APORTA PROJECT

The Aporta Project (www.aporta.es) has reached its first year and a half of life. Throughout this time, it has called the attention of Public Administrations, businesses and citizens to the benefits of the reuse of PSI and has raised awareness of its advantages for society.

The Aporta initiative, supported by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade and the Ministry of the Presidency, was born in October 2008 in the framework of the Avanza Plan (http://www.planavanza.es/Paginas/Inicio.aspx).

Avanza Plan is the current initiative of the Spanish Government for developing the Information Society, within the Government Strategy that follows the European Lisbon Agenda. Its main aim is to improve Spain’s position within the Information and Knowledge Society, its economic productivity and the general welfare of all Spanish citizens.

Inspired by the European Directive 2003/92/CE and the Spanish Law 37/2007 on Re-use of PSI, the purpose of the Aporta Project is to foster a culture of re-use in Spain, to improve the access to public information and to boost PSI re-use.

Therefore, we have been working on different activities, including:

• The Aporta website (www.aporta.es): The website, with more than 20.000 visits in the last year, is conceived as a meeting point for public sector, businesses and citizens interested in re-use that offers information and news on PSI and that provides different communication and participation channels for all the members of the Spanish PSI community. All the materials posted on the website are reusable and in different formats, including open source files in order to enable its reuse.
• The Aporta Guidebook (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/guia_reutilizacion): The Aporta Guidebook on Re-use of Public Sector Information is a handbook that explains the legal framework and all the issues of particular relevance for Public Administrations and re-users.
• The Aporta events (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/eventos_aporta): In Aporta we think that the first step in promoting re-use is raising awareness of the potential of PSI re-use. At the moment, Aporta Project is closely cooperating with EPSI Platform on a meeting to be held in Madrid next June, whose aim is to unveil the economic value of public sector information.
• Training workshops (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/formacion_aporta): Encouraging PSI re-use means also to explain the reuse process to the different actors involved. Therefore, Aporta has organized different training lectures during 2009 and has made available though its website all the training materials.
• Catalogue of Public Information (http://www.aporta.es/web/guest/catalogo-de-informacion-publica): A catalogue of freely accessible online public information, belonging to the Spanish General Administration, has been launched last Monday. It provides a single access point to the various government websites that offer public information resources.