One of the most important remits of the Junta de Castilla y León (Regional Council of Castilla y León) this legislature is to drive the “Open Government” movement, which seeks more transparency, collaboration and participation with citizens. One of the first initiatives was therefore to set up an RPSI system (Re-Use of Public Sector Information).

The public sector generates a huge amount of information that is of interest to companies and the public at large, such as social, economic, geographical, statistical, meteorological and tourism facts and figures and data on companies and education. All this information is particularly attractive to the digital contents sector, due to its quality, reliability and completeness.

The public sector open data concept means that any person or organization can use this data to construct a new idea, generating new data, knowledge, improving processes, boosting the value of existing processes and even creating completely new services. It therefore has a considerable economic potential and also favors the necessary citizen collaboration, participation and transparency to ensure more open government procedures.

Once more the Junta has opted for the new technologies to improve its citizen services, setting up an RPSI meeting all the requisites that ensure smooth interaction with the reusing agents. In pursuit of this objective it has turned once more to GMV’s knowledge and experience. GMV has long been one of its most dependable technological allies and was previously entrusted with the task of setting up a multi-site Single Administrative Information System (SIAU from its Spanish initials), which then served as the basis for setting up this OpenData portal. Further advice also came from the Fundación CTIC, the headquarters of W3C in Spain and main promoter and benchmark of the OpenData movement.

The Junta de Castilla y León and GMV have developed this project through different phases, including the consultancy phase for identification of reusable public information and the technical development of the website displaying it.

The net result is that the Junta de Castilla y León, guided by an expert integrator like GMV, has now constructed an OpenData portal to vie with any other in the whole country. This project, together with the other open government initiatives being carried out by the Junta de Castilla y León, aims to make this regional authority a national benchmark in terms of transparency, collaboration and participation.