• Bulgaria | Opening Government Data
  When the Bulgarian Parliament released information on bills and lawmakers in machine-readable formats earlier this year, blogger and open data activist Boran Yurukov found bugs and problems — then decided to show Bulgaria how to do the job right.

  On the Open Knowledge Foundation blog, Yurukov explains how he worked to scrape the Bulgarian Parliament's site, clean up the data, and release much more than what the legislative body was already putting out in formats like XML or CSV through a project of its own.

  Yurukov says that all data he's been working on are in raw XML files, but also that he's building a platform for analysis and visualization of the datasets. The platform, mostly aimed at data journalists,  will be sponsored by the Institute for Public Environment Development.

  Earlier this year Yurukov also founded Crime.bg, the first Bulgarian Ushaidi-based website, the aim of which is to collect reports on crime through the website, Twitter and Facebook. He also supported the creation of For Fair Elections, the first platform to monitor elections in Bulgaria, which happened last October.

• France | Googleviz Competition: Winners and More...
  Back in October I wrote about a competition launched by Google, YouTube and Twitter to create the best data visualisations - "dataviz" in French - to follow the French presidential campaign (elections are due in spring 2012).
  Participants could use as many data sources as they want, whether built on top of an API or a fixed database, and the only requirement was to include at least one Google or Twitter dataset.

  In their weekly roundup on open data, Owni.eu's Paule D'Atha tells more about the winner:

  The winning entry was Mediarena, designed and developed by Nils Grünwald, Stéphane Raux, Alexis Jacomy and Ronan Quidu. Everything is there at first glance: the angle is clear – how the mainstream online media cover the French presidential campaign – while the interaction is more than intuitive. With a few clicks, the user can play around with the data and scroll through the list of headlines. Beyond the simplicity and readability, Mediarena gives the user access to a huge amount of data that provides context and depth to their chosen angle.

  Other interesting projects included a structure tag cloud giving an overview of the main topics covered by the media and politicians and an analysis of the candidates' Twitter profile through a fun visualisations of the candidates being parachuted towards the presidential palace.

• EU | European Parliament Adopts Proposals to Improve EU Transparency Rules
  On December 15th the European Parliament voted to adopt proposals to improve the EU's rules governing public access to documents.
  Access Info, an organization that works on defending the right to know in Europe and globally, highlighted what it says are positives in the Parliament's new position. A first important step is the improvement of the definition of a document: this now covers electronic system, including databases stored on "off-site" servers.
  Proposals would also ensure a rapid appeal process for members of the public that are denied information and establish Information Officers to improve efficiency in responding to requests from the public.

  Back in October Access Info launched an initiative called AskTheEu.org, aimed at spreading the word on the right to ask EU institutions for information and helping citizens in the process.
  The right to access EU documents is guaranteed by Regulation 1049/2001.

• France | A Debate on Public Transportation of... Data
  The SNCF, the National Corporation of French Railways, has launched a debate about whether to open up data on transportation.
  In a country struggling to involve the transport industry in the open data movement, this initiative is most welcome, explain Pieter Colpaert from iRail npo and Pierre Chrzanowski on the OKFN blog:

  The lack till today of open transport data in France led independent initiatives to extract the data without authorisation, placing them in legal insecurity. A change by SNCF is therefore really welcome.
  Although SNCF seems to be ready for open data, other public transport operators in France are still reluctant. RATP, the state-owned subway operator for Paris area, recently refused to let other app developers use its map for free. This inspired CheckMyMetro, a startup which was forced to remove the RATP map from its smartphone application, to organize a subway map design contest.

  Given the reluctance of many operators, the process seems rather complex, but - according to the writers - the release of the national open data portal could stimulate developments in this direction.
  The French government has created its own license for the national open data portal that was launched earlier this month.

Plus
Apps4Italy: the deadline is February 10th, 2012