Universities and Open data, the challenge has just begun

Open data are spreading rapidly in public institutions (PI) as a means for promoting their effectiveness and efficiency and to enhance transparency, public participation, trust and cooperation. PI provide citizens with data and information regarding internal processes and policies, then data have to be easily accessible, understandable and usable. As to participation, shared decisional processes improve the quality of the political-administrative choices. On one side, PI gather proposals on citizens needs and, on the other side, build a cooperative network among themselves. Governance becomes a shared process which meets stakeholders’ expectations. These are the pillars of Open Government, which has proved to be the most powerful way to face the recent economic crisis, turned into a confidence crisis towards Politics and institutions. The “openness” approach can spread these kinds of innovation: i)institutional, by rethinking the public intervention in terms of real usefulness for citizens/businesses; ii)organizational, based on transparency, organizational and individual evaluation, social responsibility and accounting; iii) technological, by creating a network of interconnected administrations, supported by modern technologies; iv)cultural, with the adoption of a participatory model, in which the decision-making process raises from the collaboration between institutions and individuals. In this scenario, data are crucial to provide citizens with the necessary knowledge tools to make their decisions or evaluate the impact of public ones. In a broader setting, the economic system can develop services that, based on public information, can benefit all the community. Public organizations collect a wide range of different data, which are particularly relevant as quantity and reliability. Universities received an important acceleration towards the adoption of ‘innovative’ IT procedures by the spread of the Covid19 pandemic, but, in addition to remote learning, they publish open data on institutional information: enrolled students, courses, departments, staff. Anyway, further information are more interesting for stakeholders: they would like to know if their investment in higher education will be rewarded by a successful university performance, by an adequate teaching or by effective possibilities of quickly entering the job market. Providing open data on these issues could be effective to compare the quality of universities or the potential value of a degree. Open data can lead to a further qualitative leap in the academic world, towards smart universities dealing with smart students, aware and motivated by a complete knowledge and participation in the institutions intended for them. Open data have a huge potential yet to be fullyexploited.