Brussels, 15 December 2010

At the Lift-Off towards Open Government conference in Brussels EC Vice-President Neelie Kroes gave a speech 'My vision for eGovernment, and how to make it real'

Stating that eGovernment should be low-hanging fruit for Member States as its the one policy domain where governments and civil servants are truly in control, Kroes launched an action plan. "This is about more than good government. Effective and efficient public administration is the first pillar of the broader competitiveness Europe needs." "This Action Plan is not about incremental change, nor is it empty hype. It is practical and aimed at significantly improving the quality, stability, and effectiveness of the public sector in Europe."

Acknowledging the Commission itself has been a slow adopter until now, Kroes as well as her colleague EC VP Šefčovič are committed to "not ask of national, regional and local authorities what we are not prepared to do ourselves". This means the Commission will:

• use eProcurement
• rationalise our web presence and ICT back office
• adopt an open data strategy, and look at setting up a portal for EU open data - to encourage others to match and beat us in the effort to open up data
• take steps towards going paperless

"Europe should be the world’s laboratory for innovation in the public sector. We have the talent, the imperative and the technologies. We must be very concrete. Find the real problems in our pilots and experiences and deal with them. That is the recipe for getting Every European Digital."

The adoption of an open data strategy, as stated, comes with looking at a EU open data portal. A first discussion with experienced people from around other open data portal projects in various EU countries has already taken place early November and the report of that meeting has just been released as well (PDF for download). Kroes is announcing it not just as an action but also as a clear challenge to Member States and others to outdo the EC in their effort in opening up data.

Neelie Kroes certainly made her support for open government data extremely clear:

"I have said it before, and I say it again: yes to open data! I want to see more citizens and businesses making use of more open – machine readable – data."