Crossing Borders with Open Data

Kasvi, Jyrki & Salo, JariTIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centre

Need for open mobility data• While goods an people move freely across borders, access to public data is still

restricted by national laws and regulations• For example in European Union, a company has to negotiate with 28 national

traffic authorities in order to gain access to data required to provide encompassing cross border mobility services for freely moving people and cargo.

• The administrative and legal burden is prohibitive for small companies developing new mobility apps and services.

• The most effective way to encourage cross border mobility service innovation is to make data repositories of national traffic and related authorities easily available

• In European Union, the PSI directive on the re-use of public sector information (Directive 2003/98/EC) has eased access to public data.

• While many countries have gone beyond the requirements of the PSI directive by opening many of their public data repositories, the availability of traffic data varies still greatly.

Different users, apps and data• As the end users of mobility apps range from hauliers to bus passengers, apps

serving them require access to a wide variety of public data from all the countries where they move.

User groups Applications and services Data requirements

CitizensCar drivers Navigation, smart routing, weather

service, smart parking, roadside service information, driving habit feedback

Geographic, weather, road condition, road works and maintenance, disruptions, car parks, traffic statistics, public and private services

Passengers Timetables, fares, ticket sales, lodging, service information

Timetables, reservation, disruptions

Private companies

Transport companies and hauliers

Fleet management, fare collection, logistics, cargo tracking, customs

Tax and customs records

Road/rail/port operators Traffic flow, tracking

Public sector

Public national, EU and local authorities

Emergency services, traffic management, road maintenance, border station queue management

Traffic flow, incident detection

Common open data requirements• No technical constrains for access to data

• Open application programming interfaces• Standard machine readable open data formats• Sufficient data transfer capacity

• No legal constrains for access to data• Usage license allows data to be exploited and distributed without restrictions by

anybody for any purpose. (e.g. Creative Commons licenses).• No financial constrains for data use.

• The public authority opening the data does not charge users of the data any access or usage fees

• The location, technical definition and terms of use of the data opened have to be made easily available.

• Data catalogues and aggregator services• Restrictions to open data

• Protection of privacy through anonymization• Protection of national or system security• Protection of intellectual property rights

Mobility demands for open data• Commercial services demand high data quality even from open data

• Data accessibility: Clients require guarantees of the usability of the mobility apps and services, that is, accessibility of the (open) data they use.

• Data integrity: Clients require guarantees of the flawlessness, authenticity and timeliness of the (open) data used by mobility apps and services.

• Data quality requirements call for open data aggregators that collect open data from public authorities and ensure its availability and integrity for commercial purposes.

• Cross border mobility demands for open data• A data catalogue with technical definitions, content descriptions, license

conditions and metadata should be available in different languages• An authority should be responsible for national open data catalogues and

making national open data accessible for developers from other countries.• Countries should harmonize traffic related data and implement commonly used

standards

Open data ecosystem• Commercial apps and services require high level of data integrity and accessibility

even from open data.

RecommendationsRecommendations for authorities opening data for mobile apps development:1. Give priority to data required for mobility services when opening data.2. Use standard data formats and APIs in data repositories in order to make it easier to

open them.3. Provide sufficient broadband capacity for data downloads.4. Inform developers of the data sets opened e.g. through open data catalogues.5. Ensure data integrity and improve data accessibility6. Note the need for anonymization of data when developing new data repositories.

Recommendations for companies and developers utilizing open data in mobility apps7. Ascertain availability and integrity of open data used, e.g. through aggregators.8. Ensure timeliness of downloaded open data used for service creation.9. Ensure data security of your service.

Recommendations for legislators10. Mobile data roaming costs should be kept as low as profitably possible.11. Mobility related public data should be harmonized and standardized both

internationally and between national administrative branches.12. A public authority should be made responsible for

national data catalogue maintenance.