The Open-Data Competition of the Regional Council of Castilla y León (Concurso de Datos Abiertos de la Junta de Castilla y León) has now decided on its prizewinners. This initiative of the Consejería de la Presidencia (Presidency Regional Ministry) aims to encourage the proper use and exploitation of the set of public data published on the Open-Government Portal of the Junta de Castilla y León.

The Junta de Castilla y León is one of the keenest supporters and advocates of the “Open Government” movement as a direct communication channel between the regional government itself and its citizens, harnessing new information and communication technologies and under the guiding principles of transparency, citizen participation and collaboration. GMV has played a key role in the technical aspects of the Junta’s “Open Government” project, taking on responsibility for developing and maintaining the “open government” and “open data” portals and also collaborating in the creation of the open government blog.

On 3 July the Official Journal of Castilla y León (Boletín Oficial de Castilla y León: BOCYL) published the Open Data Competition of the Regional Authority of Castilla y León (Concurso de Datos Abiertos de la Comunidad de Castilla y León), attracting 33 candidatures. The jury, made up by representatives of the Junta de Castilla y León and the sponsoring firms, including GMV, has awarded the prizes in the categories of best cell-phone application, best web application or technological development, best work of data journalism, report or study and the best project carried out by students enrolled in the academic year 2012-2013.

The jury based its ruling on the usefulness of the project, in view of the difficulty of the problem it solves, the number of potential beneficiaries, the originality, creativity and its groundbreaking character, as well as user friendliness and accessibility. In the case of cell-phone applications, another important consideration was the download possibility from corresponding stores.

At the start of the year the Junta’s Open Government project won the prize “Benchmark Open-Government and Citizen Participation Project (Proyecto referente en Participación y Gobiernos Abiertos en las Administraciones Públicas), awarded by the National Interoperability and Security Congress (Congreso Nacional de Interoperabilidad y Seguridad: CNIS) for 2013. This makes the Junta de Castilla y León a benchmark within the whole set of government authorities in Spain, boasting one of the most complete Open Government projects at national level.