Open Data and the Core Competences of Governments: Open Issues

Open data has become an established concept, but in its implementation several open issues remain. One in particular pops up in the case of open government data: the debate on the core competences and tasks of the government in relation to publishing data. During the Smart Flanders programme (https://smart.flanders.be), we have encountered a number of related challenges, which we would like to debate during Open Belgium. This panel will discuss some of these open issues with representatives from different levels of government: a local government, the Flemish of Belgian government and the European level. We aim to discuss the following topics:

- Data hygiene within the organisation: In some cases, digitisation still is a significant challenge, but how can we generate awareness to the level of key individual public servants that work with data? How do we change working with data into an operational process that leads to good open data?
- IoT and open data (how real-time, volume, archiving of data…): In the hype surrounding the Smart City concept a lot is made of the data generated by sensors and other IoT devices, but how do publish data from these sensors in a proper way, dealing with the real-time aspect, the sheer volume of the data, archiving of data?
- Centralise vs decentralise? As a principle, open data lends itself quite well to decentralised publishing and the technical solutions are available, but how do we turn these into processes that work? This requires agreement on the roles of different levels of government? Should every city have an open data portal for example? Under which conditions is this useful or beneficial?
- Government and the market: where does the role of government end? The most typical question when discussing core remit of government is where its role ends and when private actors come into play. This is particularly relevant in the field of open data as well.
- PSI vs GDPR? These two regulatory frameworks appear like they might be on a collision course with each other. How are they different and what are their implications on different levels of government. >br />

Speakers to be confirmed