European Commission awards Capgemini with 3-year contract to continue the development of the European Data Portal

Capgemini today announced that the European Commission has awarded a three-year contract, worth several million Euros, to its subsidiary Capgemini Consulting to continue the development of the European Data Portal and related data economy studies and consulting services.

Capgemini Consulting, the global strategy and transformation consulting arm of the Capgemini Group, will lead the three-year engagement, coordinating a number of partners and subcontractors, including Capgemini’s Technology and Engineering Services subsidiary Sogeti[1].  

The European Data Portal is a core component of the public sector data infrastructure that has been set up by the European Commission and Member States. It offers three key pillars:

• Access to public data resources across Europe via the single point of contact which is the portal itself, offering over 800,000 datasets across 34 countries;

• Support to Member States via the set-up of communities of practice of national Open Data portal and policy owners, training and consultancy to improve and sustain data publishing practices;

• Evidence of the socio-economic benefits of re-using public data resources and various stimuli to foster uptake further and an overarching approach to sustain Open Data publishing.

The ultimate goal of the European Data Portal is to leverage this three-pillar approach as framework conditions to deliver impact based on the re-use of (Open) Data. The more this impact is documented and understood, the further access, discoverability, publishing and data uptake will increase.

“The European Data Portal is uniquely positioned in setting the standard and supporting European countries to close the gap and reach higher levels of Open Data Maturity,” says Dinand Tinholt, Vice-President and European Institutions Lead at Capgemini Consulting.  “This strategic win strengthens Capgemini’s position in making the data economy a reality, in providing both support and a perspective on what we can expect from the integration of a growing number of data sources.”

Beyond delivering improvements to the European Data Portal, the agreement will also include the measurement of Open Data maturity in Europe and will assess the market value of the data economy in light of the current and planned developments. Support will be given equally to European countries where specific attention should be paid to improving the discoverability of data and improving data portals to foster re-use of public data resources within each respective country.

Wendy Carrara, Capgemini’s Principal Consultant managing the European Data Portal for the European Commission, added: “Member States understand the benefits of walking the Open Data journey together, and have embraced Capgemini as a trusted companion to live the data adventure side by side. We look forward to continuing to work with them over the coming years.”

The European Data Portal

Open Data refers to the information collected, produced or paid for by public bodies which can be freely used, modified and shared by anyone. The benefits of Open Data include an increase in government transparency and accountability as well tangible financial benefits for citizens, businesses and civil society. The Capgemini study published in 2015 for the launch of the European Data Portal estimated a value of 75.7 billion EUR in market size for Open Data in 2020, with a significant increase by approximately 37% between 2016 and 2020. In this context, the European Union launched the European Data Portal. The Portal collects information about the data made available in each European Country. To date, it covers 34 countries, 73 catalogues, links to nearly 850,000 data sets across Europe and offers a variety of learning resources and use cases. This multi-year engagement is just one of the ways in which the Capgemini Group supports its clients to take strategic insight from multi-faceted data every day.