The European Data Portal published a methodological study on 18 September 2026 on the future of the Open Data Maturity assessment, a tool used for more than a decade to compare open-data ecosystems. The document does not issue a new country ranking.

The assessment looks at national policies, portal and metadata quality, and the reuse of public information. The authors say the framework must adapt to artificial intelligence, to legislative initiatives such as the Digital Omnibus, and to rising expectations about data quality and impact.

The study recommends keeping collaborative self-assessment rather than abandoning it. In the short term it proposes a shorter questionnaire, stronger independent validation and wider use of automatically collected evidence, to cut reporting burden and make results more reliable.

The roadmap is phased over the short, medium and long term. Emphasis would gradually shift from the mere existence of portals towards real-world performance: how data are used and what effect they have.

The material also points to a separate best-practices report from the 2024 and 2025 assessments, as a way for administrations to learn from one another. The recommendations remain methodological proposals, not rules already binding on ministries or municipalities.

For Romania and other participating countries, the next relevant step is whether future official editions adopt the streamlined questionnaire and independent checks. Until then, the study should be read as a roadmap, not as a verdict on open-data maturity in 2026.

Image: European Commission / Wikimedia Commons. An institutional building, not the ODM assessment chart. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: The Open Data Maturity Assessment: A roadmap for the next decade of data sharing | data.europa.eu; Open Data Maturity | data.europa.eu.