E.U. Sets 2013 Deadline for Open Source Public Data Mining Portal

Sticking with her original deadline announced last year, European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes told a European interoperability standards forum yesterday that a public portal for access to government and public data from across the continent is on track to go online in Spring 2012. Following that, the next stage in Comm. Kroes' agenda includes an ambitious project to launch a community-built, crowd-sourced public data platform for all of Europe.

Kroes told the OpenData Forum in Brussels she expects for a pan-European forum for public data mining to go live no later than 2013. "Will she really be able to pull off all that?" the commissioner asked rhetorically, referring to herself....Yesterday, Comm. Kroes narrowed and focused the definition of these datasets somewhat: "Making good use of public data can make your life better. Whether it's route planning using public geo-information or public transport data, a local community crowd-sourcing its maintenance priorities, decision-making built on statistics of all shapes and sizes, or data journalism that helps explain our world," she told attendees....