YDS

YDS Project (Your Data Stories), a project co-funded by the EU under H2020-INSO-1-2014 ICT-enabled open government programme aimed to meet the citizen and business needs by putting open data into good and innovative uses, promoting data use, re-use and re-purposing, ultimately enhancing transparency and corruption fighting. In addition, YourDataStories aimed to bring open data in social computing, by adding a third social dimension to the data, by making semantically linked open data visible and usable in popular social media platforms, where the data can be seen, used, linked, and augmented by millions of users in order to become part of their user stories.

The revolution in information technology over the last years has proven its ability to process huge amounts of data and made evident that big data can change the world. Open Government Data (OGD), from being an obscure possibility just five years ago, is spreading across the globe at a phenomenal rate, delivering the promise to spur innovation, to deliver better services for less money, to improve planning, to increase transparency, and to reduce corruption.

In this context, YourDataStories envisioned to bring this promise closer to reality, through a highly customizable online platform for data exploitation focused in the financial flows that are critical for transparency, collaboration and participation. Users, ranging from governmental bodies to journalists and to citizens, will be facilitated by powerful and established tools, not only to discover relevant information but also to remix it with diverse and dynamic data sources: YourDataStories acts like an interactive canvas to enable data citizens to (re)write their own data history. YourDataStories brings an innovative solution whose innovation potential spreads across many directions, from leveraging best practices and proven technologies across Europe, to exploiting the social Web for accessing citizens, and to supporting sustainable public services across borders. Building on top of the “Transparency Portal” initiative of the Greek government, YourDataStories can be viewed as a way to showcase and transfer the existing expertise to European level, in an attempt to transform governments and governance in Europe. At the same time, YourDataStories seeks to exploit and embed in this effort the benefits of the social Web, establishing an innovative bidirectional channel between the Social and Semantic Web. Finally, YourDataStories aimed to support sustainable services, supported by a marketing ecosystem of applications offering cross-border services of public finance flows across Europe.

YDS consortium, coordinated by Athens Technology Center SA (Greece) included National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos” (Greece), TenForce BVBA (Belgium), TenForce BVBA (Belgium), National University of Ireland (Ireland), Stichting European Journalism Centre (Netherlands), Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (Ireland), Hellenic Ministry of Administrative Reform and E-Governance (Greece) and Greek Free / Open Source Software Society (Greece).

ATC was the Project Coordinator heavily involved in the technical implementation of the project as being responsible for delivering the YourDataStories Integrated Platform as well as for leading together with Tenforce the exploitation activities of the project.

The project started in February 2015 and had a duration of 36 months.