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THE ADDED VALUE OF OPEN DATA FOR BUSINESSES

Techsol S.r.l.
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

Open data is accessible to everyone, it generally refers to the branch of the open government, according to which public administration should be open to citizens, both from the point of view of transparency and decision-making. This is a practice that has been consolidated for years, whose terminology has undergone a change over time. Today, in fact, with open data we mean a discipline linked more to the Internet, as the main channel of information dissemination.
After the 2009 intervention by Barack Obama, which presented the official Open Government Directive (through which the major US agencies were obliged to publish online information using a verifiable and downloadable format, as well as indexed) Italy has begun to embark on this new path. In 2011, the dati.gov.it portal was created.

There have been several important activities for the industry, such as the publication of the Semantic Interoperability Guidelines through Linked Open Data and the introduction of the “Open by Default” principle in Art.52 of the CAD — Digital Administration Code.

In 2013 AGID — Agency for Digital Italy — has started to develop the National Open Agenda Data and the National Guidelines for the Valuation of Public Information Heritage, published in their final version in 2014.

A new project, developed by the Bruno Kessler Foundation, has set the goal of creating a tool to assess the impact of open data in Italy, stimulating dialogue between institutions and companies in order to facilitate the meeting between supply and demand. The first results show that the main companies, that use open data, operate in the field of technology, software and geospatial mapping, but research and education are growing as well as the geographic data sector (eg OpenStreetMap).

Although the issue of open data is relatively recent, we know there is a real economic value around it. A study by Mckinsey tried to understand the added value of the data. It estimated $ 300 billion a year of economy generated by open data. The most beneficial areas are: financial advice, healthcare and manufacturing.
Open data is therefore a real asset at hand for any company and startup. Using these data generates a business opportunity and, if integrated with private ones, enables to get more strategic responses to strategic issues such as: assessing credit risk, optimizing energy consumption, identifying fraud, publishing data as linked open data so that your company can be found on the web, etc.

It’s necessary to create value from the data, using Big Data and the tools available through the IT for their analysis. All types of information from social media, business data, and the Internet of Things can be integrated and make an essential contribution to the company’s strategic and operational analysis, creating a competitive advantage.
“Analytics’s market growth, which is today worth € 905 million, confirms that the ability to become a ‘data driven company’ is no longer an option for businesses, but a need to respond to sudden market changes — comments Carlo Vercellis, Scientific Director of the Big Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Observatory — Dealing Big Data is now a priority not only for optimizing processes, but also for developing new products and services to capture the opportunities of monetizing data. In this sense, having new skills in data science and innovative organizational structures represents a challenge that can no longer be extended. “

From 2016 to today, 32% of Italian companies said they would buy data to be integrated with those collected to generate new revenue through sale or exchange. In Italy, companies buy mainly data on the market trend of their business or consumer behavior.
To be part of this innovation , new organizational skills and models, different technological approaches, and long-term design prospects are fundamental.

Written by

Software Solutions Provider for manufacturing process management. Industry 4.0, SAP Solutions, Cloud.

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