Open Data Day Buenos Aires – planning the open data agenda for 2016

This blog was written by Yamila Garcia, Open Knowledge ambassador in Argentina

For the third time, we celebrated Open Data Day in Argentina, and we invited different groups to celebrate it with us: members of the official open government office; transparency, open data and freedom of information activists, civic innovators, journalists and anyone who is interested in the progress of 21st century open governments.

March the 5th marks a day of open data deliberations, where we understand the importance of open data in three main pillars – release, reuse and impact. It is a day to share ideas, projects and opening up the dialogue channels about open public information, promotion of freedom of information laws, open government in the three branches of the state, strengthening democracy, promoting citizenes participation and generation of public and civic innovation.
Fundación Conocimiento Abierto with Argentinian civil society organizations (Democracia en Red, Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia, Directorio Legislativo and FOPEA) had the honour to receive 250 participants in #ODD16. The event was supported by ILDA.

In the last two years, we invited open data projects in Argentina and practitioners from different fields such as academia, government (in all branches), journalists and civic hackers to join us under the same roof and present their projects. This year we decided to shake things up, and had an event with the following activities:

Panels: we had Four central panels with the following topics:
- “Progress for a law on access to information” with Laura Alonso (anticorruption office holder), Fernando Sanchez (national legislature), Government officials and José Crettaz (Journalist of La Nación Newspaper).
- “Challenges for open government” with Rudi Borrmann (National Subsecretary of Innovation and open government ), Carolina Cornejo (ACIJ), Alvaro Herrero ( City government) and Gustavo Bevilaqcua (national legislature).
- “Hackers civic and open data” with four famous civic hackers
- “Local governments and opening information” panel with five representatives of local government innovation

An open space of dialogue with mentors in the following topics:
- Innovating in the public sector,
- Challenges for a law on access to public information
- Municipalities progress in the area of open government, How to achieve citizen participation channels?
- OGP agenda in Argentina
- Challenges for open municipal government with open data
- The impact of open data: How to measure results?
- Codeando Argentina: Cooperation between governments and civic hackers, and Parliament opened.

We accomplished the goal of gather all the areas that work on open data to shape the Open Data Agenda for 2016 in a collaborative way. Each year this community grows more and more. In 2017, we will expect to have an Open Data Day in other parts of the country, and not only in Buenos Aires. From year to year, we get more challenges, and we are happy to have Open Data Day to tackle them.