Ask the last politician you voted to support #1ODataLicenseEU

Last friday, the President of the Basque Country, Patxi Lopez signed his support to the call for a single opendata license in the EU. Few politicians in Europe are more concious than Patxi Lopez about the value of opendata as an engine for economic activity and a leverage for transparency. Under his government, “Opendata Euskadi” has achieved a leading position among the opendata initiatives in Europe and even the Government budgets has been published following the opendata standards.

Unfortunately, Patxi Lopez is an exception even within his own party. Neither other politician from his party nor from the government party has yet supported the initiative. Same could be said about the politicians from other EU countries. And the support of our politicians is need to achieve the objective of the campaign.

This call for a single opendata license in the EU is a EU-wide campaign, because the future of opendata in the EU it is now being deciding in the EU Council. The representatives of our governments and the European Commission are drafting the new version of the Directive on ReUse of Public Sector Information. So it is the right time to ask our politicians to support this initiative, whichever the country you leave, whichever the party you vote.

Choose one politician as a target and ask him for the support for the initiative. Choose the politician or party you voted in the last election, for instance. Send him messages to his twitter profile or write in his facebook page. If we do not obtain now a single EU opendata license, it will be lost for years. We badly need a single opendata license in EU in order to unleash fully the economic potential of Public Sector Information. More than 40 billion of Euros per year are at stake, money that it is highly needed for the economic recovery of Europe. Show your own politicians the way using Patxi Lopez tweet as an evidence.

Let´s build Europe with its public data as a leverage.