At the very beginning of the 2010s, a few public actors voluntarily engaged in the opening of public data, mainly metropolises.
On February 21, 2011, the decree creating a "Mission Etalab" was published. Its role: to create the single interministerial portal for public data: data.gouv.fr
10 years later, the data.gouv.fr platform has given rise to numerous sectoral variations) as well as API.gouv.fr and data sharing.
The recognition, in 2016, by the Law for a Digital Republic of the principle of open public data as a matter of principle marked an important step. From now on, open data is no longer just a choice of a few, it has become an obligation for all actors invested with a public service mission.
Open data has played a central role in crisis management to inform citizens and steer public policies. Public interest in open data and its uses has probably never been so strong.
Companies are getting involved in the subject, as users of the data of course, but also sometimes by opening their own data.
Following the report by Deputy Eric Bothorel on public policy on data, algorithms and source code, the Prime Minister reminded the ministries and regional prefects on April 21, 2021, that data policy is "a strategic priority for the State in its relations with all its partners, particularly local authorities and private actors. He invites the various ministries to appoint a ministerial data administrator by May 15.
New challenges, new ambitions: the opening of data is entering a new phase.
Covid and public data: a wealth of dashboards and visualization tools to track the pandemic
At the beginning of March 2020, the only available data on the epidemic were scattered in the press releases of the ARS and Santé Publique France. These data were fragmentary and did not allow to draw curves and to follow the evolution of the epidemic.
It is a group of citizens who will take care of it. In a few days, a collective (the "OpenCOVID19" initiative) and then a community of 200 data scientists organized themselves to manually extract data from 20 ARS and 100 prefectures and integrate them into a spreadsheet. A very heavy load: everything has to be redone every day[1]. The veille-coronavirus.fr dashboard ( takes shape and offers a first consolidated vision of the official data. The implementation of this contributory tool quickly receives the support of Etalab developers, then the support of the Ministry of Health. On March 28, Édouard Philippe and Olivier Véran, in a press conference, used the infographics of veille-coronavirus.fr.
As of April 2020, 177 Covid-19-related datasets were online at data.gouv.fr.
Since March 18, Santé Publique France publishes daily updated datasets on the public data platform data.gouv.fr. and on Geodes, the mapping observatory of Santé Publique France.
This opening of data has fed the work of researchers and opened the way to a myriad of visualizations in the press. The datavisualisations of Gouvernement.fr and dashboards such as Covidtracker, Coronaboard.fr, Covinfo.fr or Vaccinator.fr rely on Geodes data.
At the beginning of March 2021, SPF proposed 123 indicators on its Geodes website, at all scales (national, regional, departmental, territorial).
Launch of the 10th spring of data.gouv.fr
On the occasion of its 10 years of existence, Etalab is organizing a whole series of events to take stock of its actions, its successes and failures ... and to imagine the next 10 years. It is a dialogue that we want to launch with you."We are well aware that the public digital landscape has changed significantly over the past decade. New questions are emerging, which also call for new answers: how can we collectively use data to serve the general interest? How can we take advantage of artificial intelligence without sacrificing ethics and public and individual freedoms? What are the profiles that the public service must acquire, today and tomorrow, to pursue its digital transformation? What can we learn from Etalab's counterparts in Europe and around the world?"
The month of April was dedicated to data quality.
May is the month of data reuse.
The month of June will be dedicated to data discoverability.
Référence :
"The data policy, a strategic priority of the State in its relations with all its partners
In a circular dated April 27, 2021, addressed to ministers and regional prefects, the Prime Minister reminds us that administrations "must constantly seek the best circulation of data, algorithms and codes, in open formats that can be used by third parties. This renewed ambition implies, in addition, a strengthening of the opening of source codes and public algorithms, as well as the use of free and open software, and the extinction, by 2023, of fees charged for the reuse of data.
It invites ministers to designate a ministerial data administrator by May 15 and regional prefects to designate a "data, algorithms and source codes" referent.
Finally, with regard to relations with private actors holding so-called "general interest" data with high added value for the public authorities, he announced the forthcoming creation of a general interest data mediator.
An interdepartmental strategy for the digital sector including skills related to data and algorithms will be proposed by the Minister of Public Transformation and Civil Service by May 15, 2021.
The objectives of opening up the data and codes of the ministries must be translated into a roadmap finalized by July 15 and published by September 15. This roadmap will have to display the priorities of the ministries in terms of opening up data and codes and include a section on training agents and managers in data issues.
Administrations are also encouraged to systematically reference their data on data.gouv.fr or api.gouv.fr, as Dinum is responsible for improving the quality of government portals. The site code.gouv.fr, listing software and algorithms opened by administrations, will soon complete the system.
Référence :
Open Data Impact: nine challenges for the next decade of open public data
The Open Data Impact program, led by the Fing, has undertaken a critical assessment of these two years of open public data. "What is open data today? What have been the impacts of the actions carried out over the last eight years? What has been successful with open data? Have the promises been fulfilled?"
In a first step, the authors of this report focused on "factualizing the diagnosis": "open data, "how many divisions?
To date, France has more than 40,000 published data sets (more than 35,000 listed on data.gouv.fr). In number, more than three quarters come from local authorities, which essentially publish small and medium-sized data sets.
The State publishes comparatively fewer games, in number, but, by nature, large quantities in volume, especially through large reference games with national coverage.
A thematic view of the data shows a very varied set. Some areas are particularly well covered: geography, economy, transportation, etc.
There are few blind spots or data-poor areas: social issues, justice and, to a lesser extent, education or culture.
"Some portals," note the authors of this report, "judiciously propose to users, for each dataset, to publish the results of their uses. For example, such and such a dataset has allowed the creation of such and such an application. This practice is clearly of interest to enhance the value of uses and to promote more and more future uses. The number of reuses of each set gives an indicator, admittedly partial, but revealing of the demand for certain sets. The data.gouv.fr platform provides a list of the games that have been used the most.
Among the datasets that have been reused, a large third are long-standing and traditionally used government data, such as INSEE data, the postal code database, or certain data specific to the work and operations of major ministries: Interior (election results, accidentology), Health (Finess, doctor demographics, medicines), Economy and Finance (Fantoir, Land Values)... "Open data has further democratized their use and the published reuses show new uses of these data.
There are also "many data previously limited to certain audiences, which Open Data has brought out of the shadows. The fuel price database is an emblematic example: previously sold for several tens of thousands of euros a year, its release in Open Data has developed its uses.
Finally, for a quarter, this list highlights the rapid success of datasets directly born of the Open Data dynamic, such as the National Address Base (BAN), a project driven by Etalab, involving the IGN, La Poste and OpenStreetMap.
What are the impacts?
In a second step, the authors of the report review five major families of impacts of open public data:
"economic impacts: has open data created a market for the reuse of data? can this market be evaluated quantitatively? which private economic actors have taken up the subject?
democratic impacts: has open data strengthened the transparency of public life? is it a tool for monitoring the actors of public life (elected officials, agents of administrations, etc.) and/or a tool for empowering citizens?
the impacts on organizations that have opened data or use them, and their relationships with third parties: has open data enabled the establishment of relationships with new ecosystems? How does open data change existing relationships, for example with public service providers?
the impact on jobs, functions and working methods: which jobs are mainly impacted by the opening of data? Are we seeing the emergence of new functions, or even new jobs? Has open data changed working methods within organizations?
Finally, the impacts on the diffusion of a data culture within organizations: is open data the first brick of data literacy? Has open data paved the way for topics like the smart city?"
Nine challenges
In conclusion, the authors of the report identify nine challenges for the next decade of open public data, classified into three main themes: to make people see / want to use open data, to develop an offer that is truly adapted to the demand and to reexamine the boundaries of open data.Making people see, making them want to take advantage of open dataChallenge1: finding relevant metrics. How can we "measure" what the opening of public data produces? The two types of metrics used today (the number of reuses and the measurement of the audience of open data portals) are insufficient to capture everything that open data produces. It is time to imagine and test other metrics.Challenge 2: Open data, the pillar of intelligent cities and territories, should finally be explained and experienced by the greatest number of people. How can we explain the uses? How can we facilitate them, make them even more accessible? Many actors are trying, partially, in a scattered manner. Portals are gradually integrating more services. This challenge proposes to make it easier to see, to make people want to see and to facilitate the transition to action.Developing a data offer that is truly adapted to demandChallenge3: make data truly reusable. Is it necessary to repeat that preparation represents 80% of the time spent using open data? And that a considerable number of datasets are hardly reusable. Do we need to repeat that without standardization, without quality of service, a regular professional use of open data is not possible? Ease of use of data, one of the greatest challenges of open data today?Challenge 4: for a demand-driven open data! The energy devoted to opening a maximum of data has probably reached its limits. Just look at the many sets that have never been used. Can we imagine, on the contrary, an open data driven by demand? by what we already know to be successful? How can we identify and listen to this demand? How can we respond to it under the right conditions?Challenge 5: How can we encourage producers to make a lasting commitment, other than by constraint? One possible pitfall of introducing the principle of open data into the law would be to lose the meaning of this obligation for public actors. What is at stake here is the long-term incentive for producers to adopt an open approach, because it seems to us that this is one of the keys to the subject for the next decade. Re-users expect more than just compliance with legal obligations, they also expect a real commitment (to improve the data, to ensure the sustainability of the offer, to make an effort to improve quality, etc.).Re-examine the boundaries of open dataChallenge6: Tracking use without hindering it? Making use conditional on identification is one of the initial yellow lines of open data. But is it possible to track usage more precisely and systematically without hindering it? Should we follow the users ... or the uses?Challenge 7: From data to information. The notion of "raw data" was imposed very early on as the primary condition for "open data". However, this notion is fragile and we have known for a long time that data has necessarily undergone transformations before being published. Going further, we wonder about the possibility of publishing information, easier to understand and interpret, in addition to the so-called raw data. We can probably go even further by publishing targeted information, refined, adapted to practical and immediate uses, etc. But this does not call into question the value of raw data.Challenge 8: Open data without platforms or applications. Can we be satisfied with open data portals? Is open data always intended to produce an application? We believe that other forms of open data can emerge, outside of traditional platforms and uses.Challenge 9: Itchy data: for an open data that is not harmless!
Référence :
The pioneers of open data were intuitively cautious, and courageous publications and "itchy" uses are rather rare. How can we encourage them? Which data are problematic? Gender equality, the fight against discrimination, the fight against climate change: how can data usefully contribute to the major debates in society?
European Union merges portals to promote public data sharing
To date, the European Union has two Open Data portals. The European Data Portal collects the metadata of public data available on the Open Data portals of the EU countries. The EU Open Data Portal makes available the datasets of the EU institutions and bodies.
In the spring of 2021, Europe will merge these two currently separate gateways into a single Open Data site. This new portal will give access to more than one million datasets, from 36 countries, 6 institutions and 79 European bodies and agencies.
Référence :
IGN public consultation on the co-production and opening of geo-commons
"In France as well as abroad, more and more public authorities are seizing the dynamics of the "commons" as a third dimension to the public and the private. Initiatives mobilizing communities on the ground outside of any structure, including associations, are multiplying. At the same time, geolocalized data have taken over our daily lives and have given rise to multiple services and applications. Thanks to smartphones and GPS, geographic information has become widely available.This context offers a more open and collaborative playground for the institute: the geo-commons.
After the opening and free access to most of the IGN's data since January 1, 2021, the institute wishes to be more broadly involved in this dynamic of building commonalities and to build, with its ecosystem, its new strategy around the concept of geo-commons: a set of geographic information databases (production) and digital tools (dissemination) that are accessible to the greatest number of people.
The online public consultation " IGN and the Commons " invites professionals, users of geographic information, local authorities and partner institutions to participate in the collective impetus to build the geo-commons
Ten years of open public data: open data begins a new phase
At the very beginning of the 2010s, a few public actors voluntarily engaged in the opening of public data, mainly metropolises.
On February 21, 2011, the decree creating a "Mission Etalab" was published. Its role: to create the single interministerial portal for public data: data.gouv.fr
10 years later, the data.gouv.fr platform has given rise to numerous sectoral variations) as well as API.gouv.fr and data sharing.
The recognition, in 2016, by the Law for a Digital Republic of the principle of open public data as a matter of principle marked an important step. From now on, open data is no longer just a choice of a few, it has become an obligation for all actors invested with a public service mission.
Open data has played a central role in crisis management to inform citizens and steer public policies. Public interest in open data and its uses has probably never been so strong.
Companies are getting involved in the subject, as users of the data of course, but also sometimes by opening their own data.
Following the report by Deputy Eric Bothorel on public policy on data, algorithms and source code, the Prime Minister reminded the ministries and regional prefects on April 21, 2021, that data policy is "a strategic priority for the State in its relations with all its partners, particularly local authorities and private actors. He invites the various ministries to appoint a ministerial data administrator by May 15.
New challenges, new ambitions: the opening of data is entering a new phase.
Covid and public data: a wealth of dashboards and visualization tools to track the pandemic
At the beginning of March 2020, the only available data on the epidemic were scattered in the press releases of the ARS and Santé Publique France. These data were fragmentary and did not allow to draw curves and to follow the evolution of the epidemic.
It is a group of citizens who will take care of it. In a few days, a collective (the "OpenCOVID19" initiative) and then a community of 200 data scientists organized themselves to manually extract data from 20 ARS and 100 prefectures and integrate them into a spreadsheet. A very heavy load: everything has to be redone every day[1]. The veille-coronavirus.fr dashboard ( takes shape and offers a first consolidated vision of the official data. The implementation of this contributory tool quickly receives the support of Etalab developers, then the support of the Ministry of Health. On March 28, Édouard Philippe and Olivier Véran, in a press conference, used the infographics of veille-coronavirus.fr.
As of April 2020, 177 Covid-19-related datasets were online at data.gouv.fr.
Since March 18, Santé Publique France publishes daily updated datasets on the public data platform data.gouv.fr. and on Geodes, the mapping observatory of Santé Publique France.
This opening of data has fed the work of researchers and opened the way to a myriad of visualizations in the press. The datavisualisations of Gouvernement.fr and dashboards such as Covidtracker, Coronaboard.fr, Covinfo.fr or Vaccinator.fr rely on Geodes data.
At the beginning of March 2021, SPF proposed 123 indicators on its Geodes website, at all scales (national, regional, departmental, territorial).
Launch of the 10th spring of data.gouv.fr
On the occasion of its 10 years of existence, Etalab is organizing a whole series of events to take stock of its actions, its successes and failures ... and to imagine the next 10 years. It is a dialogue that we want to launch with you."We are well aware that the public digital landscape has changed significantly over the past decade. New questions are emerging, which also call for new answers: how can we collectively use data to serve the general interest? How can we take advantage of artificial intelligence without sacrificing ethics and public and individual freedoms? What are the profiles that the public service must acquire, today and tomorrow, to pursue its digital transformation? What can we learn from Etalab's counterparts in Europe and around the world?"
The month of April was dedicated to data quality.
May is the month of data reuse.
The month of June will be dedicated to data discoverability.
Référence :
"The data policy, a strategic priority of the State in its relations with all its partners
In a circular dated April 27, 2021, addressed to ministers and regional prefects, the Prime Minister reminds us that administrations "must constantly seek the best circulation of data, algorithms and codes, in open formats that can be used by third parties. This renewed ambition implies, in addition, a strengthening of the opening of source codes and public algorithms, as well as the use of free and open software, and the extinction, by 2023, of fees charged for the reuse of data.
It invites ministers to designate a ministerial data administrator by May 15 and regional prefects to designate a "data, algorithms and source codes" referent.
Finally, with regard to relations with private actors holding so-called "general interest" data with high added value for the public authorities, he announced the forthcoming creation of a general interest data mediator.
An interdepartmental strategy for the digital sector including skills related to data and algorithms will be proposed by the Minister of Public Transformation and Civil Service by May 15, 2021.
The objectives of opening up the data and codes of the ministries must be translated into a roadmap finalized by July 15 and published by September 15. This roadmap will have to display the priorities of the ministries in terms of opening up data and codes and include a section on training agents and managers in data issues.
Administrations are also encouraged to systematically reference their data on data.gouv.fr or api.gouv.fr, as Dinum is responsible for improving the quality of government portals. The site code.gouv.fr, listing software and algorithms opened by administrations, will soon complete the system.
Référence :
Open Data Impact: nine challenges for the next decade of open public data
The Open Data Impact program, led by the Fing, has undertaken a critical assessment of these two years of open public data. "What is open data today? What have been the impacts of the actions carried out over the last eight years? What has been successful with open data? Have the promises been fulfilled?"
In a first step, the authors of this report focused on "factualizing the diagnosis": "open data, "how many divisions?
To date, France has more than 40,000 published data sets (more than 35,000 listed on data.gouv.fr). In number, more than three quarters come from local authorities, which essentially publish small and medium-sized data sets.
The State publishes comparatively fewer games, in number, but, by nature, large quantities in volume, especially through large reference games with national coverage.
A thematic view of the data shows a very varied set. Some areas are particularly well covered: geography, economy, transportation, etc.
There are few blind spots or data-poor areas: social issues, justice and, to a lesser extent, education or culture.
"Some portals," note the authors of this report, "judiciously propose to users, for each dataset, to publish the results of their uses. For example, such and such a dataset has allowed the creation of such and such an application. This practice is clearly of interest to enhance the value of uses and to promote more and more future uses. The number of reuses of each set gives an indicator, admittedly partial, but revealing of the demand for certain sets. The data.gouv.fr platform provides a list of the games that have been used the most.
Among the datasets that have been reused, a large third are long-standing and traditionally used government data, such as INSEE data, the postal code database, or certain data specific to the work and operations of major ministries: Interior (election results, accidentology), Health (Finess, doctor demographics, medicines), Economy and Finance (Fantoir, Land Values)... "Open data has further democratized their use and the published reuses show new uses of these data.
There are also "many data previously limited to certain audiences, which Open Data has brought out of the shadows. The fuel price database is an emblematic example: previously sold for several tens of thousands of euros a year, its release in Open Data has developed its uses.
Finally, for a quarter, this list highlights the rapid success of datasets directly born of the Open Data dynamic, such as the National Address Base (BAN), a project driven by Etalab, involving the IGN, La Poste and OpenStreetMap.
What are the impacts?
In a second step, the authors of the report review five major families of impacts of open public data:
"economic impacts: has open data created a market for the reuse of data? can this market be evaluated quantitatively? which private economic actors have taken up the subject?
democratic impacts: has open data strengthened the transparency of public life? is it a tool for monitoring the actors of public life (elected officials, agents of administrations, etc.) and/or a tool for empowering citizens?
the impacts on organizations that have opened data or use them, and their relationships with third parties: has open data enabled the establishment of relationships with new ecosystems? How does open data change existing relationships, for example with public service providers?
the impact on jobs, functions and working methods: which jobs are mainly impacted by the opening of data? Are we seeing the emergence of new functions, or even new jobs? Has open data changed working methods within organizations?
Finally, the impacts on the diffusion of a data culture within organizations: is open data the first brick of data literacy? Has open data paved the way for topics like the smart city?"
Nine challenges
In conclusion, the authors of the report identify nine challenges for the next decade of open public data, classified into three main themes: to make people see / want to use open data, to develop an offer that is truly adapted to the demand and to reexamine the boundaries of open data.Making people see, making them want to take advantage of open dataChallenge1: finding relevant metrics. How can we "measure" what the opening of public data produces? The two types of metrics used today (the number of reuses and the measurement of the audience of open data portals) are insufficient to capture everything that open data produces. It is time to imagine and test other metrics.Challenge 2: Open data, the pillar of intelligent cities and territories, should finally be explained and experienced by the greatest number of people. How can we explain the uses? How can we facilitate them, make them even more accessible? Many actors are trying, partially, in a scattered manner. Portals are gradually integrating more services. This challenge proposes to make it easier to see, to make people want to see and to facilitate the transition to action.Developing a data offer that is truly adapted to demandChallenge3: make data truly reusable. Is it necessary to repeat that preparation represents 80% of the time spent using open data? And that a considerable number of datasets are hardly reusable. Do we need to repeat that without standardization, without quality of service, a regular professional use of open data is not possible? Ease of use of data, one of the greatest challenges of open data today?Challenge 4: for a demand-driven open data! The energy devoted to opening a maximum of data has probably reached its limits. Just look at the many sets that have never been used. Can we imagine, on the contrary, an open data driven by demand? by what we already know to be successful? How can we identify and listen to this demand? How can we respond to it under the right conditions?Challenge 5: How can we encourage producers to make a lasting commitment, other than by constraint? One possible pitfall of introducing the principle of open data into the law would be to lose the meaning of this obligation for public actors. What is at stake here is the long-term incentive for producers to adopt an open approach, because it seems to us that this is one of the keys to the subject for the next decade. Re-users expect more than just compliance with legal obligations, they also expect a real commitment (to improve the data, to ensure the sustainability of the offer, to make an effort to improve quality, etc.).Re-examine the boundaries of open dataChallenge6: Tracking use without hindering it? Making use conditional on identification is one of the initial yellow lines of open data. But is it possible to track usage more precisely and systematically without hindering it? Should we follow the users ... or the uses?Challenge 7: From data to information. The notion of "raw data" was imposed very early on as the primary condition for "open data". However, this notion is fragile and we have known for a long time that data has necessarily undergone transformations before being published. Going further, we wonder about the possibility of publishing information, easier to understand and interpret, in addition to the so-called raw data. We can probably go even further by publishing targeted information, refined, adapted to practical and immediate uses, etc. But this does not call into question the value of raw data.Challenge 8: Open data without platforms or applications. Can we be satisfied with open data portals? Is open data always intended to produce an application? We believe that other forms of open data can emerge, outside of traditional platforms and uses.Challenge 9: Itchy data: for an open data that is not harmless!
Référence :
The pioneers of open data were intuitively cautious, and courageous publications and "itchy" uses are rather rare. How can we encourage them? Which data are problematic? Gender equality, the fight against discrimination, the fight against climate change: how can data usefully contribute to the major debates in society?
European Union merges portals to promote public data sharing
To date, the European Union has two Open Data portals. The European Data Portal collects the metadata of public data available on the Open Data portals of the EU countries. The EU Open Data Portal makes available the datasets of the EU institutions and bodies.
In the spring of 2021, Europe will merge these two currently separate gateways into a single Open Data site. This new portal will give access to more than one million datasets, from 36 countries, 6 institutions and 79 European bodies and agencies.
Référence :
IGN public consultation on the co-production and opening of geo-commons
"In France as well as abroad, more and more public authorities are seizing the dynamics of the "commons" as a third dimension to the public and the private. Initiatives mobilizing communities on the ground outside of any structure, including associations, are multiplying. At the same time, geolocalized data have taken over our daily lives and have given rise to multiple services and applications. Thanks to smartphones and GPS, geographic information has become widely available.This context offers a more open and collaborative playground for the institute: the geo-commons.
After the opening and free access to most of the IGN's data since January 1, 2021, the institute wishes to be more broadly involved in this dynamic of building commonalities and to build, with its ecosystem, its new strategy around the concept of geo-commons: a set of geographic information databases (production) and digital tools (dissemination) that are accessible to the greatest number of people.
The online public consultation " IGN and the Commons " invites professionals, users of geographic information, local authorities and partner institutions to participate in the collective impetus to build the geo-commons
