The international agreement on the harmonization of open data has entered into force
After the agreement on the Project in the transport sector, funded by the Connecting Europe Facility, which is called ‘NAPCORE – The National Access Point Coordination Organisation for Europe‘ (hereinafter – NAPCORE; the NAPCORE Grant Agreement) has entered into force in December, cooperation between the countries developing their own open data platforms has officially begun. The State Enterprise Lithuanian Road Administration (hereinafter – the Road Administration) is also among the organisations of more than thirty different countries, that have signed this Agreement.
NAPCORE is the newly formed organisation that coordinates and harmonizes more than 30 open data platforms across Europe.
In implementing the EU Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) Directive and its delegated regulations, the EU Member States have set up their National Access Points (NAPs), which provide users with access to unified data related to road infrastructure and transport. Open data, that are provided in different formats, can be useful in developing various fields, for example, in creating mobile apps, information analysis tools, virtual maps, or in deploying other services.
However, in some countries, NAP data are provided in different formats, they are different in their setup and data access interfaces. The fundamental purpose of the NARCOPE project is to create a long-term and future-oriented platform structure, which, first of all, will operate as a coordination mechanism designed to unify compatibility and thus improve interactions between the national data accesses, which will facilitate the use of data at EU level in the future. This project, that is being implemented, will contribute to the goal of creating a single European Transport Data Area.
The above-mentioned Grant Agreement with the European Commission was signed by BASt (German Motorways Institute), which is the consortium leader. The Road Administration, as the project partner, has signed the Consortium Agreement (on the harmonization of data) with the consortium leader BASt. The contract with the Central Project Management Agency (CPMA) for the implementation of the national part of this agreement is currently being prepared.
The currently operating national access point, that was created by the Road Administration, provides free and one-stop access to data about public transport, traffic intensity, data from the stations of road weather conditions, from traffic restriction, electric car charging stations, as well as data about road surfaces, tolled road sections, data about traffic safety, speed control, road works and other.