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!

Last saturday I talked about AppsForItaly at an interesting event in Bari, Apulia.
BeMyApp is in fact an interesting competition specific for Mobile Apps developement (Android or iOs) with a great and innovative format:
Bring your best idea for an App, then create you own Team to develop it. You have only 48 hours to develop and to release the app in a “highly interactive environment”.

This format was born in S. Francisco, California and went to London, Paris, Berlin before reaching Bari for the first italian edition.   If something is changing in our Country is also thanks to Nicholas Caporusso and his staff.

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!

Next 20th October will be celebrated the Italian Statistics Day under the High Patronage of the President of the Italian Republic. Many initiatives will be carried out for two whole days  in accordance with the official program made by ISTAT, the italian statistical office. We report  the workshop: “Open Official Statistical Data” that will be held on 20th  at the ISTAT’s Great Hall. Movements, associations, foundations that have long been promoting Open Data are getting together  with the institutions and the Official Statistics main actors to talk an to discuss about open data and open government and to launch together important national initiatives.

Due to the limited capacity of ISTAT’s Great Hall, we recommend you to register to the event  simply sending an email to eventi@istat.it before 18th October. Here the program of the Workshop.

Here my presentation at International Marketing And Output Data Base Conference (IMAODBC) 2011.  (The Paper is coming)

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 

Open data Challenge is over. Congratulations to all Winners!

Open Data Challenge from Open Knowledge Foundation on Vimeo.