[open-government] French PSI portal officially announced today: "Etalab" (data.gouv.fr) to launch by end of 2011

Wed Feb 23 00:35:55 UTC 2011

Hi all,

A brief announcement from France: the French Prime Minister François
Fillon officially announced today ([1]) the creation of "Etalab", a
mission under his authority which will develop a national public
sector information portal aimed at gathering, distributing and
encouraging wide reuse of French PSI.

The portal's URL will be data.gouv.fr, and the announcement reads
as follows (unofficial home-made translation, apologies for any
gallicisms I may have left) :

"The Council for the Modernization of Public Policies headed by
President Nicolas Sarkozy enacted, on June 30th 2010, the creation of
a central national public sector information portal: Etalab
(data.gouv.fr).

Prime Minister François Fillon named Séverin Naudet director of
Etalab. Under the Prime Minister's authority, and as part of the
Secrétariat Général du Gouvernement, Etalab will coordinate national
administrations and support public organizations in order to enable as
wide as possible a reuse of public sector information. This central
portal is part of the Government's online public services
simplification strategy.

Enabling access to and reuse of public information in a spirit of
transparency is a priority objective of the Government's public
modernization policies. Etalab will make raw public data freely
available under reusable formats, and will develop new online services
for citizens based on some of these data sets. The reuse of such data
opens up a wide range of opportunities for the French community of
developers, who will be able to use it as the basis of new, innovative
applications."

Disclaimer: I joined the data.gouv.fr team just a few days ago. While
we're literally just getting started, I hope we'll have opportunities
in the future for informal exchanges around public sector information
reuse and the best practices in the field.

All the best,

Romain Lacombe

PS : my professional contact info at Etalab is as follows:
romain.lacombe at pm.gouv.fr
landline: +33 1 42 75 64 24 / cell: +33 6 32 87 45 57

[1] Link to the announcement (in French):
http://www.premier-ministre.gouv.fr/presse/creation-d-etalab-portail-unique-de-reutilisation-des-informations-publiques

--
Romain Lacombe
+33650161437
+16506464745