Luxembourg Open data Strategy

Last update: 14/12/2022

The official version of this document is the French version.

Introduction

In order to strengthen democracy, increase its resilience and move towards an open society that trusts its institutions, the Luxembourg government has implemented a policy of increased openness and transparency. The first step in this process has been the promotion and development of a truly digital society, a key objective of the national Digital Luxembourg initiative. This has enabled the Grand Duchy to develop as a European hub for digital skills and related economic activities. In this context, open data has been identified as a key factor, not only for the government, but also for businesses and civil society as a whole.
This strategy covers Luxembourg's national programme for the implementation of the principles related to Open data, in line with the principles of openness and transparency of the 2021-2025 e-governance strategy and the national interoperability framework. The national Open data roadmap contains a more detailed list of measures.

Key elements

Public sector data

Luxembourg public sector bodies have a long history of creating, collecting, managing and using a wide variety of data, information and documents. Within the scope of Luxembourg's Open data strategy, this information is not only used for its primary purpose (administrative processing) but is also open to new uses, combinations, corrections and improvements. For this reason - unless prohibited by law - this data must be collected, properly described, published and thus made discoverable and reusable, via national and European platforms including the national portal data.public.lu, the geoportal, the statistical portal and the European portal.
Public sector information forms the basis of the Open data infrastructure, in which the private sector is invited to participate. Unless otherwise stated or in contradiction with existing legislation, data produced or held by public sector bodies should be considered "open by default", and as such proactively published for re-use on the data.public.lu portal following the principles set out in the sections "Data Quality" and "Licensing".
Public sector institutions are encouraged to make greater use of Open data (principle of data-driven government and data-driven decision-making), and to document their re-use cases on the national Open data portal. Re-use of data within the public sector reduces production costs and improves the quality and impact of this data.
A key objective of this strategy is to publish inventories of existing data from public sector institutions, including lists of datasets considered to be of high value, in accordance with the legislation.

High value data sets

The following themes are considered priorities

• geospatial data;
• Earth observation and environmental data;
• meteorological data;
• statistical data;
• mobility data;
• business and business ownership data.

Licensing

Open data needs to be linked to clear and recognised licences in order to be reusable, so all published datasets must state a licence. Although there is no obligation to adopt a particular licence, licences that prohibit commercial exploitation should be avoided and the Luxembourg government strongly advocates the use of Creative Commons licences, in particular the Creative Commons Zero licence (CC0 - public domain).
For more information on Creative Commons licences: https://creativecommons.org/

National Data Portal: Central platform - decentralised data

As part of this strategy, datasets are to be uploaded by data producers to the national Open data portal data.public.lu, where the aggregation of all proposed data facilitates the search for relevant data. To manage the decentralisation of data, the national portal syndicates the content available on other portals (e.g. geoportal, INSPIRE portal, statistical portal, ...).
The portal allows data producers and portal operators to interact and exchange information about the data. Coordinated collaboration with other national data initiatives as well as with European and international data portals ensures that Luxembourg data are visible and usable in a wider context and can lead to added value contributions.

Data quality

Data should be offered and updated as much as possible in standard, interoperable, machine-readable formats, accessible and delivered via web services, APIs and mass download. Real-time data should be provided unless disproportionately burdened.
Each dataset should be provided with a complete and current set of descriptive information (metadata).

Anonymisation and pseudonymisation

The need for Open data must be assessed against the protection of personal data, which is a fundamental right. Although some datasets, in their complete form, may contain information that precludes publication under current legislation, efforts should be made to anonymise or pseudonymise them so that essential information can be published as Open data.

Raising awareness

With a view to managing change, the government's Information and Press Service (SIP) is establishing a general strategy for raising awareness and providing information on Open data, with the aim of involving decision-makers in all government departments and services. Alongside this systematic approach, on-the-ground initiatives with key players directly involved will enable data to be discovered, prepared, described and published efficiently, thus contributing to a continuous flow of new information on the portal.
The SIP Open data team maintains contact with data producers and the user community.
Regular events around specific themes are organised to draw attention to the relevant datasets and promote their re-use.

Ecosystem

The establishment of Open data officers in each organisation will help to structure and stimulate the publication of Open data. The SIP will set up and animate the network of these "ambassadors" within the public sector. Based on Open data, re-uses are intended to take advantage of a new digital data ecosystem offering direct benefits to data producers and society at large, as well as long-term economic returns. In order to assess the impact of this Open data, re-uses are inventoried and promoted as such on the Open data portal. It is envisaged to collaborate with start-ups and other companies specialised in this field as well as with civil society in order to stimulate the production of innovative re-uses.

Link with the Access to information policy

Documents made available within the framework of the Access to information Act (Transparent and Open Government Act, 14 September 2018) are considered Open data and as such are made available on the national Open data portal.

Assessment of progress

A set of criteria and indicators will be used to monitor Luxembourg's progress in the field of Open data. Monitoring of published data and national maturity will be reported regularly, and the results of this assessment will be published as Open data.

Outlook

An ever more rapid multiplication of the volume of available data, a modern legislative context adapted to improve access to and re-use of information, and a new data-driven ecosystem will support Luxembourg's migration towards a truly digital society, and contribute to better performance of public institutions, a growing economy and a more vibrant democracy.