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processes. Thus, throughout the first decade of the 21st Century, e-Government has provided a flow of information
and data available for re-use known as Open Data Government, although the concepts "open data" and "open
government data" suffer from a certain amount of ambiguity and one may exist without the other (Harlan Yu and
David G. Robinson, 2012).
The idea of a more transparent government and free access to information resources from the most varied fields
(the environment, weather, scientific information, cultural heritage...) took off parallel to the development of the
Internet and has become explicit in a great range of activities: The Budapest Declaration in 2001, the European
Directive on the re-use of public sector information in 2003 (amended by Directive 2013/37/EU on 26 June 2013),
the formulation of the open data principles in 2007 (see below), the Open Government Directive by Obama in
2009, the open access initiative in the United Kingdom in 2009 and the communication on Open Data by the
European Commission (2011) that is aimed at creating a major European data portal and putting European cultural
heritage on-line. Although some open data principles have been formulated, these eight principles have a general
recognition among the advocates of the movement (Open Government Data Principles, 2007):
1. Full: all data is made available.
2. Primary: data must be collected at the source.
3. Timely: available as quickly as possible.
4. Accessible: for all uses and users.
5. Machine: processable, by automated processing.
6. Non-discriminatory: without registration requisites or controls.
7. Non-proprietary: open formats.
8. License-free: limits only to protect personal data and security.
In recent years and with backing by the W3C consortium, the open data movement has consolidated itself on the
basic lines of promoting the use of raw data made available through open licenses as well as re-usable and linkable
formats, which has given rise to the well known five star scheme. That clear explanation still finds difficulty over
the distinction between data and information (Davies, 2010 and Yu and Robinson 2012), expressions that are
gradually being replaced by those of knowledge, being understood as open if it complies with the conditions “free
to use, reuse, and redistribute it – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike” (Open
Definition).
2. Open Data vs. Open Content – status of the matter
Development of new technologies and ongoing evolution of society have brought about the appearance of new
ways to produce and share information, which involves more transparency and wider access to information,
especially to governmental information. In order to keep up with this development, several tools have been
implemented to view and process data, mainly for open access (open data) in spite of constantly being “under
construction” (open content).
Work groups have been established for these two subjects, such as Open Access Foundation, Open Content
Alliance or Data Documentation Alliance. In spite of not being very numerous, papers on the subject have not
taken long to appear -articles, books and regulatory literature (standards,…)- as well as organizations that promote
them. Noteworthy, articles are those published under the auspices of the Open Access Foundation since
2007.
“The mere existence of data is not enough” stated Pascal Heus and Arofan Gregory (2010) in an article
published under the auspices of the Open Access Foundation. In order to cover the users’ needs, authors propose
that various measures be taken, such as assuring data quality. As data alone is meaningless, data must be accessible
to researchers in order for it to be useful.
Important steps have been taken to improve data quality, access, documentation and data exchange. However,
there are still things to improve: adopting and using standards, adapting tools and infrastructures, training people,
preparing reference materials, implementing change management.

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