Building an open data ecosystem: an Irish experience

Data.gov celebrated its fifth birthday in May 2014. Data.gov.uk will turn five in January 2015. According to datacatalogs.org, there are more than 380 Open Data portals around the world, with new portals still appearing all the time. Some Open Data practitioners cried 'go ugly, go early', others 'raw data now', while others lobbied for CSV and RDF. With Open Data initiatives maturing, what can countries such as Ireland, who are embarking on their national Open Data journey, learn from the experience of these instigators? What are best practices for selecting datasets, publishing data and supporting data reuse? In this paper, I present the experience of defining an Irish Open Data strategy, based on an ecosystem structure incorporating not only technical, but social, political, economic and legislative aspects. Each element of the ecosystem represents a key component of a sustainable Open Data initiative. Through an extensive literature review of international best practice and liaising with stakeholders, the ecosystem elements evolved, along with common principles and challenges. Finally, the outcome of this study is a concrete roadmap to progress the vision of Open Data in Ireland.