Frequently Asked Questions

More specifically, this refers to data that:

• have been collected by public administrations in the context of their public duties;
• do not (or no longer) contain privacy-sensitive information;
• are not subject to the protection of intellectual property rights;
• are released in a format that can easily be processed automatically;
• may be reused for commercial and non-commercial purposes.

With open data, restrictions on reuse should be minimized. One way this is accomplished is through the use of open standards and open licensing.

The intent of open data is that reusers can easily find the data, that it is reusable, and that no unnecessary restrictions or conditions are imposed. This notion of "open" is critical to interoperability. Interoperability refers to the ability of various systems and organizations to work together. In this case, it refers to the ability to combine different data sets. Interoperability will lead to the dramatically improved ability to combine different datasets and thereby develop more and better products and services.

A transparent government is a requirement for citizen participation, for societal debates to have accurate information that they can use to analyze policy choices, research facts and form opinions. Because a government does not always have an overview of what information is really relevant to citizens, it is useful that raw base data is also made available. This allows organizations, citizens, businesses to create relevant information themselves and actively participate by developing creative solutions.

According to the European Commission, the total economic benefits that can result from making public sector data accessible could amount to 40 billion euros per year. The economic potential here lies not only in the reuse of public sector information for new products and services, but also in efficiency gains for public administrations. For Belgium, Agoria - the sector federation for the technology industry - estimated the potential net gain thanks to opening up public sector data at 900 million euros. (year 2013)

Increased data quality: open data can improve data quality because the public service is encouraged to increase its own data quality before releasing data to the outside world through feedback mechanisms.

Strengthened legitimacy: the legitimacy of the organization is strengthened because the information held by the organization is used for other purposes.

Increased external orientation of administrations: by choosing an open data strategy, an administration is encouraged to look outward and work more with external partners.

Standardization benefits: when more data is accessed according to (open) standards, other government administrations can also more easily reuse this data. This increases public sector interoperability.

The Law on open data and reuse of public sector information, Article 2, 1°:

1. the Federal State;
2. legal persons of public law dependent on the Federal State;
3. those persons, whatever their form and nature, which are
   • established for the specific purpose of meeting needs of general interest that are not of an industrial or commercial nature, and
   • have legal personality,
   • and of which either the activities are principally financed by the public authorities or institutions mentioned in a) or b), or the management is subject to supervision by these public authorities or institutions, or more than half of the members of the administrative, management or supervisory body are appointed by these public authorities or institutions;
4. associations consisting of one or more public bodies referred to in (a), (b) or (c).

According to the "open by default" principle, all data are open data unless there is a good reason not to (for example, if the data contains privacy-sensitive information). More details can be found in the Law on open data and reuse of government information Act of May 4, 2016, articles 3 and 4.

Some examples:

• open data: budget figures, population statistics, air quality measurements, glossaries
• not open data: individual tax returns, purchased telephone directories that the government does not own

The federal open data strategy point 2 ("Proactive provision") stipulates that no additional formalities should be imposed on citizens or companies wishing to view or reuse data, such as mandatory registration.

That is, users should be able to download datasets without a login page or pop-up.

Which makes sense: visitors to government websites also do not have to register or log in to download PDF brochures, or access non-personal information.

The RD  of June 2nd 2019 concerning the reuse of public sector information  establishes a cascading logic for federal datasets.

The "open license" (CC0 deed) - allowing data to be reused free of charge for non-commercial and commercial purposes - applies whenever possible. Any deviation from this license is explicitly justified by the government department concerned (`comply or explain' principle).

• As a rule: no condition = public domain = Creative Commons Zero (CC0)
• Condition "source attribution" = CC-BY license + justification
• Condition "remuneration" = model license "re-use for remuneration" + detailed justification
• Specific conditions = model license to be determined by the government + detailed justification

The data.gov.be portal only contains links to open data files, and does not currently provide facilities to store open data files. Public administrations are responsible for storing and managing open data files themselves, preferably on their own websites. If the files are spread across several pages, it is recommended to also create an overview page with a list of these files (and/or links to the pages where they can be found).

If the files are relatively large, or if they are expected to be downloaded very frequently, it is recommended to place them on a separate server.

Public administrations in possession of data collected for the needs of their legal duties should make this data available for reuse by citizens, researchers, businesses or other governments to the greatest extent possible. Open datasets are to be released in an easy to automatically process format. According to the resources at their disposal, these services make available the most useful datasets that best lend themselves to being reused.

To avoid duplication of effort and to keep the data as up-to-date as possible, as much as possible is automated. Therefore, no manual input is done on the portal itself, the idea is that the (links to, and data about) datasets are automatically copied from the websites of the public administrations.

This federal portal already integrates data from a number of other (including regional) portals: datasets that are already listed on one of these portals are therefore automatically listed on data.gov.be. If the datasets are not yet described on one of the other portals, the metadata can be provided in several ways:

• The best way is to place a metadata file in a fixed location on one's website, preferably in the European DCAT-AP format, with references to the datasets.
• Certain platforms have a Web service / API that allows metadata to be retrieved in a structured format.
• It is also possible to create an overview page on one's own website - as a temporary solution - with an overview of the open data files. Subject to the necessary agreements, the page can then be "scraped" by the tools developed by FPS BOSA for this purpose.

To publish datasets in an organized manner, the following data are necessary:

• organisation publishing the dataset
• contact information for (re)users (this can be a generic mailbox) mag een algemene mailbox zijn)
• language-neutral unique code
• title and short description
• direct link(s) to downloadable file(s)
• overview page where more detailss can be found
• license
• file format

Additional useful data are:

• keywords
• how often the dataset will be updated
• date of last modification
• period covered by the data

Because data volumes are large, it can sometimes take a while before a particular dataset can be offered in the correct and reusable format. The European directive and Belgian laws allow exceptions, such as data covered by the protection of personal data, as well as information about state security, etc. The contact form can be used to ask questions or make suggestions about datasets still missing from this portal.