Rennes Métropole: 1st French Community to strategically open up government transport data

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Posted by Mary Gianoli on 28 Apr 2010

Rennes, France: April 2010

During February 2010, Rennes announced a pilot to open up for re-use government transportation data and was reported by LiberTIC and the ePSIplatform, among others.

The story has changed from one about a pilot to one now about the success of Rennes’ pioneering open data and the potential for the future.

The Rennes Kéolis tranportation data portal is online.

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The text of the news on the Rennes open data story by DD à Rennes (approximate English translation) (French Text online)

“Rennes is an innovator in data management service, in fact, in a press release we learn that the city now provides public data under Creative Commons. After London and San Francisco, Rennes is the first French town to embark on such an approach.

Excerpt from press release:

Rennes, the city of Rennes and Rennes Kéolis, the network operator (STAR Service Transportation of Rennes) and VéloStars announced the opening and making available of their public data through a website dedicated to Open Source and a programming interface specifically implementation (API), effective 1 March 2010 http://data.keolis-rennes.com

For the first time in France, a community decides to strategically open up the data from its public transportation system, geo data geo and information practices 1500 of agencies and associations. By public transportation data it is data that constitutes the network, infrastructure, availability of equipment (elevators, escalators, station bike) or the location of a public place. This is only the first step Rennes Métropole to open public data and move forward urban innovation in a collaborative and open way.

Through this example of simpler ways to use public transport and bicycle data the potential is shown and will be further utilised. In fact developers can, through this site, use data to make it available on their website, creating applications for mobile phones, etc. ... And thus improve and expand the uses of such transport.”

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Charles Nepote, published on the FING Blog on the re-use of public data, a post entitled: “Réutilisation de données de transport: 5 applications 21 jours après l'ouverture : chapeau Keolis Rennes!” (Re-use of pubic transportation data: 5 applications in 21 days after the opening of data) describing the immediate results from the open data inititative.

Just three short weeks after opening its data on 1 March, their portal of re-use of their data transmission, Keolis Rennes can boast of having given birth to 5 applications exploiting its original data, visible to https: / / www.levelostar.fr/.

Note that Keolis has worked hard: the platform is very well done with extensive documentation, forums with developers help. Keolis Rennes had also previously identified some local innovators interested in the data. Finally, Keolis has really engaged in dialogue with developers, gradually incorporating their comments in order to facilitate maximum re-use of data.

This pioneering example in France suggests that a proposed re-use of public data quality results can be achieve very fast. Who's next?”

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