Open data in Italy, Austria, Estonia, France, Ireland, Romania and Slovenia

7. Supervisory authority

All of the Member States, except Austria, have some bodies with coordination duties, but their role varies across the countries. 

France, Ireland, and Italy have national authorities (the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in Ireland and, the Digital Agency for Italy and the General Data Administrator in France) that design the open data strategy, govern it, are responsible for OGP and somehow support the implementation of open data within their countries.

However, none of the MS have a fully-fledged open data authority which supervises and guarantees compliance with open data standards. 

France, Estonia and Slovenia have authorities which supervise and control access to public documents (the Data Protection Inspectorate in Estonia, the Information Commissioner in Slovenia, the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents in France).

In Italy and Romania, open data also falls within the framework of the fight against corruption. 

In Italy, the National Anti-Corruption Agency controls the obligation related to transparency and access to documents. In Romania, the National anticorruption Department does not have any control function. In addition, there is the General Secretariat of the Government in Romania, an authority that promotes and coordinates the adoption of open data policies, but without power to guarantee compliance.

With regard to supervision on the openness of public procurement data, the authorities are only the same in Italy and Romania, due to the partial inclusion of open data in the anti-corruption strategy. 

In Ireland, there is almost no interaction between the public procurement office and governance of the open data portal. 

In France, the Directorate of Legal Affairs coordinates and supervises the ambitious Digital Transformation Plan for public procurement which includes, among many other aspects, the openness of public procurement.