Open data in the Spanish public administrations: main subject categories and apps

Abstract

There is a growing number of open data initiatives that allow citizens to reuse public data sets through specifically designed applications. This paper presents an overview of these initiatives and their development in Spain, analyzing the open data sets available and the functions and features of the applications developed for this purpose. The information source used in this work is the portal http://datos.gob.es, of national scope which organizes and manages the public information catalog of Spanish administrations. This source offers information about these data sets and the applications and utilities developed. The analysis shows a diverse distribution of these open data sets that requires grouping by metacategories for its study and analysis. The level of development of the applications seems low but it may be due to the incipience on freely available data. In any case, the data sets related to infrastructures (especially transports) appear to be the main object of the applications developed so far in Spain in this context.