Brussels, 15 August 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

V1 Magazine interviewed EEA executive director McGlade at the recent Esri conference. From the interview we present some remarks, connected to making data available, re-use of data and the role of citizens.

One making data available, Jacqueline McGlade says: "In the last few years, we’ve really been pushing countries to come online voluntarily with information that isn’t part of their regulatory requirement, but that citizens really want to know about. Air quality is a classic one, where countries don’t have to report all the time on air quality, but they are doing it, and for cities in particular. This idea that you do yourself less harm by reporting everything to the citizen is gradually building up. In other words, it’s better to be open and transparent about what’s really happening, than to hide it away or to create information aggregates and to smooth out all the anomalies."

Cheaper sensors and cloud hosting are becoming important to the EEA, but not just to reduce the cost of operations, also to involve citizens in new ways in the work of the EEA and related national institutions: "Sensors are the future. It is a way in which citizens, if properly priced, can participate. I’m after adding to what countries can do by having citizens bring in data and see it being used. It’s not just crowsdourcing, but professionalizing ways in which citizens can participate."

Making more data available is also of importance "I think we can unleash an enormous amount of knowledge that is currently sitting in shoe boxes and computers where there isn’t a home for it. I’m hoping to create a sort of marketplace for environmental information for sharing data about a place, and where you get credit if you collected the data."

Where the EEA has a role in terms of data provision, McGlade also stresses that citizens and organizations need to be willing to also act on environmental and climate data: "We will help you, we’ll make the data publicly available and transparent, we’ll tell you about the infrastructure, but then you need to act on it in a way that you’ve thought about what climate change will mean".