Nantes, 16 February 2011

The civic organization in Nantes Libertic has been advocating the release of open data in their city. They are therefore very pleased with the recent decision of their city to indeed 'go for open data'. In the text below Libertic describes how they have seen the process unfold in the past months.

"How Nantes citizens got their data to be released

On February 3rd, Jean-Marc Ayrault, Mayor of our city of Nantes, publicly announced the upcoming release of local data. This decision followed a 9 month period of mobilization for our non-profit organization, Libertic, dedicated to the promotion of Open Government, and Opendata in France.

After a series of meetings and conferences to raise the awareness of administrative departments, we organized many informative workshops about Opendata throughout 2010 to mobilize local actors. Through these interventions, a community of Opendata aficionados was created but the local political representatives were still not taking hold of the subject. It then became essential to go one step further in order to get their attention, so we participated in the International Opendataday and organized a Hackathon, during which some fifteen volunteers collected data from the city website, and used it to create applications in order to demonstrate the benefits of opening data to the public. A local startup also voluntarily developed a civic platform to host the collected data.

At the same time, and still with the idea of trying to obtain the elected officials’ attention, a petition was launched in favor of an open data policy. A hard copy was presented to the citizens of Nantes, at the Christmas market, and a digital version was also available online. The latter began to be relayed on online social networks and on Twitter by Nantes’ online community. Journalists saw the information passing, and seized the subject, publishing articles about it in the press. That is how our Mayor personally read these articles, and his cabinet contacted us the same day: “When can we meet?”

The day after this call, we had a meeting with our Mayor’s newly hired communications advisor, who was already well informed on the topic of Open Government, and Opendata. His goal: get more information to be able to explain the subject to the Mayor, and organize a meeting with him in order to validate an open data policy.

Thanks to this new contact and his work on our behalf, we met our Mayor on February 3rd to introduce him to the principles and benefits of Opendata, and some developpers also made a presentation of their services. Following this, the announcement of an open data policy (link to video below) was made at the inauguration of our new coworking space La Cantine Nantes.

This open data policy is the accomplishment of the spirited engagement and the support of more than two hundred Nantes citizens who carried this movement with energy and enthusiasm. It seems that all the different models of initiating Opendata are now settled in France.

The city of Rennes first released its data in 2010 after a private activism. Paris opened in January after actions taken by internal departments. Nantes will soon open as a result of the raised interest of the citizens. But this map of opendata in France is already obsolete as civic opendata activism is arising elsewhere throughout France. In addition to Regardscitoyens and their launch of Nosdonnées.fr on CKAN, initiatives in favor of local opendata policies are emerging in different cities such as Besancon, Toulouse, Lille, and Dijon. It seems french revolution over opendata is on the way.

In it’s communication to the press, the city of Nantes announced not only it’s involvement in Opendata, but also it’s intention to involve citizens in the whole process of opendata release.

For now, the cityhall is recruiting its opendata team. A first meeting should be organized next week and we will keep on promoting the idea that opendata policy is not only an opportunity to create applications and new services, but also as an opportunity to initiate a new bond between governements and citizens, in order to fulfill economic and social benefits in a more open governement scheme."

A useful insight into the local activities deployed to get local government as well as citizens involved in the theme of PSI re-use!

Related Links:

Nantes goes Open Data