SEMIC 2020: highlights

More than 600 participants registered for the digital SEMIC 2020 conference on Sustainable Data Services that took place on 15 October 2020. The recordings from the conference will be available in the coming weeks on Joinup. 

The 1st digital edition of the SEMIC Conference was co-organised by the ISA² Programme and the German Presidency of the Council of the EU. The event gathered policy makers, IT practitioners and researchers to participate in discussions on semantic interoperability for public administrations with a focus on linked and open data.

In his opening speech, European Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn emphasised that data interoperability remains high in the EU policy agenda and that SEMIC communities are essential in providing business continuity in today's world. 

Director-General of European Commission’s DG Informatics Mario Campolargo and German Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology Markus Richter highlighted in a discussion that we need to be able to facilitate online access to information in a transparent way and the semantics element is vital to achieve this. 

Erik Wilde, Catalyst at Axway, gave a keynote speech on sustainable API platforms for public administrations and pointed out that there is no single best way to design an API and the developers should always plan for evolution. 

The conference participants had the opportunity to attend four parallel sessions and discover the topics of maintenance of semantic assets, fighting COVID19 through data sharing, optimizing open data portals and user interfaces and providing sustainable data services through Wikibase and Wikidata. 

Afternoon sessions

Professor from KU Leuven Joep Crompvoets and Program Manager from the Interoperability Unit of DG DIGIT Georges Lobo gave floor to graduate and master students in the Interoperability Academy Speaking Corner where they had the opportunity to pitch their research projects and ideas to the audience. 

Three experts from Ghent University, Norwegian Digitalisation Agency and Open Knowledge participated in a closing discussion on the topic of semantics and data policies and what should be the EU priorities. Open Knowledge founder Rufus Pollock highlighted that we need to focus on tidiness and syntax and adopt best practices from software.

Emanuele Baldacci, Director of Digital Services at DG Informatics, concluded that data are an enabler and we need to focus on user friendliness and customisation. Interoperability is key to give citizens and businesses access to data from anywhere.

Learn more about the SEMIC activities under ISA² and visit the SEMIC community on Joinup!

Any questions? Contact our team via DIGIT-ISA2-COMM@ec.europa.eu.