Data collected, produced or paid for by the public bodies and made freely available for reuse for any purpose.

Source: EU OD

Open government, in line with the open movement generally, seeks to make the workings of governments transparent, accountable, and responsive to citizens. It includes the ideals of democracy, due process, citizen participation and open government data. A thorough-going approach to open government would also seek to enable citizen participation in, for example, the drafting and revising of legislation and budget-setting.

A file format that is platform-independent and made available to the public without any restriction that impedes the re-use of documents. Source: OD Directive

The OpenDocument Format (ODF) is an open XML-based document file format for office applications to be used for documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical elements. The file format makes transformations to other formats simple by leveraging and reusing existing standards wherever possible. As an open standard under the stewardship of OASIS, OpenDocument also creates the possibility for new types of applications and solutions to be developed other than traditional office productivity applications.

Open development seeks to bring the philosophy of the open movement to international development. It promotes open government, transparency of aid flows, engagement of beneficiaries in the design and implementation of development projects, and availability and use of open development data.

Source: ODH

Open data lifecycle is one of the various models that have been developed for the description of open data. Open data lifecycle model describes the handling of the data itself, starting from its creation, through the provision of open data to its use by various parties. Although stages or phases of open data lifecycle vary within the models developed by different authors, most commonly phases include: discovery and acquisition, data organization, publication, integration, analysis, re-use and storage/preservation.

Open data infrastructure (ODI) is a concept that explains the domain in which open data is created and used. ODI consists of a combination of social (non-technical) and technical elements which are interrelated and interact, ensuring the supply and use of open data. Technical elements refer to open data tools, technologies, standards etc., while non-technical elements include open data regulation and policies, governance and funding (van Loenen et al, 2018: 6).

Open data ecosystem (ODE) is a concept that provides a dynamic and holistic understanding to open data provision and use. The main characteristics of open data ecosystems are user-drivenness, inclusiveness, circularity, and skill-based (Van Loenen, Zuiderwijk et al., unpublished/ submitted).

A Web-based system that contains a data catalogue with descriptions of datasets and provides services enabling discovery and re-use of the datasets. See also → Data portal.

The Open Definition, first released by Open Knowledge in 2005, sets out under what conditions data and content is open. Both legal and technical compatibility is vital, and the Open Definition ensures that openly-licensed data can be combined successfully, avoiding a proliferation of licences and terms of use for open data leading to complexity and incompatibility.