opinion, the Wikileaks experience proves the advantages of Open Data. 
Was Wikileaks right to publish the cable? Were the specific facts and behaviors uncovered by  
Cablegate right or wrong? The answer to these questions are outside the scope of this document.  
Here we only wish to point out that Cablegate and Wikileaks, at least in the form we've known them 
so far, have been about: 
• reacting to problems after they occurred 
• without any intervention and involvement of the parties and organizations that may have  
behaved improperly 
Open Data, instead, is about prevention of errors, abuses and inefficiencies, through conscious and  
continuous collaboration of citizens and governments officials during day to day operations, if not  
before their beginning. 
Of course, citizens must always check that they aren't getting incomplete or biased data. But in any  
case, Open Data means that the involved government officials aren't just prepared to see that data  
published, they know and accept it from the start. In such a context, some risks associated to  
Wikileaks, like the fact that the leaker lacks the means to influence the downstream use of the  
information, and therefore may harm anybody connected to the linked information, are almost non-
existent. 
Above all, unlike the content of most Wikileaks documents, Open Data are almost always data that  
should surely be open, unlike wartime military reports, and that almost never contain any personal  
information.  In  summary,  whatever  the  conclusions  about  Wikileaks  are,  they  could  not  be 
conclusions  against  Open  Data,  because  there  are  too  many  differences  between  the  two 
movements. 
2.2. Data Openness in EU
Both the interest and the need for data openness at the European Union level remain high. Here,  
without making any complete analysis, we'll only report and comment a few relevant episodes.  
While studies continue to point at the political and economical advantages of Open Data, great  
inefficiencies and delays still keep the time and cost savings that could be achieved a far goal for  
the European Union. 
All the principles of the Open Declaration (collaboration, transparency, empowerment) have been  
declared key areas of action of the new EC eGov action plan. Particularly important, as explained  
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Copyright  2011 LEM, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. This work is released under a Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)