The research in social science of Datactivist’s founders entertained a belief that it is essential to put users at the centre of open data policies. In his doctoral dissertation, Samuel Goëta showed that the datasets published on open data portals often come out of the logic of the offer: the administrations employees choose the datasets to be open and how they will be published without taking into account the users needs about data.

In his work on electoral sociology, Joël Gombin has experienced the limits of open data: : too aggregated, rarely updated, poorly documented, sometimes unusable. And, for administration employees, it’s a lot of work for datasets that are sometimes little used or not used.

It is our wish to put our expertise into data producers and reusers, that made us create Datactivist, to open data and make them used and useful.

The cooperative company quickly expanded to support organizations of all types (public sector, companies, NGOs) about the opening of their data, the uses and requests of open data.

As an open data pure player, we help our customers through consulting activities ranging from the definition to the operational implementation of an open data strategy ; training that puts open data in the general context of the data revolution and data science ; and facilitation to help data reuse by experts and beginners.