Vincenzo PatrunoA Bit of Nearly Everything

Press Release

How can they be used and what we can do with Open Data? Probably no one better than, citizens, independent software developers, professionals, businesses and all data consumers can answer this question. And it ‘s because of this consideration that AppsForItaly, the Italian Open Data Competition was launched.

Remember that Open Data is (generally ) data produced and published on the Web by the Public Sector and where  reuse is allowed. To get an idea about Open Data in Italy, you can start from dati.gov.it, the national catalog of Open Data. It was launched a few months ago and it is now consolidating to become the ‘”entry point” of public data in Italy. Catalogs are also active as a regional portals. You can visit for instance dati.piemonte.it (the first public data portal in Italy) or dati.emilia-romagna.it. Statistics Open Data are released (in English, of course!) by the Italian Institute of Statistics on dati.istat.it, www.istat.it, demo.istat.it and other thematic web sites.

The aim of AppsForItaly is encouraging citizens to design Web applications, mobile apps, to create visualizations and infographics and  to design databases. Obviously not all people are specialists and therefore don’t have the necessary skills to do that. This is the reason why the competition also  includes the category “Ideas and Projects” where everyone who has a good idea or a project about how to use data can apply.

Is it worth it? You have to remember there  is € 30,000 in prizes provided by the Italian Ministry for Public Administration and Innovation, and  € 10,000 as well as prizes in technology and services  provided by official sponsors. And don’t forget that all proposals will be presented to companies,  communities, the market and  Public Administrations.

To do this, there is still three month’s time. The deadline for submitting proposals is in fact scheduled for Apr. 30th 2012.

All proposals received will be evaluated by a committee  while the event / award ceremony will take place during the first week of March. Stay tuned for all further updates!

Ok, Guys! The speech is in Italian!

Open Knowledge Foundation published a blog post I wrote last week  having the title “Open Data, Italy has awoken”. The same post was published also on Government in The Lab, the online magazine for Government and Politics around the World. Thank you guys!

Good News for data consumers all over in the World!

The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) releases all contents and data  published on the new Web Site ( released just few minutes ago )under CC-By Licence. An important step that all italian open data movement noted with satisfaction.

Here the complete disclaimer 

The consortium of Tech4i2 and Deloitte & Touche (Belgium) was commissioned by the European Commission to carry out a study on the implications of collaborative production in eGovernment.

And in the frame of the collaborative production in eGovernment study that this consortium prepared an online survey focused on innovators – initiators and evangelists of collaborative online services delivery, people who are improving public services “from the outside”. By collaborative production we understand services that engage citizens/civic associations/businesses in the design, delivery and evaluation of public services, irrespective of the service provider (government, civil society or business).

The consortium is very interested in your views on drivers, barriers and impact of collaborative production. The survey can be accessed here:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dG9QQXdNeV9sQndCZks2b0llekJVVlE6MQ

We would also appreciate if you could spread the information about the survey in your networks.

Open data Challenge is over. Congratulations to all Winners!

Open Data Challenge from Open Knowledge Foundation on Vimeo.

Here an interview to Elizabeth Linder, Facebook, Inc. Public Policy Europe, Middle East & Africa. She attended the Barcamp “Innovatori PA 2011″ giving suggestions about the role of Social Media in the Public Sector.