Ever wondered about the value of Open Data? Rhoda Kerins from @GovDataIE shows us some interesting statistics at event organised by @library_MU for #lovedata21 https://twitter.com/SueRedMal/status/1359821361213022209

Ireland is seen as a trend setter in Open Data.
2015: IRE was 20th in Europe
2017-2019: IRE was 1st in Europe
2021: Overtaken but still in the top rankings
(from Annual Open Data Maturity Survey)

IRE is also currently ranked 3rd in the OECD OURdata Index - pretty good going as we were below average in 2017

A lot of hard work to get here since 2014. Open data sits under 'reform' in government. Commenced from a place of not knowing a whole lot, public consultations resulted in the Open Data Strategy 2017-22, and the Open Data Portal http://data.gov.ie 

Engaging stakeholders to delve into the data holdings is an important strand. Open Data Engagement Fund provides grants from €500 - €5,000 to projects using data from http://data.gov.ie  Annual grant call in June-Aug https://data.gov.ie/pages/open-data-engagment-fund

DCAT standard required by http://data.gov.ie  (i.e. the list of info you must supply with your data). CSV is the minimum format (they recently upgraded the quality by removing anything that was in PDF)

Most users of http://data.gov.ie  are from Research & Academia (40%), but good interest from the Public and from Business. End products such as this very helpful site http://www.beaches.ie  which is very helpful when we can finally get back to the beach this summer