The European Data Portal (www.europeandataportal.eu) offers central access to a growing inventory of open data from the public sectors of 34 European countries. It does this by tapping metadata and making it available from a central location. For this purpose, the portal uses open data, published either by public administrations themselves or on their behalf. The aim is to improve access to information from individual countries and to enhance the value of open data. The data is available for both commercial and other uses and may be subjected to multiple reuse. With its free and simple access, the aim of the portal is to promote the innovative use of data and to release its economic potential. It also plays a role in fulfilling the accountability of EU institutions and other organisations.
Among the possibilities offered by the European Data Portal are the following:
- Searching of structured metadatasets.
- Information on the provision of open data.
- Use of open data.
- Consolidation of knowledge relating to all aspects of open data by means of e-learning modules, training guides and a knowledge database.
The majority of economic, scientific and socio-political questions possess some kind of spatial reference. For this reason alone, the geographical component of the European Data Portal takes on special significance. In this context, con terra GmbH is contributing the extensive experience that it has amassed in the construction of national and international spatial data infrastructures to the construction of the portal.
With the commencement of the European Data Portal, there now exists a central point of entry for open data from Europe. The benefits to the user are that it overcomes spatial, hierarchical and linguistic hurdles and merges datasets from open data and spatial data infrastructures for new and innovative user scenarios.