This text, part of the #ODDStories series, tells a story of Open Data Day‘s grassroots impact directly from the community’s voices.
On the 4th of March 2025 the University of Aruba participated in Open Data Day 2025! About 20 researchers and students gathered to hear all about Open Data, Research Data Management and the FAIR principles. The event consisted of two parts, the first part was a seminar which introduced Open Data by Esther Plomp, and the second part was a hands on discussion about the practicalities of Open Data. The organisation of the event was made possible thanks to the sponsorship of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and Datopian, which we primarily used to lure people in with vegan food!
In the second part of the event, we had a smaller group of participants which allowed for more hands-on discussions. One of the challenges that we focused on was on how to manage and share personal data. Particularly at our research institute this can be a challenge, as we currently don’t have an institutional ethics committee. This means that we are reliant on other institutions with whom we collaborate for ethical approvals, or we could make use of external boards that charge a fee for these types of procedures. As a small island state institute this can be difficult to manage. Therefore, the Research Center aims to start up a research ethics committee for the University of Aruba before the next academic year, to facilitate bachelor and master projects that involve human participants or personally identifiable data. Although we do not have particular legislation frameworks in place on Aruba for this (yet!), we aim to work with the same standards as institutions in the European part of the Kingdom/Europe, by basing our procedures on the Dutch KNAW guidelines.
The case study presented during the workshop, a bachelor dissertation by Joel Riven Rajnherc, a SISSTEM Bachelor student supervised by Francis Laclé, focused on audio data of participants speaking Papiamento. This project aims to develop a speech-to-text keyword spotting model in Papiamento for smart healthcare devices, enabling hands-free interaction for healthcare workers. Integrating Papiamento into modern technology enhances accessibility and supports voice commands in medical settings. Unlike speech-to-text systems focusing on global languages, this initiative prioritizes Papiamento to serve the local community better. This bachelor thesis is part of the Sustainable Island Solutions through Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (SISSTEM) programme, which aims to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in small island states, leveraging the deep understanding of local context and needs.
This case study also resulted in a discussion of how and where to share the software model eventually. A good solution for this is a combination of Zenodo and GitHub (see for instructions on this a recent webinar by Esther for DataUmbrella).
Next to the processing of personal data, we also discussed the challenges of long-term storage of big data (in the TBs). We had a short discussion on what the reuse value of this particular data was and whether it is worth it to share this big data on a data repository. We concluded that at least the processed data underlying the publications should be shared, not just for reuse value but also so that other researchers can validate and reproduce the research that was already undertaken.
Moving forward
The event was a great success with researchers and students from the University of Aruba becoming more aware of Open Data and what this entails for their research projects. The Research Center will use the input we received from the event to update information materials that are available on our internal platforms, and the discussions around participant data will be used in the process of setting up an ethics committee at the University of Aruba. We are looking forward to future workshops, where topics will touch upon the topic of Open Data as well. Onwards to the next Open Data Day event!
About Open Data Day
Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities. ODD is led by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and the Open Knowledge Network.
As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date over one week. In 2025, a total of 189 events happened all over the world between March 1st and 7th, in 57 countries using 15+ different languages. All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.
For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group or join the Open Data Day Slack channel to ask for advice, share tips and get connected with others.
