Publicaciones etiquetadas como Europa
Mega-regiones de Europa (mapa de The Creative Class Group). En la Península Ibérica: Madrid, Barcelona-Lyon y Lisboa (incluyendo la zona costera de Galicia)
a report by Marco Fioretti for the Laboratory of Economics and Management of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa (the report, finished in October 2010 …)
This report discusses the current and potential role, in a truly open society, of raw Public Sector Information (PSI) that is really open, that is fully accessible and reusable by everybody. The general characteristics of PSI and the conclusions are based on previous studies and on the analysis of current examples both from the European Union and the rest of the world.
Generation, management and usage of data constituting what is normally called PSI is a very large topic. This report only focuses on some parts of it. First of all, we only look here at really “public” PSI, that is information (from maps to aggregate health data) that is not tied to any single individual and whose publication, therefore, raises no privacy issues.
It is also important to distinguish between actual raw data (basic elements of information like numbers, names, dates, single geographical features like the shape of a lake, addresses…), their results (more or less complex documents, policies, laws…) and the procedures and chains of command followed to generate and use such results, that is to vote or, inside Public Administrations, to take or implement decisions.
So far, discussion and research on Open Data at national level has had relatively more coverage, even if much of the PSI that has the most direct impact on the life of most citizens is the one that is generated, managed and used by local, not central, administrations and end users (citizens, businesses or other organizations). Creation of wealth and jobs can be easier, faster and cheaper to stimulate, especially in times of economic crisis, at the local level. Finally, open access to public data is much more necessary for small businesses that for big corporations, since the latter can afford to pay for access to data anyway (and high prices of data may also protect them from competition from smaller companies). For all these reasons, the main focus of this report will be on the raw data that constitute “public” PSI as defined above. This is the reason why in this report the terms “raw data” and “PSI” are practically interchangeable. We will also focus on the local dimension of Open PSI, that is raw data directly produced by, or directly relevant for, local communities (City and Regions), and on their direct impact on local government and local economy …
A Map to Freedom: The Internet in Europe
… The Internet report for 27 EU countries (including Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland) was put under a microscope and scrutinized. Six major points of interest were chosen:
European public bodies produce thousands upon thousands of datasets every year - about everything from how our tax money is spent to the quality of the air we breathe.
We are challenging designers, developers, journalists, researchers and the general public to come up with something useful, valuable or interesting using open public data.
There are four main strands to the competition:
The timing of the November 2010 inaugural meeting of the Bad Ragaz Group could not have been more propitious. As signs of economic recovery clashed with the realities of the Irish bailout and renewed concerns about additional financial contagion in the eurozone, the meeting’s theme—”What’s Next for Europe?”—was already on the minds of the senior business executives, economists, policymakers and thought leaders who gathered at Switzerland’s Bad Ragaz resort for two days of discussions. Forty European executives—current and next-generation leaders representing multiple industries and sectors from 12 countries—gathered at the Swiss alpine resort of Bad Ragaz in November 2010 to ponder Europe’s future challenges and opportunities. Discussions by these members of the Bad Ragaz Group (BRG) centered on the risks and opportunities associated with integration and globalization during these challenging geopolitical and economic times.1Specifically, members discussed the outlook for the European economy, the impact of social media, Europe’s uncertain energy prospects, and the future of the euro. This paper summarizes the discussions.
… About five years ago, Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology, wrote “The Geography of Thought.” This fascinating book drew on extensive research pointing to fundamental cultural differences in how we see the world. Specifically, he contrasted an East Asian way of seeing the world with a more traditional Western way of seeing.
While it would be difficult to summarize Nisbett’s rich analysis, I want to focus on a key distinction that he develops in his analysis of two cultural ways of perceiving our world. He suggests that East Asians focus on relationships as the key dimension of the world around us while Westerners tend to focus more on isolated objects. In other words, East Asians tend to adopt more holistic views of the world while Westerners are more oriented to reductionist views.
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As Nisbett points out, the Greek philosophers gave us the notion that “the world is fundamentally static and unchanging.” East Asians tend to focus on oscillations and cycles which acknowledge change but contain it in relatively narrow fields – the world is in flux but it does not head in fundamentally different directions over long periods of time.
So, there is another dimension that differentiates perception – and this is a point that Nisbett sadly does not explore or develop. Some of us tend to view the world in static terms while others focus on the deep dynamics that lead to fundamental transformations over time
… The report “The impact of Social Computing on the EU Information Society and Economy”, published today by the JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), finds that in 2008, 41% of EU Internet users were engaged in social computing activities through Social Networking Sites (SNS), blogs, photo and video sharing, online multi-player games and collaborative platforms for content creation and sharing. This percentage rises to 64% if users aged under 24 only are considered.
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