Eurostat considers to publish more open source tools using EUPL
Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Communities, is considering to release three more of its tools using the EUPL. The bureau in Luxembourg this summer published its Business Cycle Clock application using the open source licence written by the European Commission.
The Business Cycle Clock is a visual tool offering easy to use access to key economic indicators within Europe. The application is based on a tool developed over the past three years by Statistics Netherlands. "Eurostat did not use the exact same code, but they have used the same concepts to create their own application", says the Dutch developer Thom Werkhoven, who helped Eurostat in Luxembourg. The software itself was built by external developers Werkhoven said.
The tool can be used as a web service, explains Werkhoven. Given a predefined selection of a country or countries, and given a selection of data set such as employment figures, exports or industrial production, other can use the service to display on their site up to date graphs. "It is a very easy way to compare to countries. Once you've made a selection, you can offer it on your site. It works just like a bookmark in a browser."
Eurostat has made the tool available as open source software. The development project is hosted on the Osor.eu website.
The Business Cycle Clock is one of four applications recently built by Eurostat for presenting its statistical data. One of the developments is Eurostat's Data Explorer, to provide an easy to use interface for the extraction of statistical data from the Eurostat databases. A third tool is the Table Graphs and Maps (TGM) application, offering access to about a thousand tables and which allows users to make their own graphs and maps. The fourth application Eurostat developed is called the Country Profiles. Werkhoven: "This application is targeted at the general audience interested in an overview of the most important indicators per country."
The bureau has not yet made any formal decisions whether these three other applications will be release under an open source licence. However, Eurostat has already published several other tools using the EUPL, such as SDMX standard for the exchange of statistical data and metadata.
More information:
Business Cycle Clock introduction
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