Democratic Data in Barcelona

I think that the way Barcelona as a city is innovating in the digital space is nothing short of exemplary. Barcelona wanted to increase public engagement in the civic process, including the utilization of public data, while still respecting personal privacy. The municipal government has done that by creating their own manifesto for open data in an effort to become a “digitally sovereign” city. The manifesto’s values have been realized in practice by the civic user testing group and European consortium DECODE, who has run pilots in Barcelona and Amsterdam to increase civic engagement and give them ultimate autonomy over which data they choose to share. My favorite example of the pilots empowered users to activate city services, creating a sensor network that detected noise in a community. It was a tangible, scalable example of how technology can improve city life.

Ben D.