Patricia Tejado, Northwest Region Manager of GMV Secure e-Solutions, presented the company’s Open Data activities, both inhouse and with some of its clients, including the Regional Council of Castilla León (Junta de Castilla León) and Red.es.

The Day, organized by Universitat de Valencia with the collaboration of the Regional Ministry of Transparency (Conselleria de Transparència) of the Regional Government of Valencia (Generalitat Valenciana), was opened by the Vice Rector of Research, Pilar Campins Falcó, and the Regional Secretary for Transparency, Social Responsibility, Participation and Cooperation, Zulima Pérez.

The conference looked at data’s information-generating power and the results to be obtained from cross referencing this data. Patricia Tejado’s speech ran through the various international experiences such as the Boston Dashboard, which gives a snapshot of how city services are faring (arrival of buses at schools, emergency service calls, etc.) and London Transport and then zoomed in on the Open Data Project of the Junta de Castilla León. In her own words “initial spadework set out the basic pillars of transparency, citizen collaboration and participation to improve results in terms of efficiency, efficacy and the quality of public services. This involved developing an open data methodology to achieve the goals in sight”. She also explained the methodology and procedures followed for defining and rolling out the new architecture of the Open Data portal (datos.gob.es) and its federating data-catalogue system.

Attendees, made up by professors, students, companies and institutions working and researching in the open data field, were given a foretaste of the future challenges to be dealt with in the upcoming International Open Data Congress IODC16 to be held in Madrid.