PublicaMundi, being a research project working to make big open geospatial data easier to share, discover, and reuse, is really excited for the European Commission’s (EC) first official strategy to promote the data-driven economy in the EU!
In July 2014, the EC outlined a new strategy on Big Data, supporting and accelerating the transition towards a data-driven economy in Europe. The data-driven economy will stimulate research and innovation on data while leading to more business opportunities and an increased availability of knowledge and capital, in particular for SMEs, across Europe. The EC adopted the Communication on the data-driven economy as a response to the European Council’s conclusions of October 2013, which focused on the digital economy, innovation and services as drivers for growth and jobs and called for EU action to provide the right framework conditions for a single market for big data and cloud computing.
The EC urges governments to embrace potential of Big Data! In the words of EC Vice-President Neelie Kroes:
It’s about time we focus on the positive aspects of big data. Big data sounds negative and scary, and for the most part it isn’t. Leaders need to embrace big data.
These are exciting times for all researchers and SMEs working in the forefront of the Data Economy! As a project, we are really looking forward to helping the EC, EU member states and SMEs to capitalize on our research and innovation results.
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