State data lake is steadily expanding and diving to depths
Today, in the Government House of the Republic of Lithuania, the State Data Agency (Statistics Lithuania), together with its colleagues from various municipalities, is talking about state data. The event “Story of the State Data Lake: Part II Plunging deeper” presents the progress of the inventory of data managed by municipalities, discusses the use of data, legal aspects, shares good practices, advice and solutions.
At the event, the awards were handed out to data ambassadors – institutions, municipalities and enterprises that contributed the most to the smooth integration of state data into the data lake: the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, the Customs Department, the Institute of Hygiene. Furthermore, the municipalities of Vilnius, Klaipėda, Panevėžys cities were also awarded. UAB “Varutis” was chosen as the most benevolent business representative.
"We are striving to bring together and maximize the largest possible circle of institutions that manage and use data, ask themselves and us difficult, relevant and important questions on this topic. The main goal of the project discussed at the event is to increase our state’s resistance to threats: primarily, based on data, to identify and control them. It is important to enable the public to participate in this process – by opening up, increasing transparency and, at times, admitting our own – as data controllers – imperfections. However, today we are willing to show how much we can do together in a common state data ecosystem. I hope that the heads of municipalities will feel and see the enormous benefits of the data lake for their institutions”, noted Dr Jūratė Petrauskienė, Director General of the State Data Agency.
The state data lake is useful and has proved to be highly successful not only for the public sector – it makes available to the public to quickly open data collected in the public sector. In addition to the datasets already available on the Lithuanian Open Data Portal, today the public has gained access to the environmental monitoring data of Klaipėda city municipality (collected since 2005). This dataset includes information on environmental noise, air quality, surface water, and soil.
About the Project
By the summer of 2026, several hundred information systems managed by state or municipal authorities and institutions, including hospitals, schools and utility undertakings, will be integrated into a unified data lake – the State Data Governance Information System. This public sector data integration project is being carried out by the State Data Agency. The key aspect is that the data from the integrated systems will be automatically opened on the Lithuanian Open Data Portal. Results of the project are displayed on the dashboard in real-time.
Why are we doing this?
There is a very large number of various data systems in Lithuania, unfortunately, they are fragmented and at a low maturity level. Therefore, previously, in the event of emergencies or other unforeseen circumstances, we could not make operational decisions as we did not have accurate information on the current situation. The ecosystem of the data lake developed by the State Data Agency makes it possible to utilize state data very quickly, moreover, to make “more accurate”, perceptive decisions based on it. It is also possible to use data for various analytical purposes, to share high quality information with the public.
“We are working towards the everyday possibility that in the future all decisions, crucial for the state, will be made based on data. Our main goal is to strive to ensure that all state data are used and open to the public. We can boast excellence in this field, we are in the lead in Europe. We are an example because we open data in a very transparent and reasonable manner”, stated Dr Jūratė Petrauskienė, Director General of the State Data Agency.
During the process of transferring data into the data lake, continuous collaboration is maintained with state authorities, providing them with consultations and training. Currently, collaboration is ongoing with 322 institutions, and 263 connections have already been established with public sector information systems. The most valuable data for the public is made available on the Lithuanian Open Data Portal (data.gov.lt).
According to Dr J. Petrauskienė, the successful start and significant progress of the project would not have been possible without the goodwill and understanding of the institutions in pursuing common goals – enhancing analytical competencies in the public sector, using data for informed decision-making and analysis, and, over time, increasing public trust in state institutions.
Data and its analytical capabilities are of great importance to researchers, students, businesses and other society groups. One of the ways of applying data in the data lake is dashboards, which present summarized conclusions on themes of interest to the general public: for example, a dashboard of patient queues displaying possibilities of access to doctors, their availability, occupancy, etc.
The project “Integration of State Information Resources into the Data Lake” is funded under the Economic Recovery and Resilience Enhancement Plan "New Generation Lithuania" (RRF).
