Since 2011 there has been a strong commitment across Latin America and the Caribbean to open data government and making information easily accessible and public. Uruguay has made similar commitments with the goal of promoting transparency. See Law N°19.355 – Art. 82. Adagio has been working with the government to help them build the tools they need to allow access, collaboration and information exchange.
The commitment to open data in the government has not only been national but also international, with the creation of the International Open Data Charter in October 2015, which has since been adopted by 71 governments and 52 organizations who are collaborating on the definition and application of common principles for the publication of open data.
AGESIC, which is the Agencia de Gobierno Electrónico y Sociedad de la Información or the National Agency for e-Government and Information Society is the lead coordinator of the Open Government Process in Uruguay.
In this role, AGESIC has provided support for the publication of data to different public and private organization and defined National Action Plans on open data government that have served as strategic guidelines to improve and enhance open data initiatives.
Perhaps the greatest contribution of AGESIC, due to its visibility to the public, has been the implementation of the National Open Data Catalog which currently has more than 2100 sets of data that are freely accessible and published under open licenses that allow its use, reuse and redistribution. These data sets serve as input to many sectors who can benefit from such data such as the media and journalists, application developers, entrepreneurs, service providers, researchers, various institutions and civil society itself.
Adagio has been involved in the publication of open data since its inception, having developed for AGESIC the ‘Data preparation and opening process’ which enables the publication of data in the National Catalog in a simple and automatic way.
This process is divided into two modules:
- The data preparation module
Unifies original data into a single file with a standard format that has defined data and meta data that makes it suitable for publication as open data.
- A module for opening and publishing data
This module takes the prepared data and publishes it automatically in the National Open Data Catalog in an open format, so that it can be easily processed and analyzed by computers.
The key to this module is a web form developed in Pentaho which acts as an interface and guides the user through the process of indicating the general characteristics of the data set to be created (logical grouping and categorization within the catalog) and particular characteristics of the resource (file to be published.) From there, more PDI processes are used to generate data files in different open formats (.xml, .csv) and a metadata file (.json) which are then published simultaneously.
Below is a list of 10 open data government projects that have used this process for publishing their data in the National Open Data Catalog.
- Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (MIDES[i]): Indicators of welfare and economic, social and cultural rights.
- Fondo Nacional de Recursos (FNR[ii]): Expenses for medical acts
- Ministerio de Industria, Energía y Minería (MIEM[iii]): Updated industrial business directory
- Agencia Estatal de Compras y Contrataciones (ACCE[iv]): Purchases awarded in 2018
- AGESIC: Traceability of online procedures
- Ministerio del Interior (MI[v]): Gender-based security and violence
- Correo Uruguayo[vi]: Local of the National Postal Network and Citizen Attention
- Oficina de planificación y planeamiento (OPP[vii]): Income and expenses of departmental governments and expenditures of municipal governments.
- Ministerio de vivienda, planificación territorial y medio ambiente (MVOTMA[viii] [ix]): Water level readings and rainfall record 2017.
- Oficina Nacional de Servicio Civil (ONSC[x]): Labor links with the state
During 2019 Adagio will continue working with AGESIC to support and promote open data government publication projects and collaborate with multiple government agencies who want to generate new visualizations of data that allow even friendlier access to information.
Do you have an open data initiative? Get in touch with our Pentaho experts to find out how we can help!