2015 with engagement with national statistical offices.

Visit Open Data Watch

The Open Data Monitor gives an overview of available open data resources around the world, allowing an analysis and visualisation of existing data catalogues. Innovative technologies are used to present the results.

The Monitor collects metadata from open datasets from a diverse range of open data sources. Scalable analytical and visualisation methods allow you to find out about the composition of regional, national or pan-European open data repositories. Analysing and visualising the metadata reveals hidden potential and essential insights from existing resources and identify gaps where additional open data are needed.

In the OpenDataMonitor project we will adopt CKAN as the underlying software architecture within which all our software contributions will be integrated as plug-ins. This will help make sure the platform is available to a wide population.

Visit the OpenDataMonitor