PhD Position on Assessing the value of – open - data (MSCA-ITN ODECO)

The EU Horizon 2020 Marie SklodowskaCurie ITN project ‘ODECO: Towards a Sustainable Open Data ECOsystem’ (see www.odeco-research.eu ) is a four-year project involving 15 PhDprojects covering each a specific part of the open data ecosystem. The centralaim of ODECO is to train the next generation of creative and innovative earlystage open data researchers and unlock their creative and innovative potentialto address current and future challenges in the creation of user driven,circular and inclusive open data ecosystems. 

Current developments in the field ofopen data are characterised as highly fragmented. Open data ecosystems areoften developed in different domains in isolation of each other and with littleinvolvement of potential users, resulting in approaches that significantlylimit open data reusability for users. This reduces innovation and the abilityto create new valued added goods and services. Isolated domains also undermineinteroperability for users acting as a barrier to data sharing. Efforts arealso uncoordinated in open data training and research, where multidisciplinaryapproaches are scant. 

Bringing together different sectors(research, private sector, government, non-profit) and different perspectives(public administration, law, business, engineering), ODECO aims to address thecentral challenge of realizing a user driven, circular and inclusive open dataecosystem. Through its novel research and training programme, ODECO willprovide early stage researchers with relevant open data knowledge, skills andresearch experience.

ODECO has two open positions fora PhD fellowship at KU Leuven:

• One position on Assessing the value of – open - Dataat the Spatial Applications Division Leuven (SADL)
• One position on Open data and public values at thePublic Governance Institute