Luxembourg’s open data portal project

The widespread silo mentality of public sector organizations in general and the resulting reluctance to share data, documents or information with employees of other governmental organisms or the rest of the world used to lower the efficiency of many governmental activities. The vicious circle started with a lack of documentation about the data or documents that exist at the level of the different organizations. The consequence of this lack is the potential re-usersÕ ignorance of their existence and their possible suitability. The absence of a platform to show, document, describe and deliver these datasets, as well as missing concepts for licensing, eventual cost issues, data formats and technical accessibility further contributed to a corporate culture relying on individual stand-alone work rather than on re-use of existing material. This inevitably led to multiple work, a loss of time and public money and a disregard of already existing expertise.