PROCEEDINGS
www.samos-summit.org
Yannis Charalabidis, Irene Matzakou, Fenareti Lampathaki University of the Aegean, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
November 2012
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Samos, 4th July, 2012 - Doryssa Seaside Resort
More than 80 high-level ICT experts and decision makers from 20 countries participated in the international
Samos 2012 Summit on “Open Data and Interoperability for Governance, Industry and Society”, that took
place from 2nd to 6th of July 2012 in the island of Samos.
The Samos 2012 Summit on Open Data and Interoperability was co-organised by the University of the
Aegean1, the Greek Interoperability Centre2 of the National Technical University of Athens3, the ENGAGE e-
Infrastructures project4 (co-funded by the European Commission) and the ENSEMBLE Support Action5 (under
the auspices of the Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) cluster6 of DG Connect7), in order to foster
international cooperation and strive for a new research and practice agenda in open data, collaborative
governance, enterprise Interoperability and future internet systems.
With an emphasis on Open Data, Interoperability and a new Participative Governance Model for the public
sector, the enterprise and within a connected, inclusive society, the Samos Summit was a first-class opportunity
to see, interact with and influence cutting-edge European ICT research projects and initiatives.
1 http://www.aegean.gr/aegean/en/intro_en.htm
2 http://www.iocenter.eu/
3 http://www.ntua.gr/index_en.html
4 http://www.engage-project.eu/engage/wp/
5 http://www.fines-cluster.eu/fines/jm/FInES-Private-Information/ensemble.html
6 http://www.fines-cluster.eu/fines/jm/
7 http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/connect/index_en.htm
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The Samos Summit was attended by more than 120 participants came
from more than 20 countries, representing research and development
centers of Google, IBM, Microsoft, Intrasoft International, Engineering,
TXT, Whitehall Reply, Athens Technology Centre, Fraunhofer, Poznan
supercomputing centre, Cycorp and more. Representatives from several
collective bodies and organizations joined the discussions and workshops
of the Summit including W3C, ISA (European Commission unit for Interoperability), EGI (European grid
infrastructure), the Hellenic Parliament and Greek, Austrian, Slovenian, Spanish, Italian public sector and e-
Government units.
The key messages of the Summit, as presented in the Samos Declaration8, put the emphasis on the following
actions:
Raise the legal and administrative barriers which prevent the spreading of open data
Support research on metadata, core vocabularies and visualization, as new ways of discovering and
using open data
Promote innovation and entrepreneurship on open data applications for the public
Support open data use by science, in a global effort to reach evidence-based decision making on
societal problems
Promote scientific approaches in solving Interoperability issues, and especially the Interoperability
Scientific Foundations
Strive for open data and Interoperability “killer-apps”, in order to illustrate the power of ICT tools
towards wider audiences
Foster collaboration among scientific communities, industry, SMEs, public sector and citizens, towards
an ecosystem where the immense potential of open, interoperable data will be exploited
The above wishes and wills of the ICT research community have been endorsed by numerous members of the
community.
May this Summit serve as an inspiration for all, in the challenging tides we navigate.
(edited in November 2012)
Yannis Charalabidis, Samos 2012 Summit Chair
8 http://samos-summit.blogspot.gr/2012/07/samos-2012-summit-declaration-on-open.html
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Samos 2012 Summit Chairs
Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean, Greece
Euripidis Loukis, University of the Aegean, Greece
John Psarras, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Samos 2012 Summit Scientific Committee
Carlos Agostinho, UNINOVA, Portugal
Pierluigi Assogna, IASI-CNR, Italy
Yannis Charalabidis, University of Aegean, Greece
Matthias Fluegge, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany
Ricardo Goncalves, UNINOVA, Portugal
Nikos Houssos, EuroCRIS, Netherlands
Marijn Janssen, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Keith Jeffery, Science and Technology Facility Council, UK
Fotis Karayannis, Independent/Microsoft Innovation Centre, Greece
Akrivi-Vivian Kiousi, INTRASOFT International, Luxembourg
Sotiris Koussouris, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece
Fenareti Lampathaki, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece
Euripidis Loukis, University of Aegean, Greece
Michele Missikoff, IASI-CNR, Italy
Spyros Mouzakitis, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece
Keith Popplewell, Coventry University, UK
John Psarras, National Technical University of Athens (ENGAGE & ENSEMBLE coordinator), Greece
Antonis Ramfos, Intrasoft International, Belgium
Avi Yaeli, IBM Research Haifa, Israel
Anneke Zuiderwijk, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
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Samos 2012 Summit Organizing Team
Agenda / Web Site / Presentations / Proceedings
Irene Matzakou, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece
Organization of Accommodation and Trips / Registration / Registration Fees / Logistics / Prints
Lefkothea Spiliotopoulou, Vasiliki Diamantopoulou, University of the Aegean, Greece
Videos and Interviews
Tina Barbatsalou, University of the Aegean, Greece
Technical support (sound, lights, internet connections)
Michael Karypidis, Yannis Koulizakis, Iraklis Pappas, University of the Aegean, Greece
Photos
Periklis Leros, University of the Aegean, Greece
Transportation Management
Athanasios Tsakirakis, Elena Spanou, University of the Aegean, Greece
Presentation Rooms
Christina Karanikola, Ioanna Topa, Niki Kiriakou, Areti Prentza, University of the Aegean, Greece
Samos 2012 Summit Hosts
University of the Aegean
Union of Municipalities of Samos, Ikaria, Fourni islands
Municipality of Samos
Union of Samos Wine Producing Cooperatives
Doryssa Seaside Resort
“Aristarchos” Airport of Samos
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Samos 2012 Summit Co-organisers
ΕNGAGE eInfrastructures project
ENSEMBLE FP7 project
PADGETS FP7 project
NOMAD FP7 Project
CROSSOVER FP7 Project
Samos 2012 Summit Organisers
University of Aegean / ICSD / Information Systems Laboratory
www.icsd.aegean.gr/is-lab
Greek Interoperability Centre / National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) / DSS Laboratory
www.iocenter.eu
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CONTENTS
1 Context of the 2012 Summit 9
2 Plenary Session I: The 3rd Samos Summit on Open Data and Interoperability – “From Samos to Europe and the World” 10
2.1 "Welcome by the host: The University of the Aegean in Samos" 10
2.2 "Samos and its region" 11
2.3 "Samos 2012 Summit: Key issues on Open Data and Interoperability" 11
2.4 "CONNECTing to the Future Internet" 12
2.5 On Open Data and Governance: Perspectives from Austria" 12
2.6 Questions and Answers Session 13
3 Plenary Session II: Future Internet and Interoperability: Defining the shape of Tomorrow 14
3.1 "The FI-WARE project on Future Internet, status and perspectives" 14
3.2 The IMAGINE integrated project and a forward looking view on Future Internet" 15
3.3 "The MSEE integrated project for service innovation in manufacturing" 15
3.4 Questions and Answers Session 16
4 Plenary Session III: Open Data for Science, Society and Business 17
4.1 European Standardisation for Open Data 17
4.2 An industry view on Open Data 18
4.3 On open data platforms: characteristics and challenges 19
4.4 Business Models for PSI Re-use 20
5 Plenary Session IV: Open Data and Interoperability: Regional Views and Opportunities 21
5.1 Open Data and Electronic Participation in Western Balkans" 21
5.2 "Open Data Initiatives in Greece and the World" 22
5.3 "World-wide cases on linked, open data and Interoperability" 23
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5.4 Danube Region as a potential testbed for cross-border innovation 23
5.5 Questions and Answers Session 24
6 Academic Track: Academic and Research Directions in Open Data 25
7 The Samos 2012 Summit Keynote Speeches 26
7.1 Open Data: Worldwide initiatives, experiences and challenges 26
7.2 The future Internet Enterprise Systems Research Roadmap 27
8 Samos 2012 Summit Workshops 28
8.1 The ENGAGE Workshops on Open Data 28
8.1.1 Plenary Presentation of the ENGAGE e-Infrastructure Project on Open Data 28
8.1.2 WS I: Open Data Requirements 29
8.1.2.1 Objectives 29
8.1.2.2 Results 30
8.1.3 WS II: The ENGAGE Open Data Prototype 30
8.1.3.1 Objectives 30
8.1.3.2 Results 30
8.1.4 WS III: New visions and ideas for Open Data and Governance 31
8.1.4.1 Objectives 31
8.1.4.2 Results 31
8.2 The ENSEMBLE Workshops on Interoperability 33
8.2.1 Plenary presentation: FInES, ENSEMBLE and a Scientific Perspective for Enterprise Interoperability 33
8.2.2 WS IV: EISB Workshop 34
8.2.3 ENSEMBLE – FinES Workshops Findings 35
8.2.3.1 Moving the EISB Forward – Sustainability 35
8.2.3.2 Report on thoughts concerning the EI Laws 35
8.3 WS VII: eFiscal Workshop on computing e-Infrastructure costs 37
8.3.1 e-Fiscal Workshop Objective 37
8.3.2 e-Fiscal Workshop Findings 37
8.4 WS VIII: Legal challenges for FP7 projects: a +Spaces and WeGov Workshop 40
8.4.1 Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group 40
8.4.2 MOSIPS - Open data and multi-agent models for the simulation and forecast of the Public Policies impact 40
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8.4.3 Legal and Ethical Issues relating to the use by policy makers of tools for tracking and analysing social networking discussion 41
8.4.4 Controllership issues in FP7 projects – example of SocIoS 41
8.4.5 Legal Issues while researching users’ behaviour in virtual spaces 42
8.4.6 Privacy, Law and Social Networks ‐ is 'consenting' a model of the past? 42
8.4.7 Discussion: The future of legal and ethical research in Europe 42
8.5 WS X: PADGETS/ NOMAD Workshops on Open Data Analytics 43
8.5.1 Visual Analytics for Policy Formulation: Demonstration of the PADGETS Platform 43
8.5.2 Policy Gadgets Mashing Underlying Group Knowledge in Web 2.0 Media 43
8.5.3 An overview of NOMAD architecture and technologies 43
8.5.4 The case of Publicspending.gr: Greek public spending in a nutshell 44
8.6 WS XI: A Roadmap for the migration of the FInES Research Roadmap on the Web 45
9 The Samos Summit Declaration 46
10 Samos Summit by numbers 48
10.1 Summary 48
10.2 Twitter Statistics 49
10.3 The most popular users 49
10.4 Source of tweets 49
10.5 Top 20 words used 50
11 Samos 2012 Summit Memories 51
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1 Context of the 2012 Summit Open data provide an unprecedented opportunity for societies to move towards transparency, evidence-based
decisions, enhanced cohesion, public engagement and trust. Public sector information may be offered as
”Open Data” in many forms and through different media: from simple datasets describing traffic or
unemployment, to web services linking and mashing information from different sources, to interactive
visualization of complex phenomena, to citizen-based data gathering and transmission. This way, new
information is made available to scientists, citizens and enterprises for developing and offering value-added
services, thus forming a supply chain around publicly available open data.
In this context, the ENGAGE project9, funded by the European Commission under the e-
Infrastructures Programme, aims at the deployment and use of an advanced service
infrastructure, incorporating distributed and diverse public sector information resources as well
as data curation, semantic annotation and visualization tools, capable of supporting scientific collaboration and
governance-related research from multi-disciplinary scientific communities, while also empowering the
deployment of open governmental data towards citizens.
In parallel, in a turbulent world where technological evolution has surpassed even the most imaginary scenarios
predicted a few years ago, Interoperability among organizations and information systems remains an
intangible and elusive challenge. In light of the financial crisis and with the advent of the Future Internet,
enterprises are faced with unprecedented challenges and opportunities that bring forward a radical game
change in the business landscape. Τhe Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) Cluster10, supported by the
European Commission over ten years, has thus emerged as a field of activity that aims at enabling enterprises,
including SMEs, by means of ICT, to exploit the full potential of the Future Internet.
In this context, ENSEMBLE («Envisioning, Supporting and Promoting
Future Internet Enterprise Systems Research through Scientific
Collaboration»)11, a Support Action funded by the European Commission, aims to coordinate and promote
research activities in the domain of Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES)12, providing a sustainable
infrastructure for the FInES community into use for these purposes into the foreseeable future. ENSEMBLE,
working with the FInES community, develops and implements a systematic approach to the establishment of
the scientific foundations of Enterprise Interoperability (EI). Within the Samos 2012 Summit, participants had
the opportunity to join the Collaborative Workshops on (a) the Enterprise Interoperability Scientific
Formulation and (b) the new Research Roadmap on Future Internet Enterprise Systems, as they have been
prepared by the research community, the ENSEMBLE project partners and the Experts Scientific Committee.
The Samos 2012 Summit on Open Data and Interoperability, aims at bringing together policy makers, industry
representatives, research and academia to actively interact, share best practices and contribute in shaping
the European Union agenda.
9 http://www.engage-project.eu
10 www.fines-cluster.eu
11 http://www.fines-cluster.eu/fines/jm/FInES-Private-Information/ensemble.html
12 http://www.fines-cluster.eu/fines/jm/
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2 Plenary Session I: The 3rd Samos Summit on Open Data and Interoperability – “From Samos to Europe and the World”
Co-chairs: Yannis Charalabidis, Euripidis Loukis, University of the Aegean, Greece
Rapporteurs: Sotiris Koussouris, National Technical University of Athens, Christina Karanikola, University of the Aegean,
Greece
2.1 "Welcome by the host: The University of the Aegean in Samos"
Euripidis Loukis, University of the Aegean, Greece13
Professor Euripidis Loukis welcomed the summit’s participants, summarized the Samos Summit history from 2010 until
now and then presented briefly the University of the Aegean14
and its departments. Then, he moved on by talking about
the Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering15
in Samos and especially about the
Information Systems Laboratory16
(IS Lab), which is one of the main organizers of the Samos Summit. He talked about
the various activities of both the University of the Aegean, in general and the IS Lab in particular, pointing out the active
and significant role that they play in the area of ICT research and development through research projects and initiatives,
especially focusing on its activities regarding Interoperability and Open Data until now.
13 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/euripides-loukis/4/760/163
14 http://www.aegean.gr/aegean/en/intro_en.htm
15 http://www.icsd.aegean.gr/icsd_en/
16 http://www.icsd.aegean.gr/is-lab/
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2.2 "Samos and its region"17
Michalis Folas, Union of Samos - Ikaria - Fournoi Municipalities, Greece
Mr. Michalis Folas, representing the local community and based on his role in the
Local Union of Municipalities of Samos, Fournoi and Ikaria, also welcomed all
participants to the island of Samos. He presented the municipality of Samos and
informational facts about Samos and the region around Samos, along with some
brief historical facts about interesting places and sights to visit around the island.
He closed his presentation by saying that Samos might be a small Greek region but
it has a great potential to become a “smart, green island”.
2.3 "Samos 2012 Summit: Key issues on Open Data and Interoperability"18
Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean, Greece19
Professor Yannis Charalabidis presented the major topics to be
discussed in this year’s summit. A major part of this year’s summit is
dedicated to Open Data, which at the moment is not utilised as
much as it should. Then, he went on by talking about the next
challenges on Open Data, introducing terms like “Metadata
Schemas 2.0”, talking about building “ecosystems” of open data
and pointing out that open data is just the surface of open and
collaborative governance and that they serve towards the provision
of open services either in the public or in the private sector. Within
this landscape, he talked briefly about the ENGAGE project on
Open Data, its scope and its objectives, summarizing the work that has been done during the first year of the project.
Then, professor Charalabidis gave an overall description of the summit’s plenaries and workshops along with some
information about the participation of people within each session of the conference. Finally, wanting to stress out the
importance of Interoperability, he briefly presented the ENSEMBLE project and its work until now, announcing the
workshops on the Enterprise Interoperability Science Base (EISB) that was to be conducted during the second summit’s
day. He closed his speech by giving some brief information about the University of the Aegean and the island of Samos.
17 https://www.dropbox.com/s/5zjtqfuqrfcdp7h/Welcome%20to%20Samos_Folas.pdf
18 https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbtnstavsx5ol67/YannisCSamosSummit2012.pdf
19 http://www.linkedin.com/in/charalabidis
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2.4 "CONNECTing to the Future Internet"20
Cristina Martinez, European Commission, DG Connect, Belgium21
Ms. Christina Martinez presented the progress of the work that is being done within the
Digital Agenda for Europe22
and especially the work that has been done within the ICT
Programme (Challenge 1) from 2008 till 2012, presenting the various objectives that pave
the path from research and technology developments (RTD) towards innovation.
Then, she introduced the term of Future Internet, as well as the challenges and new
directions within this field. One of these directions also includes the objective of Digital
Enterprises for the agile, innovative, sensing and sustainable digital enterprises of tomorrow
Mrs. Martinez presented how the past of EU research will connect with the future and gave
an overview of the Horizon 2020 programme, mentioning that Future Internet is amongst
the programme’s main priorities. This evolution is also visible in the European Commission,
as DG INFO23
becomes DG CONNECT24
. The last part of the presentation included insights
on future research areas such as the Future Internet, Internet of things, global knowledge
networks, Interoperability, virtual worlds, new energies, green technologies, space,
economics, robotics, etc. All these research areas are related with the various scenarios
regarding the future of human life, which could be built around collective development and Interoperability.
2.5 On Open Data and Governance: Perspectives from Austria"25
Dr. Alexander Balthasar, Head of the Institute for State Organisation and Administrative Reform Federal Chancellery
of the Republic of Austria, Austria26
Dr. Alexander Balthazar, coming from Austria, a country that is
already highly ranked in Europe in terms of the establishment of “e-
Government”, explained that the use of Open Data and e-
Governance is evident in Austria, offering as an example the “Open
Data Portal” of Austria27
, as well as a consolidated overview
concerning the history, development and the currently available
applications of “Open data” in Austria28
.
He also talked about the various legal documents that are included
in the RIS Legal Information System29
of the Republic of Austria,
20 http://prezi.com/3msjl5ypn9zr/samos-presentation/
21 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/cristina-martinez/26/67a/46b
22 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/index_en.htm
23 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/index_en.htm
24 http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/connect/index_en.htm
25 https://www.dropbox.com/s/1llp57ojglwlbke/Balthasar.pdf
26 http://at.linkedin.com/in/alexanderbalthasar
27 http://www.ris.bka.gv.at/UI/Ogd.aspx
28 http://www.data.gv.at
29 http://www.ris.bka.gv.at
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which facilitate decision makers, layers and the general public in their transactions. He also mentioned that there is a thin
legal line that separates Open Data use in order not to disturb private data and added that the provision of publicly owned
data as open access data, free of charge, might not remain as such in the future, as this could disrupt the private sector
profits from private bodies that utilize such data (distortion of the markets). He followed on by mentioning that all
population should have sufficient access to the electronic media that deliver the Open Data and not exclude or at least
disadvantage some part of the population. Finally, he closed his presentation by pointing out that Open Data activities
help to enhance cooperation within EU and thus, build and strengthen European identity and unification.
2.6 Questions and Answers Session
Yannis Charalabidis to Christina Martinez: What is really
changing in DG INFSO – DG CONNECT? What will be the
changes in the everyday lives of researchers, people and
organizations?
A: DG CONNECT will be more open and transparent in
order to be closer to people and to share publicly many
information. Specific tools are being developed for this
reason.
Enrico Ferro to Christina Martinez: Are there any plans for open data approach for the FP7 call to make it more
transparent regarding how the money is distributed to projects, etc?
A: There is room for improving the transparency in the different calls. Horizon 2020 will probably meet this request.
Anneke Zuiderwijk to Christina Martinez: Is there any practical implementation of the idea regarding crowdsourcing in
selecting the research idea to be funded by the EC?
A: The idea is still under consideration and it is being seriously considered for H2020.
Michalis Vafopoulos to Christina Martinez: Ordinary people can’t act as experts but
they can judge the results and the effects of the projects. Is the DG considering this
approach?
A: We have to implement this approach, as its impact is extremely important. The
process of implementation is not yet decided, but it should be procedural, taking into
account a large community of experts, instead of a limited number as it is currently
being done.
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3 Plenary Session II: Future Internet and Interoperability: Defining the shape of Tomorrow
Co-chairs: Christina Martinez, European Commission, Belgium
Fenareti Lampathaki, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Rapporteurs: Sotiris Koussouris, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
3.1 "The FI-WARE project on Future Internet, status and perspectives"30
Stefano De Panfilis, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, S.p.A., Italy31
Mr. Stefano De Panfilis presented the FI-Ware platform32
as a project that is being developed within the vision of the
Future Internet PPP (Public-Private Partnership). At the moment, 11 FI-PPP projects are running (around 300 million euros)
and more specifically, 8 FI-Ware trials are being executed in different domains. After presenting all major facts and figures
of FI-Ware, Mr. De Panfilis presented the FI Core Architecture Platform, mentioning the major offerings and objectives of
the platform and the way the applications of the various use cases will run in order to enhance and support service delivery
along different sectors.
He closed his presentation by outlining the major benefits of the use of FI-Ware, which are standardization (a portable
platform technologically agnostic), usefulness (a generic platform, adoptable in all domains), openness (all APIs and most
elements are Open Software) and evolution (as the FI-Ware platform is supported by all major vendors and
telecommunication providers).
30 https://www.dropbox.com/s/71elmgrvx7mexja/20120702_samos_a.pdf
31 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/stefano-de-panfilis/1/8a1/192
32 http://www.fi-ware.eu/
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3.2 The IMAGINE integrated project and a forward looking view on Future Internet"33
Antonis Ramfos, INTRASOFT International SA, Greece34
Dr. Antonis Ramfos presented the IMAGINE project35
and its contribution to promote
Interoperability in contemporary manufacturing.
After discussing the incentives that lead to the project’s creation, a more detailed
presentation of the IMAGINE concept and idea was presented, which is based on
analysing the product management life-cycle and designing a platform which can enable
interoperation between suppliers and Original Equipment Manufacturers - OEMs.
The presentation concluded by showcasing the IMAGINE video36
which explains through
a use-case scenario, the differences between traditional manufacturing and
contemporary/interoperable manufacturing, with the use of the IMAGINE platform. The
scenario is being presented twice: (1) the scenario is executed with the traditional way of
manufacturing, pointing out the problems, delays, gaps in Interoperability and costs in
terms of time, money and information and (2) the scenario is executed with the
IMAGINE platform, stressing out the benefits and gains from the use of IMAGINE
platform.
3.3 "The MSEE integrated project for service innovation in manufacturing"37
Sergio Gusmeroli, TXT Solutions SA, Italy38
Mr. Sergio Gusmeroli started his presentation about MSEE project
(Manufacturing Service Ecosystem)39
, its vision and the grand challenges
that it has to accomplish. MSEE focuses on services rather than products,
bringing a new service delivery approach into a new services innovation
ecosystem. More specifically, it aims to deliver a complete set of Service
Delivery Project Templates that can be configured in any kind of Domain and
Sector. It also develops an innovative Service Delivery Maturity Model for
driving EU Manufacturing Enterprises towards advanced forms of Service
Delivery, as well as a Service Lifecycle Management Toolbox that serves to
model the various aspects of an enterprise during its service delivery. Moreover, it develops a collaborative Innovation
Ecosystem Platform to stimulate creativity and co-create service innovation through collaboration along with an
innovative set of Enterprise Applications “as a Service”, in order to support the operation of advanced product-related
33 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qvfnk72113r019p/sc-4L7XUgv/IMAGINE%20Ramfos%20Samos%202012.pdf
34 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/antonis-ramfos/4/651/832
35 http://www.imagine-futurefactory.eu/index.dlg
36 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItXLtIb1OrI&feature=plcp
37 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pjee0g6ngn7qein/uyIy-nxrJb/20120702_samos_a.pdf
38 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sergio-gusmeroli/0/68/15
39 http://www.msee-ip.eu/project-overview
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services in an ecosystem. Finally, Mr. Gusmeroli closed his speech by mentioning that there are four pilots and
experimentations within the MSEE project in order to apply and verify the developments of the project.
3.4 Questions and Answers Session
Fenareti Lampathaki to all Speakers: How do you think industry will benefit from a more systematic way of addressing
Interoperability problems?
Sergio Gusmeroli: TXT puts more focus on integration than Interoperability, but if Interoperability as a science was there,
it would of course make business easier and cheaper. The Interoperability community did not succeed till now to show the
benefits of Interoperability by Design and it should be more convincing into showing the economic benefits of
Interoperability than being just occupied with small integration projects.
Antonis Ramfos: Interoperability Science is something that has just commenced, as all these years of research ware not
coordinated properly and Industry believes that “Interoperability by Design” might solve many projects. The reality creates
different ways of itself. We cannot have a universal view of reality, we have to cut it down to sub-realities and therefore,
Interoperability among them is a fact. I think we cannot solve it, as standards apply to specific issues but cannot be reused
universally. Maybe the notion of the cloud could be the way forward.
Stefano de Panfilis: We are still in the very beginning of having systems to solve the Interoperability problem “by design”.
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4 Plenary Session III: Open Data for Science, Society and Business
Co-chairs: Keith Jeffery, STFC, UK
Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean, Greece
Rapporteurs: Anneke Zuiderwijk, Technical University Delft, Netherlands
Dimitris Batis, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
4.1 European Standardisation for Open Data40
Vassilios Persiteras – ADMS, federation and core vocabularies. Improving semantic Interoperability in European e-
Government systems, Brussels41
Mr Vassilios Peristeras began his presentation with an introduction
on the background of the EC efforts towards Interoperability and
standardisation. Many programmes have been initiated since 1995,
with the most important nowadays, the Digital Agenda for Europe,
which states that currently, there is a significant lack in
Interoperability. Notably, the second pillar of this programme,
focuses on Interoperability and standards. Within this framework,
the ISA programme (Interoperability Solutions for European Public
Administrations) defines and promotes Interoperability between
European Public Administrations, supporting sharing and re-use of
software solutions. Moving on, Mr Peristeras mentioned how metadata are very important for Interoperability and pointed
out that if we improve metadata then we increase Interoperability. Thus, ISA aims to improve semantic Interoperability in
European government systems by the proposition of an Asset Description Metadata Schema (ADMS), which is a data
schema (vocabulary) that allows to describe semantic assets. ADMS is developed by 16 EU-member states and a white
paper on metadata in general, can be downloaded from the ISA website. Mr Peristeras moved on by talking about core
vocabularies, explaining that a core vocabulary is an agreement among multi-disciplinary working groups developing a
model and posing the question on how feasible it is for the 27 EU member-states to agree on common semantics, i.e. on a
common entity/concept that remains relevant in different contexts. He added that there have been recently developed 3
core vocabularies, as well as 1 ADMS, whose 1st
versions are available since May 2012. Then, he ended his speech
summarising the results and next steps
23 May 2012: endorsement of the ADMS and the 3 core vocabularies by the ISA coordination group.
Acknowledgements and support of the achieved results.
From July 2012: promotion, dissemination and exploitation of the core vocabularies and the ADMS to the
Member States.
ADMS and the three core vocabularies specifications entered the W3C standardization process to evolve to global
standards.
40 https://www.dropbox.com/s/76878y8tz8qxwen/Open%20Data%20SAMOS%20peristeras.pdf
41 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/vassilios-peristeras/2/722/911
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4.2 An industry view on Open Data42
Avi Yaeli – IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel43
The central question of this presentation was “How can
we create value out of open data”. Therefore, Mr Yaeli
opened his presentation with an introduction of examples
that verify this value of Open Data. His examples included:
The fact that Obama especially pointed at
transparency in the memorandum of 2009
Governments are gradually using more and more
the social media
Recently (2010), the idea of e-Government as a platform emerged
Then, he moved on by exploring the way on how this value of Open Data can be sustained. More specifically, he focused
on facts like:
crowd sourcing development
the development of many governmental platforms (e.g. data.gov.uk)
standardisation (Open 311 standard)
He expects that the economic growth and gain from the use of Open Data will reach the amount of 40 billion euros,
introducing at the same time the concept of the data marketplaces, which show how data can be turned into profit. For
that reason, he gave some examples to justify his proposal: Mapumental44
, which uses public transport data and sells
travel time maps to businesses, as well as BrightScope45
, which uses government data to clarify 401k plans to citizens. He
also gave a non-profit example from his country, i.e. the Israeli Open Budget platform46
. Moreover, Mr Yaeli talked about
business models for a sustainable ecosystem in order to fund and invest to the provision and expansion of the concept of
open data, presenting cases where citizens pay, where cities pay and where businesses pay.
Finally, he focused on the role of government on this whole process of the provision and expansion of Open Data. Should
the government build applications or just provide APIs and let the community build applications? Should we need to
provide higher level API’s? Thus, he concluded that the role of government lies in balancing between three engagement
models: own services that the city must own, drive experiments and monitor. His final summary and conclusions included
the statements:
Open data are here to stay and grow
Government as a platform enables to do more with less. It is a catalyst for economic development
The role of government will continue to evolve as new business models emerge
Researchers should help government understand the potential value of open data and how to capitalize on it
42 https://www.dropbox.com/s/8fsb6ks9kq3tlyc/Open%20DataAviYaeli.pdf
43 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/avi-yaeli/3/69/305
44 http://mapumental.com/
45 http://www.brightscope.com/
46 http://www.gov.il/firstgov/english
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4.3 On open data platforms: characteristics and challenges47
Yannis Chalarabidis, University of the Aegean, Greece48
Professor Yannis Charalabidis talked about the characteristics that the open data platforms should have, highlighting the
ENGAGE project towards this direction and mentioning at the same time all the challenges that the people involved in this
field will have to face.
Concerning the characteristics of open data platforms, he noticed that there is a movement towards working more with
big data. Then, he mentioned that societal problems can be solved with open data and that should be a multinational and
multilingual approach. Concerning metadata, which are very important, he told that what exists now is not enough for
scientists, because we use existing standards. Finally, he concluded that there is a crucial need to build an “Open Data”
community.
Concerning the ENGAGE project, professor Charalabidis explained that ENGAGE project provides PSI to research
communities and citizens in a personalised manner. For this, he added, we need curation, annotation, etc. Then, he
mentioned that ENGAGE is a kind of marketplace. It has “two-way” usage scenarios. It delivers public sector data to
researchers and citizens and it delivers open data needs and guidelines to public sector organisations. Finally, he pointed
out that ENGAGE is related to many other projects.
As for the challenges concerning the open data platforms, professor Charalabidis mentioned that metadata should be
made “auto-fill”. According to his speech, automated filling and self-classification is needed, as well as multiple levels of
abstraction for different user groups would be necessary. Moreover, he added that auto-calculating new metrics for open
datasets should be developed. Data quality will allow for automatically linking open data. Then, he moved on by saying
that open data platforms should have full API and SaaS operations, novel ways of visualisation for open/linked data and
they should communicate and cooperate among them towards building a kind of “Open Data Ecosystems”
Finally, concerning the PSI metadata issues, he mentioned that conventional metadata for PSI is flat and inadequate for
describing the context of the data, for software processing of the dataset, for scientific use of open data, for automating
47 https://www.dropbox.com/s/2fxa978x46c09vx/YannisCharalabidis_OnOpenData.pdf
48 http://www.linkedin.com/in/charalabidis
20
linking or for automating visualisation. At that point he closed mentioning that the ENGAGE project has developed a
metadata architecture where metadata can be obtained automatically from a dataset.
4.4 Business Models for PSI Re-use49
Enrico Ferro50
, Michele Osella51
, Instituto Superiore Mario
Boella, Italy
Mr Enrico Ferro made an introduction to his speech by
stating that public bodies are by far the largest producers
of information in Europe and not only. However Public
Sector Information (PSI) is recognized as a major, but so far
it is an under-exploited asset.
Mr Ferro went on with his presentation by mentioning that
PSI reuse can be seen from different perspectives on the
PSI realm. For that reason, his presentation included a
study which looks at the business model viewpoint and
tries to explain how value can be generated from PSI.
Before he started, he explained that most similar studies
mainly focused on the upstream administration (on how to open up governmental data), whereas the study that he
presented focuses on the “downstream information” (from release to how value is created), as well as on “how much” in
lieu of “how” (how much worth is opening data).
The approach of his study included the review of 139 enterprises and the selection of 13 enterprises for case studies. The
criteria for the theoretical sampling were the geographical location and position in the value chain. Other criteria included
for example a resource-driven business model design.
Mr Ferro went on with the results derived from the study, which were the following:
He identified 4 main strategic positions for companies:
- Core re-users On the front line, PSI as “bread and butter”
- Service advertisers On the front line, PSI as “attraction tool”
- Enablers Behind the scene, PSI as “bread and butter”
- Advertising factories Behind the scene, PSI as “attraction tool”
The different business models for those 4 positions were: Core re-users (Premium product / service, “Freemium” product
/service, Open source like), Service advertisers (Free as branded advertising), Advertising factories (White-label
development) and Enablers (Infrastructural razors and blades, Demand-oriented platform, Supply oriented platform). Mr
Ferro closed his presentation with some policy recommendations that the businesses were asked to provide. The following
4 recommendations were identified: the creation of a clear and long-term legal framework, the continuity in the update of
data, the Guarantees about data quality and the distinction between ownership and stewardship of data.
49 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dsm1hvmceoodr14/_8Sw0fod8E/PSI%20International%20-%20Ferro-%20Samos.pdf
50 http://www.linkedin.com/in/enricoferro
51 http://www.linkedin.com/in/micheleosella
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5 Plenary Session IV: Open Data and Interoperability: Regional Views and Opportunities
Chair: Julia Glidden, 21c, UK52
Rapporteur: Apostolis Mastoris, National Technical University of Athens, Greece53
5.1 Open Data and Electronic Participation in Western Balkans"54
Blaz Golob, Center for eGovernance Development, Slovenia55
Mr. Blaz Golob made a presentation about Open Data and
Electronic Participation. He opened his speech by talking about
achievements in the field of semantics in Balkans so far and gave an
overview of open government partnership of South East Europe
(SEE) pointing out the need for the development of an information
society in this region.
He proceeded with the changes that need to be made in order to
create sufficient demand for open data initiatives in this region and
presented the real priorities that the Balkan countries should have,
priorities that are divided into societal challenges (political, social,
cultural, legal issues) and technological (ICT development gap)
challenges.
He explained that the solution to overcoming the barriers towards
the establishment of open government, especially those related to
societal and technological challenges, is e-Participation and to verify
his statement, he showed a graph with indexes showing the
progress of various countries through years 2010-2012 within this
field.
He concluded his speech with the 7 e-Pillars model, a new renaissance concept, which describes the priorities that will
contribute to the future development of the European continent.
52 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/julia-glidden/3/675/772
53 http://www.linkedin.com/in/mastoris
54
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5za8k2f2r4itfqm/Samos%202012%20Summit%20Presentation%20Bla%C5%BE%20Golob%20CeGD.pdf 55
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/blaz-golob/15/827/742
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5.2 "Open Data Initiatives in Greece and the World"56
Theodoros Karounos, e-Government Office of the Greek Prime Minister, Greece57
Mr. Karounos presented some
Greek projects within the field of
open government which are
related to open data, as well as
some initiatives that have been
implemented as proof of concept
for the aforementioned local
projects.
The most important of them is
called "Diavgeia", which was
implemented due to demand for
more transparency and
commitment to government
accountability. When presenting this project’s management model, he mentioned that currently, 394 public authorities
have implemented this programme, but still in pilot phase.
He continued with the presentation of the rest of the relative projects within Greece, describing the main purpose of them
and what problems they are solving, as well as an API for each one of these initiatives. He pointed out that the problem
that Greece mainly faces is the lack of high quality data and explained that possible solutions to that problem might be the
development and application of various validation processes that secure the quality of data and the corresponding
metadata in order to allow Interoperability and aggregation. Finally, he mentioned that the purpose of the initiatives is to
use human resources and existing high system resources to get advance of the data. Then, he talked more about various
initiatives, such as the following:
Law on e-Governance: This law recognizes the legal right of citizens to commit transactions with public authorities using
ICT means of communication and includes, among other frameworks, an e-Payments framework to facilitate citizens’
transactions with the public authorities. Mr Karounos presented the business plan, goals, objectives and implementation
model of this initiative.
OpenGov.gr - the Greek Open Government Initiative: Mr. Karounos explained that this initiative aims to serve the
principles of transparency, deliberation, collaboration and accountability, including open electronic deliberations and open
calls for the recruitment of public administration officials.
labs.OpenGov - open contests: It includes the National Infrastructure for Geospatial Information, also known as
Opengeodata, which includes publicly available spatial information, using an open license (creative commons), allowing
the reuse of the geospatial data by public authorities and private sector bodies.
56 https://www.dropbox.com/s/zysrd5zqiuddhp0/karounos_samos%202012_%CE%95%CE%9D.pdf
57 http://www.linkedin.com/in/tgkarounos
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5.3 "World-wide cases on linked, open data and Interoperability"58
Michael Witbrock, Cycorp, USA59
Mr. Witbrock presented the need for
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in linked data. He
started explaining that the current human-
computer collaboration has the form of
master-servant relationship. He went on by
discussing about current complex data and
systems, the open data, linked data and the
lack of knowledge for their form. He then
presented a case study in systems biology
explaining that here is a huge flood of data
concerning biology and he showed how
computers can help people towards
comprehending such amounts of data,
processing, thinking about and prioritising these data. The problem that he pointed out is that there are different types of
models which are not available in computer readable format and that here are a lot of complicated data forms and AI that
use many layers of representative languages from where one can extract info. Moreover, he presented GWAS-bone, a
pilot experiment for constructing a model causal hypothesis. This experiment returns human-readable explanations where
the system can eliminate the bad hypothesis. Applying the above experiment to e-Government, it can be seen from the
perspective that (for example) there are many data on justice matters, but there is not available any knowledge that
matters to people, on how justice system functions in order to produce all those mentioned data.
Mr. Witbrock concluded that the important part is that there is a way of representation that computers can reason. Giving
computers details about the data, they can collaborate with enterprises and not be only the servants (collaborative
knowledge creation). As a result, they can decide if something is causal or not. A way to achieve this, is to use state of the
art tools in order to provide computers rich data and to be more collaborative.
5.4 Danube Region as a potential testbed for cross-border innovation60
Miklos Gabor, Danube Region as potential testbed for cross-border
innovation, Hungary61
Mr Miklos Gabor presented the need to provide e-Services and cross-border
Interoperability with great varieties. For that reason, he presented the use
case of Danube Region which consists of different countries with different
languages and cultures. He went on by mentioning that the future of Danube
region includes 14 countries and approximately 110 million people. The
58 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cgpqsdq6owsnk99/qgXOhFlWtl/Witbrock.pdf
59 http://www.linkedin.com/in/witbrock
60 https://www.dropbox.com/s/flbpg13tgjov264/Danube_Region_Samos_Corvinno.pdf
61 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/miklos-gabor/b/396/0
24
variety of these countries is mainly the different culture, the economic situation and the available infrastructures. Some of
them are really small countries, with very small cities and sometimes this fact causes rivalry among these regions, mainly
for investment reasons. Moreover, he presented the Danube Region strategy which includes 11 priorities grouped in 4
pillars. He pointed out that the purpose is to have an innovative region, an “e-Region”, where Interoperability and cross-
border partnership exist. And this wiil happen only via education and cross-border cooperation.
However, he concluded, there are some challenges and problems to overcome. Some of them are the lack of funding for
innovation, the use of not realistic measurement (pseudo indicators just to fulfill expectations), the no-risk taking from
public sector, the lack of risk management and the lack of the ability to cope with project failure and success. There should
be new funding structures based on risk and venture capital, giving money to proceed with innovation, Interoperability and
cooperation plans.
5.5 Questions and Answers Session
Yannis Charalabidis to Michael Witbrock: How do countries from outside Europe see Europe in terms of Open Data
development, through discussions and meetings?
A: They mainly see Europe at the stage that internet was in 1994. This means that they see Europe as providing and
producing, but there's not a clear notion if there's an advance or not. The thing is that we have a low-level research that
produces more on Interoperability and on better representation for people.
Julia Glidden to Theodoros Karounos: What does Greek Government do to the demand for transparency due to crisis?
A: The crisis has accelerated the process of transparency, as people have been frustrated because of the lack of
transparency during the last decades. Diavgeia is a step forward to this field and despite the fact that there are still many
organizations that provide non-parseable data (like PDFs), more and more people are interested in the open data
perspective.
Julia Glidden to Blaz Golob: What initiatives are available in Slovenia in order to cover the demands for greater
participation and transparency in the Public Sector?
A: Only three groups of stakeholders have been involved in Slovenia, although there are 8. They should participate during
the whole process of promoting open data, transparency and participation, from the design phase until the final
implementation.
25
6 Academic Track: Academic and Research Directions in Open Data
Chair: Professor Euripidis Loukis, University of the Aegean, Greece
Rapporteur: Angeliki Androutsopoulou, University of the Aegean, Greece
Prof. Euripidis Loukis, opened the «Academic and Research Directions in Open Data" session, introducing the speakers
and the academic scope of this small colloquium. During the session a number of approaches on Open Data research were
presented. At first, Dr. Vafopoulos, outlined the visions of linking Open Data to enhance public awareness in Greece. He
presented an ontology built for LOD and demonstrated an implementation of this ontlolgy approach in the "where my
money goes in Greece?" (see figure) application. Then, Dr Fenareti Lampathaki presented to the audience a Metadata
Schema for managing Open Data. Ms Anneke Zuiderwijk presented a method for gathering user requirements for Open
Data platforms based on questionnaires, as well as the results obtained from the development of the ENGAGE Platform.
Thereafter, Dr. Spyros Mouzakitis highlighted the principles behind the design of an Open Data Infrastructure targeted to
Scientific Communities and specified the requirements based on Scientists' needs for Data Utilization. Ms Aggeliki
Androutsopoulou presented the PADGETS62
platform approach in modelling data from three different types of analysis
for policy formulation. She explained the methodology behind defining the needs and ways of PADGETS visualisations and
showcased some examples of data representation addressed to policy makers. Finally, Mr Harris Alexopoulos, concluded
the session with a presentation of Open Government Data Sources in Greece, analyzed under three perspectives
(functional, semantic and technological) and highlighted the potential of public-sector information reuse in providing
added value services. In a further step and due to the interested that the researcher's works provoked to the attendants, it
was proposed by professor Euripidis Loukis to be published as a Special Issue on Open Data.
62 http://www.padgets.eu/
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7 The Samos 2012 Summit Keynote Speeches 7.1 Open Data: Worldwide initiatives, experiences and challenges63
Phil Archer, W3C, UK64
Mr. Phil Archer gave an insightful speech on Open Data, on
the challenges that their use and spreading implicate, as well
as on the most important initiatives and experiences within
this field until now. He started his speech by the challenge of
the multilingualism that exists in the field of data in general
and how Interoperability can be achieved in that case. He
moved on with the fact of the fear that people feel when it
comes to Open Data and their distribution. Then, he talked
about the need to empower people to use and exchange
Open Data and understand what this information is about.
More specifically, he mentioned that “transparency is not
enough for the reduction of corruption, as other necessary
conditions must also be present. These conditions include
that the citizen must be able to receive available information,
that the different audiences can understand such information
and that there exists a mechanism to hold the government
accountable”. Then, he gave the five axes that the Open Data
engagement should follow:
1. Be demand driven
2. Put data in context
3. Support conversation around the data
4. Build capacity, skills & networks
5. Collaborate on data as a common resource
He also talked about the challenge of context and responsibility and how developers understand the responsibility they
have, as they see data sets only as a black box and finally, as a representative of W3C, he pointed out the basic directions
and initiatives that W3C as an organization is following towards the wider use and spreading of Open Data:
1. The Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group within W3C65
2. The e-Government Interest Group within W3C66
3. W3C supports the EU ISA Programme
4. The Linked Data Platform Working Group within W3C
5. W3C supports the Crossover Project
The speech ended with ideas and questions from the audience.
63 http://www.w3.org/2012/Talks/0703_phila_samos/#(1)
64 http://www.linkedin.com/in/philarcher
65 http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/wiki/Main_Page
66 http://www.w3.org/egov/wiki/Main_Page
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7.2 The future Internet Enterprise Systems Research Roadmap
Michele Missikof, IASI-CNR, Italy67
Mr. Missikof started his presentation by explaining why it is important
to develop a research roadmap that will draw the main lines for future
research in the domain of Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES
Research Roadmap – FRR). He talked about the proposed approach
towards this roadmap, explaining that it should follow a balanced
method supported by organized groups and casual contributors that
would form a wide community which will include both internal and
external FInES stakeholders. Concerning the organized groups
mentioned before, he introduced the Editorial Board, the Scientific
Advisory Group, the Scientific Experts Committee, the FInES Projects
and the independent experts, i.e. the parts that form the FRR Task
Force.
Then, given that in the next decade there would be a socio-economic
market discontinuity and having in mind that the FRR should have a
long-term and highly-innovative vision, he proposed a qualitative
regression method for developing the FRR, defining first the kind of
world we would like to live in, focusing on the development model,
production systems, and enterprises and then on enterprise systems
and enabling technologies.
He moved on by giving more details over the future of the socio-
economic market, the new paradigms of economic expansion, the
different growths for wealth and well-being, the new value systems
and how innovation needs to be reconsidered in light of these concerns. He also talked about the Enterprise space and the
different kinds of enterprises (humanistic, inventive, agile, g-local, liquid, sustainable, etc.) and noted that this complexity
and unpredictability of the world should be taken into consideration while developing the FRR. He also talked about FInES
and the technology space related to the enabling role of ICT for FInES and he closed his speech by giving some first details
about the migration of the FInES RR on the web. He noted that a RR written on a paper is more limited than an online,
collaborative and open version of it. An online FRR would constitute a Semantic Knowledge Repository for the future of
FInES and along with the online FInES community, serving as a backbone of this venture, this FRR would be open to other
scientific communities, as well.
67 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michele-missikoff/1/7b5/b28
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8 Samos 2012 Summit Workshops 8.1 The ENGAGE Workshops on Open Data
Chair: Michael Wilson, STFC, UK68
8.1.1 Plenary Presentation of the ENGAGE e-Infrastructure Project on Open Data69
Spiros Mouzakitis, Harris Tsavdaris, National Technical University of Athens, Greece70
Dr. Spiros Mouzakitis talked about the ENGAGE project, starting with a brief description of what the project is about and
what are its objectives. According to his presentation, ENGAGE project includes the development and use of a data
infrastructure, incorporating distributed and diverse public sector information (PSI) resources, being capable of supporting
scientific collaboration and research, particularly for the Social Science and Humanities (SSH) scientific communities and
empowering the deployment of open governmental data towards citizens.
According to Dr. Mouzakitis, “Simply put, ENGAGE is a door for researchers that leads them to the world of Open
Government Data. By using the ENGAGE platform, researchers and citizens will be able to submit, acquire, search and
visualize diverse and distributed Public sector datasets from all the countries of the European Union”.
68 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michael-wilson/18/568/7a2
69 https://www.dropbox.com/s/fvh1ydja2x9z656/ENGAGE_Plenary_Session.pdf
70 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/harry-tsavdaris/2/48a/a78
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8.1.2 WS I: Open Data Requirements
Animator: Anneke Zuiderwijk, Technical University Delft, Netherlands71
8.1.2.1 Objectives
In the last years the value of opening up i.e. publishing government data, has been acknowledged increasingly. However,
at this moment, the deposition, access and use of open public sector data is often cumbersome and could be improved.
The aim of this workshop was to exchange knowledge and ideas about the status of open data, its benefits and challenges
and user requirements.
Based on a questionnaire that was conducted among open data users, the organizers of this workshop put forward several
propositions, which provided the basis for an interactive discussion among all participants. Subsequently, the presenters
showed the interim results of the questionnaire and the results of an extensive literature review on benefits, barriers and
challenges for the use of open data. Finally, the e-Infrastructure for open data that is being developed in the ENGAGE
project, which is based on the user requirements and some of its most important functionalities, has been shown. This e-
Infrastructure can be beneficial for the participants, for instance, because it may help them with conducting research or
making policy decisions.
71 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/anneke-zuiderwijk-van-eijk/23/6a6/2a2
30
8.1.2.2 Results
During the first workshop, entitled “WS I : Open Data Requirements”, Anneke Zuiderwijk – Van Eijk (Delft University of
Technology), Charalampos Alexopoulos (University of AEGEAN) and Marijn Janssen (Delft University of Technology)
exchanged knowledge and ideas with the audience about the status of open data, its benefits and challenges and user
requirements.
Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire about requirements of open data users and to write down on post-it
papers the three requirements of open data users that are most important according to them. Then, all post-its were
gathered, discussed with the participants, and organized in categories, such as functional and non-functional
requirements. Finally, the organizers of the workshop presented the interim results of the questionnaire and put forward
several propositions, which provided the basis for an interactive discussion among all participants. The requirements that
were derived during the workshop will be used to further specify the e-infrastructure for open data that is being developed
in the ENGAGE project.
8.1.3 WS II: The ENGAGE Open Data Prototype
Animator: Harris Tsavdaris, National Technical University Athens, Greece72
8.1.3.1 Objectives
The main goal of the ENGAGE project is the development and use of a data infrastructure, incorporating distributed and
diverse Public Sector Information (PSI) resources, capable of supporting scientific collaboration and research, particularly
for the Social Science and Humanities (SSH) scientific communities, while also empowering the deployment of open
governmental data towards citizens. Simply put, ENGAGE is a door for researchers and citizens that leads them to the
world of Open Government Data.
By using the ENGAGE platform, researchers and citizens will be able to submit, acquire, search and visualize diverse and
distributed Public sector datasets from all the countries of the European Union. Throughout social collaboration, Public
Sector data will move towards more standardized, effective and semantically enriched structures that will allow PSI re-use
reach towards its full potential. The main purpose of this ENGAGE Workshop was to demonstrate an early Prototype of
the ENGAGE platform as well as to present the vision for the next version.
8.1.3.2 Results
At the second workshop, entitled “WS II: The ENGAGE Open Data Prototype”, the ENGAGE first release of the platform
prototype has been demonstrated by Spyros Mouzakitis and Harry Tsavdaris (NTUA).
The workshop was conducted in order to gather feedback from potential users and discover the priorities for ENGAGE
project. Initially, a live demonstration of the current prototype was performed, followed by a visual presentation of the
plans for the next release. The 20 attendees were then asked to fill in a questionnaire and use an online feedback tool
where they could comment freely and suggest new ideas for the ENGAGE Services infrastructure. Based on their input,
support for the data curation process and the implementation of collaboration utilities were marked as the most
important, and most commented, features for the next release. Furthermore, users provided ideas for the enhancement of
data visualization tools, as well as on improvements for searching and filtering datasets.
72 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/harry-tsavdaris/2/48a/a78
31
8.1.4 WS III: New visions and ideas for Open Data and Governance
Animator: Elias Kalapanidas, Intrasoft International SA, Greece73
8.1.4.1 Objectives
Public and private bodies retain, maintain and continue to acquire a wealth of information and content. To the degree that
this information is in digital form and given the pervasive nature of ICT technologies, the value of open data as a resource
is constantly increasing. A large potential of exploiting open data is remaining untapped, waiting for innovative
applications to create added-value by reusing the datasets that are offered today in new and exciting ways.
In this session, there have been presented some ideas for the ENGAGE project sustainability, there has been a debate on
the success of existing open data portals and catalogs and participants identified the weaknesses of open data,
commented on existing and future funding and governance models and investigated both top-down and bottom-up
approaches. Finally, the participants attempted to draw the landscape of the open data market in the next decade.
8.1.4.2 Results
The third workshop entitled “WS III: New visions and ideas for Open Data and Governance” was animated by Elias
Kalapanidas and Yannis Charalabidis started with the presentation of Nigel Shadbolt of the University of Southampton
73 http://www.linkedin.com/in/eliaskalapanidas
32
under the same title. This served as a nice provocation for the next session, where each participant identified the 3 most
promising ideas for open data and governance. The consolidated results were clustered in 3 categories: Privacy and Trust,
Technology, Business, and are presented below.
Privacy and Trust
Truly free licensing of open data
A new IP rights management framework for open data. Who is the “owner” of open data should be clear (liability
to maintain data)
Anonymisation methods needed
Restriction of data combination (for data where individual identity can be “derived”)
Privacy should be extended to Internet of Things (e.g. data sent by your car)
Harmonisation of legal frameworks (pan-European)
Technology
Multilingual metadata & UI for open data access (do not forget language technologies, publication)
Take into account existing ontologies in scientific communities
Real-time streaming of data (IoT, WoT)
Machine understandable meta-knowledge made by non-experts
A single access API for all open data
Simple open standards for datasets (for complex documents, charts, etc)
Better metadata for discovery AND processing
Quality of open data: history, provenance
Business
Budget constraints for open data (barrier)
Policy for creating open data demand by citizens and scientists
Blend open data and innovation. Make new apps for (smart) cities, crossborder apps, etc.
Create value for policy makers (though apps based on open data)
Think of ENGAGE USP’s in view of existing national open data portals
Find and make the killer apps
Make a “full open data” experiment
Include Enterprises as open data providers (new direction)
Make money out of open data – business models (e.g. who is the owner?: for PSI, us. For Private SI: the enterprises)
33
8.2 The ENSEMBLE Workshops on Interoperability
Chair: John Psarras, National Technical University of Athens, Greece74
Moderators: Fenareti Lampathaki, Sotiris Koussouris, Yannis Charalabidis, National Technical University of Athens
8.2.1 Plenary presentation: FInES, ENSEMBLE and a Scientific Perspective for Enterprise Interoperability75
Fenareti Lampathaki, National Technical University Athens, Greece76
Dr. Fenareti Lampathaki initiated her presentation entitled “FInES, ENSEMBLE and A Scientific Perspective For Enterprise
Interoperability” with the Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) cluster vision of looking at Future Internet from a
business perspective and mentioned the key milestones during the last 10 years of the FInES cluster history. She
introduced the ENSEMBLE project scope and emphasized on the activities to structure and systematize the scientific
knowledge around Enterprise Interoperability (EI) over the years.
With the initial Interoperability definition bringing us more than 30 years back (in the 1970s decade), there is a long history
of interoperability solutions and approaches, yet there are so many different and disperse interpretations of existing EI
knowledge that enterprises cannot find the appropriate solution to tackle specific problems they face. Dr. Lampathaki
explained that the EISB (Enterprise Interoperability Science Base) is actually a different way to deal with interoperability,
tackling issues at design time, with a systemic way. She outlined the EISB activities timeline since 2006 and presented the
methodology adopted in the ENSEMBLE project.
Reaching consensus on the definitions, structuring the underlying body of knowledge, exploring the relations with
neighbouring domains and providing insights towards the future were listed among the ENSEMBLE key achievements.
The challenges that the EISB work is anticipated to face in the next months are related to its sustainability and real-life
impact to all stakeholders.
Upon summarizing the next steps for the project, Dr. Lampathaki presented the members of the ENSEMBLE consortium,
as well as the Experts Scientific Committee that had an instrumental role on the EISB activities.
Finally, she explained how the participants can contribute to the working groups and introduced the workshop objectives:
To engage a wider audience and bring together academia, industry and public administration.
To share the vision for the EISB and discuss its core elements towards the 3rd Wave of evolution.
To elaborate on the key issues for sustainability and the next steps.
74 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-psarras/31/309/198
75 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dzkh7ezpe8efuwi/ENSEMBLE_Samos%202012%20Summit_4%20July%202012-v1.00.pdf
76 http://www.linkedin.com/in/fenaretilampathaki
34
8.2.2 WS IV: EISB Workshop
Whereas in the past it was said that EI was unachievable until seamless interaction could take place at the technical,
semantic and organizational layers of Interoperability and at all levels of the enterprise, today this vision is extended,
foreseeing that EI will be fully achieved only when the benefits brought by the new technology paradigms are harvested,
including those of the Future Internet. This way and to enable generalization and full reuse of the methods and tools that
have been developed so far, Interoperability has to be studied and developed based on rigorous scientific principles
including mathematical and scientifically-lawful phenomenon and following scientific practices similar to established
sciences, to enable the sustainability of existing developments.
Such a science base comprises a new set of concepts, theories and principles, with a view to long-term problem solving as
opposed to short-term solution provisioning. EISB has been framed through the definition of: a problem space to address
the range of application and theoretical problems addressed by the EI domain; a solution space, covering the knowledge
available for the solution of EI application problems; and a domain knowledge base to contain the effective structure and
methodological knowledge of the EISB, all together enabling the reception of inputs from practical experience,
requirements, research contributions, and producing efficient EISB applications and new research requirements.
Although the Enterprise Interoperability Science Base (EISB) is still in its early embryotic phase, it is of great importance
to consider actions and activities that will not only target its sustainability and growth, but will also reinforce its credibility
amongst the different communities. The latter is a key milestone, which will eventually signal the uptake of the EISB by
the community that will benefit from its existence, achieving at the end a community driven long-term sustainability
model.
The objectives of this workshop were the following:
Present and gather feedback concerning the existing EISB sustainability aspects;
Identify the EISB major laws and principles;
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8.2.3 ENSEMBLE – FinES Workshops Findings
8.2.3.1 Moving the EISB Forward – Sustainability
The purpose of this discussion was brainstorm views
from the members of the Validation Community as to
how best ensure that work on the EISB is sustained into
the future.
The following topics were raised by the participants of
the workshop:
Delete the “E” from the EISB to reach other
domains (towards an Interoperability Science)
Continue the work towards a “Science”
objective
Act as a PPP (Public-Private Partnership)
gateway
Open data for Interoperability by utilising the
power of the Public bodies
Ensure consolidation of existing results
Extend the community from EU to global
Reach out for industry collaboration and with socioeconomic community
Ontological support towards a common understanding of concepts and issues
Formalize the matrix for measuring (maturity) level / degree of Interoperability
But… Don’t follow a technical-driven approach !
8.2.3.2 Report on thoughts concerning the EI Laws
The focus of this discussion was on brainstorming
the definition of a set of “Laws of Interoperability
Science”, which might form the guiding principles
for both future research and application. The
proposed laws included the following statements:
Go to the root of Interoperability
(investigate incentive/strategy).
Combine legal and technical
Interoperability.
Don’t leave assumptions unverified (e.g.
assuming vocabularies..).
You can’t interoperate with everything.
Don’t try to achieve commercial domination through technical segmentation.
Interoperability needs to be supported by top management. The higher you go in Io layers, the more top
management support you need.
Self realization is important towards Interoperability.
Forget seamless lossless Interoperability.
Bottom Up approach is highly import. Exploit the wisdom of the network.
36
Abandon the illusion of control.
Try to define your core.
Shift from thinking as a single entity.
Whenever there is heterogeneity between two entities, there is a risk for Interoperability.
More insights on the ENSEMBLE workshop are provided in the relevant ENSEMBLE deliverable available at the FInES
portal.
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8.3 WS VII: eFiscal Workshop on computing e-Infrastructure costs
Animator: Fotis Karayannis, e-FISCAL project coordinator, Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), Greece77
8.3.1 e-Fiscal Workshop Objective
The concrete objective of the workshop was to discuss the preliminary findings of the e-FISCAL project78
. These findings
were based on data received from EGI and PRACE country coordinators and center managers around Europe by the time
of the workshop. In addition, a survey of the state of the art in financial analysis of ICT infrastructures was presented, as
well as some initial results of the benchmarking efforts of the project that compare commercial cloud offerings with
research e-Infrastructures. The project also gathered feedback from the participants and the project Advisory Board, as
well as disseminated the results in the wider public. The workshop benefit also from being co-located with the Samos
Summit event series, where a mixed audience of e-Infrastructure practitioners, users and policy makers was available.
The concrete sub-objectives of the workshop are given below:
Present the initial findings of the project a. State of the art on costs of e-Infrastructures for research and
comparing them with commercial cloud offerings
Surveying European HPC/HTC centers in Europe; first analysis
Benchmarking: comparing the performance of research e-Infrastructure HTC/HPC sites with commercial cloud
ones
An equally important higher level goal of the workshop is gathering together financial experts from the e-Infrastructure
community and establish foundations for a crucial community of practice that can make important contributions to the
overall sustainability planning of the e-Infrastructures in the Horizon 2020 era and beyond.
8.3.2 e-Fiscal Workshop Findings
The e-FISCAL project aim is to design, evaluate and improve ICT infrastructure cost assessment approaches. The fact
that this workshop took place within the Samos Summit on open data and Interoperability offered good opportunities to
immediately present workshop’s findings to a broader audience.
The two-day event brought together finance and e-Infrastructure experts, with the first day focused workshop attracting
28 members for intense discussions regarding the state of the art based on the e-FISCAL analysis, high-level presentations
from EGI and PRACE initiatives as well as a number of detailed case studies presenting different approaches to cost
assessment and optimisation. The second day panel session gathered more than 25 additional participants from the
summit and featured three high-level keynote speeches and a panel discussion on best practices, high-level
recommendations and suitable next steps for sustainability and cost assessment approaches in the e-Infrastructure
domain.
The discussions during the first day brought up many interesting observations that will serve as starting points for further
studies. The list below summarises some of these key points:
The current state of the art presents a broad range of results with regards to the comparison of dedicated and on-
demand infrastructures. For example, there was a factor-of-six difference between the highest and the lowest
reported “Cloud/dedicated infrastructure” cost ratios in the literature survey. Possible reasons for these
differences were discussed, with variations in the actual service specification, different assumptions about costs
77 http://www.linkedin.com/in/fotisk
78 http://efiscal.eu/
38
to include or exclude and the different metrics used were identified as possible reasons. The whole ecosystem of
HPC (Tier 0 to Tier 2) needs to be considered, as far as cost related to performance is concerned. Investing in HPC
means also scaling-up the physical infrastructures (computer rooms, cooling systems, power sources etc.) and the
decision related to the set-up of such systems are based on many parameters (ranging from political to technical).
The selection of appropriate and useful metrics (besides the de-facto standard units of core hour and MFLOP) was
seen as challenging in general. Estimating, maximising and demonstrating a clear impact on research were seen
as key sustainability factors for e-Infrastructures. However, the commonly used low-level metrics are not
necessarily directly related to application-level performance. On the other hand, selecting a representative set of
applications that could be used as a higher-level benchmark was seen as equally challenging – adapting
applications to new execution environments is a crucial, labour-intensive task that can have a major impact on the
execution speed of the application. This kind of benchmarking approach is thus fairly costly to be used as a metric,
and may still not provide accurate estimates for the applications not included in the benchmark set.
The proportion of personnel effort that could be re-allocated to perform the configuration and adaptation of
applications to the Cloud environment and supporting related users (by adopting the outsourced Cloud
approaches) is difficult to calculate. In the case of European e-Infrastructures, the issue seems to be further
complicated by the large variations in the (reported) staffing levels, even when normalised by the size of the
computing centre.
The difference between (mostly) vertical infrastructures provided by the Cloud offerings of today and the
horizontal infrastructures that are needed to support collaborations around the major research infrastructures (RI)
was noted as an issue that will make Cloud adoption more challenging – at least until the Cloud market matures
enough in terms of Interoperability.
The strengths and weaknesses of the Full Cost Accounting, TCO analysis and the e-FISCAL approaches were
discussed in some detail. It was highlighted that the initial e-FISCAL results were quite well aligned with the ones
made in the preparatory phases of the EGI initiative, which were based on TCO methodology.
In the conclusion of the first day, the unique nature of the high-end research activities was noted, with the caveat that not
all of the computational or data management tasks done by all of the research teams fall into this category. In fact, there
are groups or even individual researchers that are not interested in collaboration, who tend not to be attracted by the
community-based HTC/HPC services and their sustainability in general. These individuals or groups are sometimes
referred to as “the long tail of science”. The role of the large pool of common e-Infrastructure resources as an enabling
factor that makes new research activities possible – e.g. through re-prioritisation or – scheduling of activities – without
new budget allocations was noted. This role of common e-Infrastructure as “credit in a bank” was seen as a topic that
would require more awareness-raising among the potential new users. Green-IT issues were seen as very well aligned with
the economic ones, with maintaining a high utilisation rate seen as a key factor for addressing both. Approaches to
maintaining and even further improving utilisation rates were discussed, such as simplified access to infrastructure,
developing the governance practices, building excellent service provider teams, and executing targeted marketing and
training exercises for the users.
The second day opened with three keynote presentations illustrating different facets of the e-Infrastructure cost and
sustainability challenges.
The first presentation was given by Cristina Martinez, presenting the outlook of the European Commission activities on
Research Infrastructures towards Horizon2020.
Emphasis was put on the impact of e-Infrastructures as an enabling technology beyond achieving scientific excellence into
areas such as addressing societal challenges and boosting industrial leadership. The role of the e-Infrastructures as
enabling technologies that have an impact beyond the scientific excellence was emphasised. The unified and simplified
funding system brought in by the Horizon 2020 should make this effect more prominent and rapid.
39
John Barr79
from 451 Research presented an industry analyst perspective,
highlighting the rapid growth of the market and the importance of creating
clear definitions for the key attributes of the Cloud services and their delivery
models, for example, making meaningful comparisons where possible.
Similarly, analysing application attributes to see which of them are good
candidates for Cloud platforms is important, with special emphasis on the
data, which represents a service market that is growing faster than the
computationally oriented Cloud offerings. In the final keynote, Dana Petcu80
(picture), presented the goals and activities of the e-Infrastructures
Reflection Group (e-IRG) as a policy body. The sustainability, governance
and increased impact of the service-oriented paradigm are some of the
underlying key issues of the e-IRG’s activities. The cost assessment activities
and the opportunities provided by the new technologies such as Cloud are
thus highly relevant to the policy-level work. In the presentation, these high-
level goals and initiatives were also put in the context of the Computer
Science Department of the West University of Timisoara, Romania. This
example illustrated how relatively abstract high-level recommendations steer
the activities on the grass-roots level and what kind of challenges one might
face when implementing the policy recommendations.
The final panel was aimed at discovering high-level architectural models as well as concrete next steps towards optimal e-
Infrastructure service provision. The discussion uncovered a wide range of possible high-level options, ranging from fully
dedicated systems to aggressive Cloud adoption. However, the most likely future scenario seemed to be a hybrid solution
where ICT services are provided using a combination of dedicated hardware at the provider’s premises and different
outsourced solutions. The role of leading-edge infrastructures (such as Exascale initiative or PRACE Tier-0 centres) as
training grounds for tomorrow’s affordable HPC systems was also noted. The importance of marketing and awareness-
raising related to the new opportunities of different e-Infrastructure services was again brought up as one of the concrete
proposals to ensure sustainability and broaden the user base of the e-Infrastructure. Improved cost modelling as well as
development of metrics that are more relevant to the users, policy makers and funding actors than the standard low-level
units – such as core hour – were seen prerequisites for more efficient engagement with both user communities and funding
agencies. On more abstract level, the importance of working together and maintaining an analytical approach with regard
to hype phenomena were seen as the foundations that allow the e-Infrastructure to focus on the researchers’ needs and
help them to bring new innovations to the market faster.
In the final summary presented in the Samos Summit closing session, the importance of creation of an open community of
financial experts was emphasised. Solving the issues identified in the workshop as well as changes of successfully facing
any future sustainability challenges can be greatly ameliorated by this kind of trans-disciplinary community. The e-FISCAL
project is going to continue discussions in the future workshops as well as online in a collaboration group to be launched
soon. For more information, please get in touch with the project at http://www.efiscal.eu/contact.
79 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-barr/0/a51/903
80 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dana-petcu/0/286/227
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8.4 WS VIII: Legal challenges for FP7 projects: a +Spaces and WeGov Workshop
Animator: Eleni Kosta, KU Leuven, Belgium81
The workshop was organised by +Spaces82
in collaboration with the WeGov project83
as part of the Samos Summit 2012
and aimed at presenting issues, challenges and possible difficulties that EU research projects deal with, focusing mainly on
the ones relating to legal and ethical ones. Due to some changes in the programme of the Summit, the programme chair
asked us to host two additional presentations and thus two new items were added in the beginning of the workshop: a
short presentation on the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group and a presentation on the MOSIPS project. This also
limited the discussion time that was foreseen at the end of the workshop.
8.4.1 Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group
(Anna Sadowska, EIIR, France84
)
Anna presented the activities of the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group (OISPG)85
and navigated the
participants in the workshop through the initiatives of open innovation put into practice. Anna stressed the importance of
the challenges among the innovation processes which incorporate external ideas, of openness of data and of the new
mechanisms coming up to speed up the development of new services in Europe. During H2020 OISPG will focus its
activities on validation of OI mechanisms and processes involving citizens and opening data and its effectiveness towards
growth and job creation. OISPG is very interested in finding out the outcome of research projects and other initiatives
which explore further the OI approach and business models based on these phenomena.
8.4.2 MOSIPS - Open data and multi-agent models for the simulation and forecast of the Public Policies impact
(Neftis Atallah, Anova IT Consulting, Spain86
)
Neftis presented the MOSIPS project, which is an EU FP7 project on modelling and simulation of the impact of public
policies on SMEs. Neftis pointed out the difficulties that governments face in forecasting the impact of policies, which
currently is considered as inadequate. She stressed the importance of MOSIPS, which aims at the creation of a tool for
facilitating the decision-making process by providing the possibility to make experiments with different socio-economic
designs and the establishment of mechanisms to expose open data and boost the involvement of citizens. MOSIPS is using
multi-agent systems to model the real economy based on the attributes and behaviour of each individual actors and their
relations. Given the importance of SMEs in EU Economy, the tool will focus on the impact of the SME-oriented policies and
they will expose the simulation results as open data. How does this expose the conflict between open data initiatives and
data/privacy protection? Finally, Sergio Gusmeroli from TXT87
asked what will be the test cases that will be launched in
Madrid and Verona. Neftis answered that although the SMEs policies are developed at an upper administration level,
81 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eleni-kosta/4/b1/a69
82 http://www.positivespaces.eu/
83 http://www.wegov-project.eu/
84 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/anna-sadowska/0/155/806
85 https://sites.google.com/site/openinnovationplatform/home
86 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/neftis-atallah-gonz%C3%A1lez/1a/64/653
87 http://www.txtgroup.com/it/Pagine/default.aspx
41
different application could be implemented at the cities‘ level to support policy making. Besides, Verona and Madrid are
cities with very different characteristics so the test cases will be different.
8.4.3 Legal and Ethical Issues relating to the use by policy makers of tools for tracking and analysing social networking discussion
(Paul Walland, IT Innovation, UK88
)
Paul Walland presented the WeGov project which aims at facilitating government policy-makers in engaging better with
citizens by utilising channels citizens already use and are familiar with, such as social media like Twitter or Facebook.
WeGov is developing a toolbox with web applications for search, topic analysis, discussion activity analysis and user
behaviour analysis in order to identify hot topics of discussion, find key citizens, and to spot their opinions. The WeGov
project was confronted with a number of legal and ethical challenges. One of the questions Paul raised was whether the
problems arising were new or simply a new incarnation of an old problem? WeGov has recognised that there needs to be a
balance on how we can ensure legal compliance whilst maintaining trust, since citizens must be confident that ‚big brother‘
is not snooping on their privacy. It isn’t enough to just maintain Legality, also user perception and maintenance of ethical
principles will be critical. Whilst most people may agree to trading their personal data in exchange for Tesco coupons they
seem to be much less willing to reveal information and personal data to the government, since they don’t trust the
government to protect their data. WeGov will produce a best practice Guidelines document at the end of the project in
September 2012. Paul also said that the WeGov toolkit will be available via the WeGov website soon for evaluation.
8.4.4 Controllership issues in FP7 projects – example of SocIoS
(Aleksandra Kuczerawy/Brendan Van Alsenoy, ICRI-KU Leuven, Brussels89
)
Aleksandra presented the SocIoS project, which is an EU FP7 project with the objective to allow the leveraging of content
from SNS (UGC and Social Graph). The use cases of the SocIos project are the use of SNS data for journalistic and media
production purposes. Aleksandra explained the concepts of controller and processor and their origin, historic background,
implications of the assignment of a specific role. Aleksandra discussed the problems this complicated relation between
data controller and data processor poses in the current situation of multi-level platforms, with entities involved to a
different degree, on different stages, possibly from different countries. SocIoS is a perfect example of complex situation
with a number of entities responsible for different components, where it is difficult to apply the binary division (controller
v. processor) as specified in the Data Protection Directive. Particularly in FP7 projects when these issues are often not given
enough attention, should be discussed from the very beginning, possibly already in the DoW.
Questions arose from the audience with regard to the awareness of users of social media with regard to their role, as well
as regarding the owneship of content when bought by a journalist.
88 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-w-walland/6/687/3b8
89 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brendan-van-alsenoy/4/99/a40
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8.4.5 Legal Issues while researching users’ behaviour in virtual spaces
(Eleni Kosta, ICRI- KU Leuven, Brussels90
)
+SPACES is an EU FP7 project aiming at Policy making simulation in virtual spaces (virtual worlds). In +Spaces virtual
spaces are classified into (a) Online Social Networking platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger) and (b) 3D Online virtual
worlds (Open Wonderland). The project has dealt extensively with legal issues and a final deliverable is going to be
published in the end of September. +Spaces carried out an extensive review of Terms of Use and privacy notices of Virtual
Spaces in order to ensure compliance of the +Spaces platform with the Terms of Use of Virtual Spaces. +Spaces also dealt
with issues relating to the posting of content, the deployment of user interface, the storing and the extracting of content.
With regard to the issues of data controllership (previously presented by Aleksandra), +Spaces defined clearly the roles of
the project partners, and filed a notification to the Greek Data Protection Authority. Eleni finally presented the opinion of
the Greek DPA on the EU FP7 research project COCKPIT, which is interesting for all European projects.
8.4.6 Privacy, Law and Social Networks ‐ is 'consenting' a model of the past?
(Christian Hawellek, IRI-University of Hannover, Germany)
Christian presented the CONSENT (CONsumer SENTiment regarding privacy on user generated content services in
the digital economy)91
EU FP7 project, which aims to study the online behaviour of consumers‘, their attitudes toward
personal privacy and the effects of contractual, commercial and technical practices on consumer’s choice. CONSENT is
based on the OECD definition of User Generated Content. Christian presented some results of a survey they conducted
examining various aspects of consumer’s behaviour in social networks, such as the correlation between age and online
behaviour or to which extent users change their online behaviour depending on reading and understanding the privacy
policy.
Discussions were raised on the role of minors: what is the strategy to deal with children who can't enter legally binding
contracts and how can the difficulty of understanding complex legal text be overcome.
8.4.7 Discussion: The future of legal and ethical research in Europe
The discussion part started with the question whether creating general rules for e-government engagement is necessary.
The participants in the workshop found that the issues are too complex for a single rule base because of differences
between different legislative systems around Europe and worldwide. Another point was raised on whether real data was
necessary for R&D projects, as opposed to the need for thorough testing of publicly used systems using real data (a
distinction between for example WeGov which is going to be used by policy makers in real situations compared with
research projects developing the tools).
90 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eleni-kosta/4/b1/a69
91 http://consent.law.muni.cz/
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8.5 WS X: PADGETS/ NOMAD Workshops on Open Data Analytics
Animator: Anna Triantafullou92
, ATC SA, Greece
8.5.1 Visual Analytics for Policy Formulation: Demonstration of the PADGETS Platform93
Euripidis Loukis94
, University of the Aegean, Greece
Professor E. Loukis gave a brief speech by presenting the two main projects that concern this workshop, i.e. PADGETS95
and NOMAD96
projects, which are two similar-scope projects that include searching, tracking, selecting and analyzing
people’s opinions and feedback from various social media, regarding various policy discussions. Their aim is to categorize,
represent and visualize the citizens’ feedback selected from the various social media, in order to extract useful information
and conclusions that will be forwarded to policy makers and reflect citizens’ opinions and needs concerning several policy
issues. He closed his presentation with a comparison of these two projects platforms analytics, focusing mainly on the
general activities and participation quality and quantity of citizens and policy makers.
8.5.2 Policy Gadgets Mashing Underlying Group Knowledge in Web 2.0 Media97
Lukasz Radziwonowicz98
, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany
In the scope of the workshop, Lukasz spoke about the PADGETS project, gave briefly its main goals and went on by
pointing out the two-way interaction that the PADGETS project provides among citizens and policy makers. Citizens no
longer are consumers of information concerning policy making, but they take part actively by interacting with the policy
makers, expressing their opinions, changing and forming collaboratively the various proposed policies. Then, he
presented the technological parts and components that compose the PADGETS platform, as well as the architecture
behind and the mechanism for analyzing all the gathered citizens’ opinions and the corresponding decision support
engine that is involved in this process. He continued with showing the mobile application of the project, as well as some
screenshots of its functionalities and operation. He closed with a short demo of the PADGETS platform.
8.5.3 An overview of NOMAD architecture and technologies99
Vangelis Karkaletsis100
, Pythagoras Karampiperis, National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos”, Leonidas
Kallipolitis101
, Athens Technology Centre (ATC) SA, Greece
92 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/anna-triantafillou/13/162/920
93 https://www.dropbox.com/s/neo4w1uu45slprf/1_Introduction.pdf
94 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/euripides-loukis/4/760/163
95 www.padgets.eu
96 http://www.nomad-project.eu/
97 https://www.dropbox.com/s/srs96276vk2grje/2_PADGETS-SamosSummit2012-LukaszRadziwonowicz.pdf
98 http://de.linkedin.com/in/lukaszradziwonowicz
99 https://www.dropbox.com/s/kxrv7fxirlz4u7r/3_NOMAD_Summit_Presentation_Final.pdf
100 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/vangelis-karkaletsis/1a/46/545
101 http://gr.linkedin.com/in/leonidaskallipolitis
44
The representatives of the NOMAD project talked about the NOMAD vision and system behind the whole idea of the
project. Nomad’s vision is to provide decision-makers with fully automated solutions for content search, acquisition,
categorisation and visualisation that work in a collaborative form in the policy-making arena. They explained the technical
approach in brief and moved on with the approach of gathering data from social media, explaining how they organize the
knowledge gathered in concepts and arguments, along with their definitions. They gave an example of opinion mining
over a certain subject and closed the speech by presenting the project consortium.
8.5.4 The case of Publicspending.gr: Greek public spending in a nutshell102
Dr. Michalis Vafopoulos, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Dr. Michalis Vafopoulos talked about an innovative application within Greece, the publicspending.gr, explaining that the
basic idea behind this application is the answer to the question “where does Greek citizens’ money go in Greece”.
This application takes input from some certain online systems that publish open public data to the people (diavgeia and
TAXIS), processes and mashes them and then demonstrates them in a simple way, with graphs and representations
regarding to who spends, who receives money, as well as where and how much of the Greek money is being spent each
day, each month and each year.
He explained in general how the open public data acquired from the online system of diavgeia is classified according to
various criteria and how they are then mashed up and represented with the according queries. He explained how
knowledge is organized in ontologies, he mentioned that the language used is SPARQL, he talked about the
interconnections that are being established among data and pointed out the demos, services and basic visualisations that
are being made in order to raise public awareness.
102 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ecs8iyqj74t20y1/4_publicspending.gr%20demo%20SAMOS_SUMMIT_2012.pdf
45
8.6 WS XI: A Roadmap for the migration of the FInES Research Roadmap on the Web
Animator: Michele Missikof, IASI-CNR, Italy103
The FInES Research Roadmap (FRR) is a dense document of 50 pages that reports a significant amount of knowledge
gathered, elaborated, organised by the FRR Task Force, established within the FInES Cluster. The scope of FInES is very
ample and therefore its content is rich and articulated, spanning over different disciplines and research areas: from socio-
economics to enterprise engineering, from the characterization of enterprises to enterprise systems and the related
enabling technologies. Seen the rich articulation of the FRR content and the high dynamicity of the addressed fields, the
validity of the FRR is challenged by two main problems: (i) completeness, since despite the efforts of the FRR Task Force
and the wide consultations that took place, there may be topics that are not sufficiently represented; (ii) obsolescence,
since the reality is evolving at a very fast pace and therefore there are continuous achievements and findings, especially in
the area of technology and systems, so that in a short time the content of the FRR may result partial and outdated.
For the above reasons, the next phase of the FRR Task Force activity is devoted to the creation of a Web version of the
document, available to the FInES community for open consultation and, overall, for easy amendment and integration (in
the spirit of Wikipedia). We call this phase FRR MoW (Migration on the Web). A first version of the FRR MoW is already
available on the FInES Portal, but we need to understand what are the actions to be undertaken to guarantee that the Web
version will eventually become a shared, living resource that the FInES community will recognise, use, maintain, and
evolve over time. This workshop intends to address this problem, drawing a first MoW roadmap aimed at achieving the
above objective. To this end, during the workshop a number of issues, articulated in three parts: Content, Governance,
Technology, were addressed and extensively discussed.
103 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michele-missikoff/1/7b5/b28
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9 The Samos Summit Declaration Samos 2012 Summit Declaration
On Open Data and Interoperability for Governance, Industry and Society
Samos, Greece, 4th July 2012
We, the participants of the Samos 2012 Summit on “Open Data and Interoperability for Governance, Industry and Society”
being active citizens, members of the academic and industrial communities, members of Public sector bodies and SMEs, as
well as researchers of Governance and Policy Modeling, Public Administration Transformation, Government 2.0,
Enterprise Interoperability, Information & Communication Technologies, Future Internet and Social Sciences
Recognizing:
that knowledge and innovation are important means for tackling the global economic crisis while also being
predominantly a key factor for sustainable economic growth and competitive advantage of enterprises;
that today’s global challenges are complex in nature, characterized by non-linear development, cascade
spreading and unpredictability, therefore requiring the collaborative effort of scientists, private and public
institutions, and citizens;
the strategic importance of information and communication technologies in dealing with collaborative and open
governance, establishing and ensuring open and competitive economies;
the global context of the development of information society, which necessitates the transcendence of national
horizons into transnational collaboration schemes and programmes across disciplines;
Acknowledging:
the European Digital Agenda 2020, which strives to foster information society development and to provide the
building blocks for sustainable growth, for all citizens and businesses;
the European Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for research and innovation, which provides an evolving
constitutional agenda for supporting scientific research and pre-competitive industrial development on
information and communication technologies, social sciences, energy and environment, education and
sustainable development;
the Open Governance Partnership, that brings public sector information sharing and innovation forward, as the
best mean of successfully tackling major societal challenges, which are becoming more urgent by the day;
the Rome Declaration on CRIS (Current Research Information Systems) and OAR (Open Access Repositories), a
joint declaration by the CRIS and OAR communities that identifies the need for the availability of high quality
open data concerning publicly-funded research;
the Future Internet Information Systems research roadmap and enterprise Interoperability science base,
initiatives of the FInES cluster aiming at providing enterprises and citizens with novel tools for productivity and
growth;
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We call upon:
the United Nations, the European Parliament, the European Union Presidency and Council of Ministers, the European
Commission, National Governments, international organisations and NGO’s, elected representatives and decision makers
within the industry, SMEs and every active citizen
To:
Support research and innovation in the domain of Open Governmental Data so that major technical and non-
technical barriers for the wider availability and utilization of open data are overcome to enable significant benefits
both in the research and industry and in the domain of governance for evidence-based decision making,
transparency. and public trust
Support the deployment and use of Advanced Service Infrastructures, incorporating distributed and diverse public
sector information resources as well as data curation, semantic annotation and visualization tools, capable of
supporting scientific collaboration and governance-related research from multi-disciplinary scientific
communities
Support the promotion of a new participative governance model for the Public sector and the enterprises within a
connected, inclusive society that is based on transparency, enhanced cohesion, public engagement and trust
Support the promotion of research activities in the domain of Future Internet Enterprise Systems and Enterprise
Interoperability
Support the Interoperability Scientific Formulation through the endorsement and promotion of the Enterprise
Interoperability Science Base development and the new Research Roadmap on Future Internet Enterprise
Systems
Foster collaboration towards the availability and Interoperability of high quality open public sector information,
supported by comprehensive metadata adhering to common international standards and enabling high degrees
of utilization and reuse
Foster collaboration among scientific communities, industry, SMEs and citizens, towards a global ecosystem
where the immense potential of open, interoperable data for improved governance and decision making,
economic gains and wealth creation will be exploited
Embrace and apply the results of ICT research and innovation to improve Interoperability and utilization of open
data in the public sector, academia, industry and society at large.
In light of the above considerations, we have gathered at the Samos 2012 Summit on “Open Data and Interoperability for
Governance, Industry and Society”, and now we call on all institutions and individuals addressed above, to take decisive
steps at global, European, regional and local level regarding the development and adoption of new and advanced ICT
solutions for Open Data and Interoperability - thereby providing the means for a proper response to the challenges of the
future.
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10 Samos Summit by numbers 10.1 Summary
A quick summary of the participation and impact of the Samos 2012 Summit can be given from the following numbers:
More than 120 participants in Samos, 80 of them experts in the area of Open Data and Interoperability, coming
from 20 countries
More than 60 presentations
More than 1000 visits to the Samos Summit site, during the conference, from 38 Countries
360 on-line viewers
More than 1,500 tweets, re-tweets and shares, reaching thousands of people
More than 1,000 person-hours of collaborative workshops
More than 1,000 photos
More than 15 video statements – A summary of the video statements made, can be found in the two following
links:
- For the Enterprise Interoperability Science Base (FInES and ENSEMBLE project):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1VFIxWrLu0&feature=youtu.be
- For the Open Data concept and the ENGAGE Project:
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/rotvla13301cizr/OpenDataSamos.wmv
The following map shows the global reach of the Samos 2012 Summit Website
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10.2 Twitter Statistics
The following figures show interesting statistics concerning the Samos 2012 Summit hashtag #samos2012
10.3 The most popular users
10.4 Source of tweets
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10.5 Top 20 words used
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11 Samos 2012 Summit Memories
2
More at: www.samos-summit.org