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Portale federato degli open data del Trentino

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Index

  1. What is the Trentino Open Data Portal?
  2. What is Open Data?
  3. Why a unique opendata catalogue for Trentino?
  4. What could I find on the Trentino Open Data Portal?
  5. Which are the target users for the Trentino Open Data Portal?
  6. Which data are available for download?
  7. How do I download data from the data portal?
  8. Who could publish data on the Trentino Open Data Portal?
  9. How to publish data on the Trentino Open Data Portal?
  10. Which are the PaT ongoing actions on opendata?
  11. What is an open format?
  12. Where could I find a open format list?
  13. What is a metadata?
  14. How to open a data file in .csv format?
  15. How to open a data file in .shp format?
  16. How to open a data file in .json format?
  17. What is an API?
  18. What is a open data license?
  19. What is a CC0 license?
  20. What is a CC-BY license?
  21. Where could I find additional information?

1 - What is the Trentino Open Data Portal??

The Trentino Open Data Portal is a data catalogue that allows you to search, access, download and preview of the open data collected in the Trentino province through a single access point.

Thanks to compliance with the standards defined in the open data guidelines approved by the Provincial resolution n. 2858/2012, open data and open documents collected on the catalogue are ready to be reused both from a technological point of view that from legal point of view.

The open data guidelines provide details about the legal aspects of the release to public of the data, a set of open formats to be used, instructions on how to do enrich the data with a defined set of metadata and a minimum related documentation in order to facilitate the reuse.

The data loading and update is a continuous and constant process that is and will be developed in collaboration with all the territory stakeholder, both public and private . back to index

2 - What is Open Data

Data refers to the individual pieces of information from various sources, describing facts unambiguously reproducible and can be expressed and stored in digital formats.

The CAD (art. 68, c. 3, letter. b) describe open data as data that have the following characteristics:

  • are available under the terms of a license permitting their use by anyone, even for commercial purposes, in disaggregated format;
  • are accessible through information and communication technologies, including public and private computer networks, in open formats in compliance with subparagraph a), that are suitable for use by automated computer programs and are provided with the metadata;
  • are made available free of charge through the technologies of information and communication, including public and private computer networks, or be made available to the marginal costs incurred for their reproduction and dissemination.

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3 - Why a unique opendata catalogue for Trentino?

The choice of Trentino to publish in a single data portal facilitates the reuse of data and provides a single access point for the whole Trentino system. Improves the level of sharing, increases the quality of data and provides considerable support in the search for data. The goal is to promote the reuse of data by encouraging the development of innovative ideas.

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4 - What could I find on the Trentino Open Data Portal?

The open data catalogue includes data or documents containing public data produced by government as part of its institutional purposes that, in order to be published, were screened and compared to the standards of legality, quality, metadating, etc. It is not and it will never be present in the open data catalogue, data and documents excluded from the right of access (L. 241/90 and L.P. 23/92), the data of the Anagrafe Tributaria and those who, for the type of reuse or how you intend to achieve it, may violate:

  • the right to privacy and protection of personal information;
  • Statistical confidentiality, military, industrial, commercial, etc.
  • the right of third parties to intellectual property;
  • public safety and national defence or the conduct of criminal investigations or disciplinary. To open data published in the open data catalogue are associated with Creative Commons Zero (CC0) or Creative Commons by Attribution (CC-BY) licenses, as described in the PaT open data policy and guidelines for the use and dissemination of public data.

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    5 - Which are the target users for the Trentino Open Data Portal?

    The portal is aimed at all: public, private or commercial, researchers, analysts, civil society organizations, media, etc ., everyone interested in publishing in open data their own data and/or have need for data to be used in its activities.

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    6 - Which data are available for download?

    All those published in the open data catalogue. The download does not require any authentication procedure. It is advisable to consult the accompanying license, as this determines the use that can be done with the downloaded data.

    If you have comments, ideas, tips, reports, examples of reuse (applications, views, services, research) that are based on published data, we invite you to report them to the email address: info@dati.trentino.it

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    7 - How do I download data from the data portal?

    Once you choose the dataset that you want to download, you need to follow the link on the resource selection (= the file to download) and press the button "Download" (or "EndPoint API" if is the case) that appears in the top right tab of the description.

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    8 - Who could publish data on the Trentino Open Data Portal?

    The Departments and the Structures of the PaT, as well as all public bodies operating in the province and the instrumental bodies of PaT (as identified by art. 33, L.P. n. 3/2006) can publish their data on the open data portal of Trentino, after the adherence to the PaT open data policy, through the signing of appropriate agreements or memorandums of understanding.

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    9 - How to publish data on the Trentino Open Data Portal?

    If you fall into the category of those who can publish data in the open data catalogue (cfr. "Who could publish data on the Trentino Open Data Portal?"), then the first necessary step is to contact the working group to the email info@dati.trentino.it from where you will get all the information and support necessary for the creation of automated processes when data are available on interoperable platforms. The main steps to follow are:

    • check that the data are not covered by specific constraints (privacy, rights of third parties, etc.).
    • agree the license agreement (between CC0 or CC-BY);
    • provide data in open formats;
    • provide metadata information;
    • agree on planned update tasks.

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    10 - Which are the PaT ongoing actions on opendata?

    The open data policy of the Autonomous Province of Trento for are described here (italian): http://www.innovazione.provincia.tn.it/documentazione/in_trentino/pagina182.html Il Open data in Trentino is described here (italian): http://www.innovazione.provincia.tn.it/opendata

    Since 2010, the PaT has initiated a series of actions for the promotion of open government data, widely described in the documents of strategic planning for innovation enabled by ICT. Following the publication of geographic data of PaT in open format (PaT resolution n. 195/2012), was approved the Provincial Law (L.P.) n. 16/2012 (art. 9), according to which the PaT ensures the availability, management, access, transmission, storage and usability in digital mode of public data and documents containing public data that it owns. Moreover, in order to create conditions for fair reuse, proportionate and non-discriminatory, PaT will adopt ICT Internet technologies and it will publish the data in open formats, releasing them with standard licenses such as Creative Commons licenses.
    To implement the L.P. n. 16, in year 2012, PaT started the process of publishing open data of Trentino through the preparation of the open data policy and guidelines and the identification of a first set of data to be released as open data. In 2013, PaT started the project "Open Data in Trentino" Special coordinated from office regarding Innovation, in partnership with Informatica Trentina, TrentoRise, Fondazione Bruno Kessler and University of Trento. The publication of the "Open data of Trentino" data portal dati.trentino.it, and the continuous update of it, is the main activity around which develops the whole project.

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    11 - What is an open format?

    The Digital Administration Code (CAD) provides this definition of open data format: a data format made public, documented exhaustively and neutral than the technological tools necessary for the use of the data (art. 68, c. 3, lett. a)); For example, to represent a table, the CSV format (vd "How to open a data file in .csv format?") fulfills this requirement in that:

    • it is a data format (eg. not an image);
    • it is simple and well documented;
    • it is neutral with respect to the technological tools necessary for its use as it can be opened with different software on different platforms.

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    12 - Where could I find an open format list?

    An illustrative list of open formats is available in the "allegato B" of the Open Data policy adopted by PaT.

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    13 - What is a metadata?

    The term metadata we refers to the information that describes a set of data. In the specific case of the descriptive metadata, they constitute a level of information contained in the data and make explicit some features of it and make it more easy to identify. To facilitate the availability of data and their interoperability is important to use descriptive elements such as title, description, link, display the license validity period, owner, size, etc. For more details and for the implementation of the metadata inside the open data catalogue please consult the "allegato B" of the Open Data policy adopted by PaT.

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    14 - How to open a data file in .csv format?

    The .csv (Comma Separated Value) is a text format that is used to distribute data in a tabular format. Each line of the file corresponds to a row of the data table and the contents of the cells are identified by the chosen separator (comma or semicolon or any other symbol).
    The .csv file can be read using either open source software such as OpenOffice Calc, as well as using a proprietary software such as Microsoft Excel.

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    15 - How to open data file in .shp format?

    The format .shp ("ESRI Shapefile") is a data format for geographical data. It is composed by a set of several files with the same name and different extension (eg. Ammcmp.shp, ammcmp.shx, ammcmp.dbf and ammcmp.prj), for this reason they are distributed in a single .zip file (a format that in addition compress it, allowing to distribute files in a single file). To use them, you must first of all, unzip the zip file, and then open it with a GIS (Geographical Information Systems) software, such as Quantum GIS, OpenJump, gvSIG, ESRI ArcGIS etc.

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    16 - How to open data file in .json format?

    The format .json (JavaScript Object Notation) is a suitable format for the exchange of data in client-server web application. It is used in programming as an alternative to XML/XSLT. The simplicity of the JSON format has determined its adoption and its use via JavaScript is particularly simple, because the interpreter is able to perform the parsing through a simple call to one function (the function "eval ()"). It is not a format targeting a direct use in desktop applications, it is therefore not easily usable instead of other data formats. it can be viewed with a "json viewer" inside the browser and also converted to other formats with free tools such as Konklone

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    17 - What is an API?

    The acronym API (Application Programming Interface) indicates the way in which computer programs communicate with each other. Can be understood as a communication protocol to which programmers refer to write software programs to query other programs. The open data catalogue can be queried via the CKAN API, published with open specifications by OKFN.

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    18 - What is an open data license?

    In most national laws, there are intellectual property rights that can prevent third parties to use, reuse and redistribute data without explicit permission. When satisfied the absence of intellectual property constraints that prevent the opening of public data, it is necessary to apply to them a license that defines the conditions and procedures for re-use by anyone for commercial purposes(in compliance with art. 8 del D. Lgs. 36/2006, art. 9 della L. P. 16/2012 e all'art. 68 CAD). PaT makes use of the licenses Creative Commons Zero (CC0) and Creative Commons Attribuzione (CC-BY).

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    19 - What is a CC0 license?

    The Creative Commons Zero (CC0) is a statement that allows "the most extensive and free usage, free of charge, even for commercial purposes" of what is associated with it. Associating a CC0 license to a document or a dataset you give up all rights to the document and its content, including data, to the maximum extent possible by the laws, in full harmony with the OGD policies. At this address you can read the full text in English http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed

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    20 - What is a CC-BY license?

    An alternative to the license Creative Commons Zero (CC0) is represented by the Creative Commons license "Attribution or equivalent" (CC-BY), which allows to distribute, modify, create derivative works from the original, even for commercial purposes, provided that be recognized paternity of the author or the maker of the database. Also this license is an expression of the principle of wider access and free use even for commercial purposes. The only obligation on the licensee (the one who accepts it a license) is to cite the author of the database or document object reuse, in the manner indicated by the licensor himself (who dismisses the data set) in the license or attached with the same ("Attribution"). This license, version 2.5, is adoptable for databases that are clearly protected by copyright and/or by "sui generis" database rights (art. 102 bis, L. n. 633/41 e s.m.i). At this address you can read the full text in English http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

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    21 - Where could I find additional information?

    This FAQ is developing continuously and are enriched by the contributions of users of this catalogue. Please send your questions to the email: info@dati.trentino.it

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    Links:

    last update: 30 January 2015