Document Overview
The 2023 Open Data Maturity Report is a study prepared as part of data.europa.eu, an initiative of the European Commission, and published by the Publications Office of the European Union in Luxembourg in 2023. The named authors are Martin Page PhD, Emir Hajduk, Eline N. Lincklaen Arriëns, Gianfranco Cecconi and Suzan Brinkhuis, with figures prepared by Edoardo Altamura PhD. The report is the ninth annual open data maturity (ODM) assessment and covers the progress of European countries in making public sector information available for reuse, in line with Directive (EU) 2019/1024.
Scope and Participating Countries
- A total of 35 countries took part: the 27 EU Member States, 3 EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) and 5 candidate countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Serbia and Ukraine).
- The report aims to help countries understand their maturity level, identify areas for improvement and learn from one another, and it also records best practices.
Methodology: Four Dimensions
The assessment defines ODM through four equally weighted dimensions:
- Policy: open data policies, governance models and implementation measures.
- Impact: willingness, preparedness and ability to measure reuse and the impact created by reuse.
- Portal: functionality of national portals, usage, data provision and sustainability.
- Quality: metadata harvesting, metadata monitoring, DCAT-AP compliance and deployment quality.
Key Findings on Overall Scores
- The average score for all participating countries rose from 75 % in 2022 to 79 % in 2023.
- The EU Member States average increased from 79 % to 83 %; France (98.3 %), Poland (97.9 %) and Estonia (96.2 %) are the most mature EU-27 countries.
- The biggest climbers were Slovakia (+32 pp), Latvia (+23 pp), Montenegro (+13 pp) and Iceland (+12 pp).
- Croatia had the largest decrease among EU Member States (-13 pp).
Dimension Results
- Policy is the most mature dimension at 89 %, followed by portal at 85 % and quality at 82 %; impact is the least mature at 77 %.
- Impact showed the greatest improvement (+6 pp), while the report notes that less than 50 % of Member States have gathered data on impact in the various domains.
- The number of Member States reporting a definition of open data impact rose from 20 to 24.
High-Value Datasets
- Member States are progressing in applying Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138, which sets six thematic categories of high-value datasets.
- On average, progress is most advanced on geospatial and statistics datasets (both 62 %), while technical requirements score lowest, with machine-readable formats at 53 %.
Why It Matters for Open Data Policy in Europe
The report is addressed to national open data teams and policymakers across the participating countries, and it sets out recommendations for four country clusters: Trendsetters, Fast-trackers, Followers and Beginners. Its stated purpose is to show where countries stand, support their learning from one another and inform the next steps of the European data strategy.