"Open data basic resource of 21st century"

The Irish Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin, has qualified open data as a basic resource of 21st century. Making government data publicly available for re-use brings economic, social and democratic benefits. That's why last year the country decided to set up a national data infrastructure. So told Eoin MacCuirc, Databank and Dissemination Manager at the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO), his audience two months ago at the Open for Business v.2.0 conference in Dublin.

The CSO is helping other national authorities in making their data available online. It has set up a separate section on its portal where these organisations can publish their data under their own names and logos. The information is hosted by the CSO, but the respective organisations remain owners of their data.

We are explicitly calling upon other public agencies [on the ONA list] to open their data. We have a long list of databases that we would like to see available to the public.