Italy
Maurizio 'napo' Napolitano is coordinator of the Digital Commons Lab of FBK (Fondazione Bruno Kessler) in Trento, Italy. FBK is official node of the Open Data Institute. Napo is also closely involved with communities related to the topic of open knowledge, and is an Ambassador for Open Knowledge in Italy. Specifically, Napo is interested in the study of the processes of creation of collective knowledge with a focus on geographical information.
Italy ranked #17 in the 2014 Open Data Index / Other stories from Europe
I am glad to see that, for this edition of the Global Open Data Index, there are new names as the reviewers. In Italy international ranking is down a few places, but this is because we decided to be more strict on some datasets that have been issued but have not been updated. In particular, it is sought to assess who, from the administrative point of view, has the official task of dealing with that category of data.
Unfortunately, progress is poor. In previous editions there was enthusiasm for some datasets released on the maps but with time this has not led to an incentive. Following the G8, Italy signed the Open Data Charter, and this has meant that the Agency for Digital Italy has worked to open some more key data sets. This is shown in the open data agenda. The document signaled the opening of the zipcodes later this year and other datasets of interest in the census. Probably, in the 2015 edition of the Index we will enter these.
In terms of transit data, the situation is still not settled - there are many agencies that have opened the data, others have not. The demerit is that while many are distributing data to the Google Transit project, they still do not release the source for open data.
The role of the Global Open Data Index is extremely important - the rankings always help to encourage us to do better the next time. Participating in the review process is also a great way to become aware of the situation in my own country. From my point of view it is a very important exercise, and if you find a good number of reviewers, it enables you to start a debate on the issue and thus helps us better understand our own country. It is for this reason that we should also invite and encourage everyone to take part in the review process of the city census for each country (eg. http://it-city.census.okfn.org/).
