This September I was exceptionally proud to be invited to serve as one of two keynotes for the Innovation and Smart Government Conference 2022 (ISGOV2022) and open this conference, delivering my talk titled “Data as an asset for Sustainable Development of data-driven Smart Cities and Smart Society”. Another keynote was delivered by J. Ramon Gil-Garcia with the talk devoted to the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector.

Some key takeaways or the main points of this talk (see slides above):
💡 Open data became a daily phenomenon, but making government data publicly available is not enough – there is time and need for the next steps towards sustainable and smart data ecosystems, requiring transformations at all levels;
💡 Open data is not only about OGD (B2G, crowdsourced data, sensor generated data etc.);
💡 Open data is not about data availability and accessibility. The data should –> must be qualitative (?), well-documented, valuabl (high value data (?)), smart (?), while the entry point from which they are available should be sufficiently user-friendly and interactive. Here, the concepts after which “?” follows is a subject for another 1.5h long talk :);
💡Open data quality is not only about metadata, their completeness and accuracy, it is also about the quality of content of dataset, where completeness of data is not the only criteria to be assessed! (reliability, internal and external consistency, timeliness, currency / up-to-date’ness and many more!);
💡{open, geospatial, smart, …} data ecosystem is not only about the platform (e.g., OGD portal), from which data can be downloaded, and not only about data governance or management. It is also not only about the data, which is, however, the key asset. It is many more…
💡Open data users – individuals, businesses (SME) etc., are not only end-users, they are (should be) an integral part of open data ecosystem. In other words, public data (eco)system is also about “public” –> stakeholders and actors of OD ecosystems should be identified (their role, needs etc.), which should then imply in requirements for newer and sustainable data ecosystems, which will facilitate interaction of (multiple) stakeholders
💡All in all, it’s all about data, portal, service, policy…
💡At the same time users and the whole society should be educated and acquire knowledge and skills needed to interact with the OD artifacts –> digital literacy, and open data literacy, where the latter term is not well-defined at this moment, while it is obvious that we need it!

I am very grateful ISGOV organizers, namely, the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas (UAT), the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM), the University of Guadalajara (UDG), the I-Lab Public Innovation and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory – for having me as a part of this conference!!!

I am also grateful to all participants, especially those who participated in a discussion with so many relevant questions. Hope that this talk was interesting and contributed to the general understanding of the topic!