Belgium
Pieter-Jan Pauwels is a Community Coordinator at Open Knowledge Belgium. He is also an organiser of open summer of code, and Open Belgium. Pieter works to translate open data efforts in Belgium into interesting projects, and is hoping to introduce the concept of open knowledge to a wider audience in Belgium through an interactive video platform.
Belgium ranked #35 in the 2014 Open Data Index / Other stories from Europe
In early 2014, we used the Global Open Data Index to motivate open data experts, opinion leaders and government officials to gather for the very first edition of Open Belgium, as a part of the 'Data Days' conference in Ghent . This was a success, not only because it was an opportunity to openly discuss open data, but also act and publicise new datasets such as the company register (KBO) of the Department of Economy, and the transport data of TEC, the Walloon public transport company.
Now almost a year later, we view the Global Open Data Index not just as a tool for leverage, but as a tool to support further open data publications in Belgium. It is also a way to encourage those who are opening up information in Government, and shows other departments on a federal level that opening up their data is part of a global movement.
The Global Index did trigger a new mindset at Open Knowledge Belgium, and now we try to go beyond that by building a crowdsourced local data census, and using our learnings to create a regional index as well. This will hopefully provide us with an overview of where the open data comes from in Belgium, and which levels are engaged in the opening up of valuable information. In this way we can try to stimulate bottom up actions by cities and municipalities who want to show that they too believe in a more open Belgium.
