A community of practice to support the evolution of regional tourism policies
About this good practice
Publishing quality open data is important, but it is not enough for users to take an interest in it and develop solutions to improve public services. Users need to be involved in the process. In 2023, as part of the Grand Est’s SRDT (regional tourism development scheme) and to support the development of a responsible tourist economy taking into account local issues, DataGrandEst (policy instrument for developing a regional strategy for open public data) with the support of regional and national stakeholders proposed to organise a data visualisation competition open to everyone (technicians, ordinary citizens). It took the form of a free hackathon competition dedicated to enhancing the value of existing POI tourist data in the region through a cartographic representation known as "data visualization", A way to valorize our territory on touristic aspect. The aim was:
To raise awareness of the growth potential of tourism and open data as a lever for growth
To initiate and acculturate partners to the challenges and benefits of datavisualisation
That the results would be likely to attract the attention of citizens, but also of elected politicians, in order to demonstrate that data is a major issue in territorial analysis and strategic political axes.
This enabled 82 registrations to the competition, 42 participants from France (80 % from Grand Est), 25 projects developped. A new edition will be launch next year in renewable energy.
Resources needed
Human resources to list + open data platform to publish available regional touristic data, providers, completed with high quality national data.
Human and financial resources to organize and animate a datavizualisation day, a Call to project (animation and selection), a promotion event at the end.
Evidence of success
The event demonstrated that:
- the number of analyses and decisions that can be made from OD is significant (25 visualisations were obtained from 2 datasets).
- anyone can take part in improving the quality of public services by using OD (30% of amateurs).
- a wide range of datavisualisation tools are available and accessible (42 participants discovered new tools)
By exploring the 25 projects, new ways to analyse the touristic activities were identified by the service in charge of tourism.
Potential for learning or transfer
Relevance: To increase quality standards of public services with Open Data, this competition will help any territorial or thematic public service to have:
better knowledge of the data and providers available in their field
new approaches to elaborate new plan of actions
It helps public and private participants in their training process / knowledge acquisition about OD. We observed that giving meaning to the use of OD encourages the involvement of a community and the autonomous development of OD skills (technologies and practices).
Replicability: This pedagogical methodology, easy to put in place and enjoyable could be replicated anywhere and could be based on any datasets to aware on OD anyone who seeks to contribute to the betterment of society.
The competition is due to be renewed in 2024 on renewable energies.
Sustainability:The inclusive practice allows employees from the same company who did not know each other to work on a common subject. They continued thereafter.