In the century of data, Lithuania seeks to build a solid foundation for State Governance through data. This will affect our economy as well decisions we need to make every day. The world is changing at an inexorable pace and governments need to be prepared for it. By being an open and collaborative country, Lithuania is laying the foundations for the future economy and governance based on open data.
“Data is a strategic asset for every country; if managed and used properly, it can bring added value in a wide range of areas. Currently, around 2,000 datasets from different institutions are already available on Open Data in Lithuania. So opening up data is one of our priorities so that businesses, start-ups, and representatives of academia and society can use it to develop innovative products and services,” said Aušrinė Armonaitė, Minister of the Economy and Innovation.
“Lithuania has made significant progress in making data and thematic datasets available. The Information Society Development Committee is implementing a project that has already opened up around 750 datasets. Therefore, the opening of new public datasets will benefit both businesses developing products and innovative solutions with high commercial potential and the public looking for useful and necessary information,” said Erika Kuročkina, Vice-Minister at the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation.
By June next year, even more high-value datasets (HVDs) will be made available to business and the public. This will include geospatial, Earth observation and environmental, meteorological, statistical, mobility, and company and corporate ownership datasets that have not yet been made public.
The main areas where new data will be opened up are Earth observation and environment as well as statistics. These new HVDs will be made available on Open Data in Lithuania at https://data.gov.lt/ in electronic format via an Application Programming Interface. It will be possible to download the data in one go and scan it automatically. All HVDs will be made available to the public free of charge.
This one-stop shop for business and the public, Open Data in Lithuania makes it easy for businesses and the public to access and use data held by public sector bodies.
The new HVDs are being made available in line with the requirements of the European Commission’s legislation. This requires EU countries to open up and publish specific datasets in the categories to be re-used by 9 June next year.
All EU countries have to implement this legislation, so the thematic HVDs will be available to business and the public in other EU countries as well. Making the HVDs available will help fight climate change, reduce urban air pollution, and improve transport infrastructure. Open data are datasets that are depersonalised and have been made publicly available in open formats suitable for automated scanning, and that can be reused and distributed by anyone.
