Balearic Islands adopts the international Open Data Charter principles

The Open Data Charter is pleased to welcome the Balearic Islands (Illes Balears), Spain to our global network of adopters

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

1. Why did your government adopt the Charter and what benefits do you hope to gain?

We believe that it is a framework that can assist our Government in implementing open data policies, adopting best practices and international standards for data management and strengthening our Government’s commitment to open and reuse data.

The benefits that this adoption can bring us are:

• Increasing Government’s transparency: this transparency can enhance trust between citizens and the government.
• Promotion of innovation in our society: open data can drive innovation by fostering the creation of new products, services, and solutions.
• Enhancement of Government efficiency: opening up data will allow us to better understand our government, share data across different departments, identify redundancies, and make better data-driven decisions (data-centric Government).
• Encouragement of Data sharing with other public administrations: we aim to foster the sharing of data with other public administrations.

2. How have you approached the guiding principle of becoming open by default?

We have implemented different actions to approach the principle of becoming open by default. Next, we will explain them:

• Approval of the open data strategy of the Government of the Balearic Islands for the period 2019–2024. In December 2024, 74% of the tasks defined in the strategy were completed, 13% were in progress, and another 13% were pending. A dashboard has been created to track its progress. We are currently working on defining the open data strategy for the period 2025–2029. It has not been published yet.
• Approval of Decree 47/2021, of December 3, which creates and regulates the Interdepartmental Commission for Open Government, the Technical Commission for Transparency, and the Technical Commission for Open Data. The Technical Open Data Commission reviews and ensures the effective open data.
• Approval of the Agreement of the Government Council of April 17, 2023, establishing measures to promote the opening and reuse of data from the Government of the Balearic Islands. In agreement 4, the Government of the Balearic Islands subscribes to the principles of the International Open Data Charter.
• Implementation of an Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) tool to extract and process data before publishing it in the open data catalog of the Balearic Islands. Data can be anonymized to comply with the Spanish Law on the Protection of Personal Data and Guarantee of Digital Rights.
• Update of the development standards for computer applications of the Government of the Balearic Islands. A section has been included requiring that government computer applications implement a REST API that offers REST data reuse services.
• Inclusion of a section that enforces the reuse and open data by implementing REST API and REST reuse services in the Technical Requirements Document for the development of computer applications.
• Implementation of a control and review process to ensure that new computer applications have a REST API with REST services that enable, by default, the data reuse and opening.

3. What challenges have you encountered from developing and implementing your open data policy and which area would you seek most support from the Charter network?

The challenges we have encountered from developing and implementing our open data policy are:

• Limited awareness of the benefits of open data. It is believed that the data from Public Administration is not interesting for citizens, businesses, or even the Public Administration itself. Therefore, open data is not perceived as a priority.
• Resistance to opening data by the different departments of our Government. There is a limited data culture and a strong sense of ownership of public data.
• Challenges in finding the balance between open data and concerns about privacy and information security.
• Finding the suitable technical infrastructure to manage, store, and disseminate open data.
• Government staff lacks the skills and capacity to effectively implement open data policies in our Government.
• Lack of clear and robust legal frameworks and open data policies.
• Insufficient resources, both financial and human, to carry out open data policies.

4. Based on your experience, what is your top tip for government officials implementing open data initiatives?

They should strive to automate open data as much as possible through automatic query services (REST API) and avoid information systems that act as data silos.

5. Is there a particular policy challenge or sector that your open data strategy will seek to tackle?

In our open data strategy we have some challenges to tackle, such as:

• To create a data inventory of our Government.
• To provide our information systems of REST services to allow the automatic query of the data that they manage.
• To define a more complete data governance structure for our Government.

However, if we were to mention a particular policy challenge to tackle, it would be to open the high-value datasets defined by the European Parliament and the European Union Council with the Directive (EU) 2019/1024. These high-value datasets have significant potential to generate benefits for society, the environment, and the economy. Therefore, European Union member states are required to promote their free release in machine-readable formats, through APIs, as bulk downloads, and comprehensively described with metadata.

We are thrilled to welcome the Balearic Islands (who is our 172nd adopter) to the ODC Network and look forward to being a part of their journey towards openness! Read their adoption letter here. Check out their open data catalogue (in Catalan/Spanish), or visit their website in Catalan and Spanish .