The Government Data Portal for Germany

Fraunhofer FOKUS collaborated with the Federal Ministry of the Interior to build up the official open government data platform in Germany: govdata.de. This talk gives an introduction to open data use cases in Germany, how we approached and eventually architected the platform.

Transcript

1. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   1 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   The Government Data Portal for Germany
   GovData.de
   Konrad Johannes Reiche | September 12, 2013 | Nancy, France
   

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2. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   2 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   Open Government Data
   Government Data
    Motives
   – Transparency
   – Innovation
   – Participation
   – Efficiency
    Core Elements
   – Machine-readable data
   – Licenses
   – Accessibility
   Open Government Data Venn Diagram
   by justgrimes
   

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3. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   3 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   Open Data Example #1
   mundraub.de
    Many fruit bushes and
   fruit trees are unused
    Wild fruits, private grower,
   organizations
    Data about these plants is
   collected and published on
   http://www.mundraub.de
    Data comes from people
   and administrations who
   submit their knowledge
   for the public use
   by hybrid.moment
   

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4. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   4 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   Open Data Example #2
   Glass Recycling Container in Berlin
    Glass Recycling Container in Berlin
   – City
   – Private Organizations
    The Berlin Cleansing Department (BSR)
   has to clean around them
    Problem BSR has no information about
   the location of many containers
    Solution Local administrations do have
   data about the container’s location and
   help the BSR by making these data
   publicly available
   by Andreas Möller
   by pixelroiber
   

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5. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   5 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   Metadata…
   …and Harvesting
    Data is stored and managed distributed
    Why? Centralized data is hardly feasible and beyond administrative
    Heterogeneous data, distributed competence, conflict of interests
    Metadata is used to describe the data
    Distributed data storage with central metadata portal
    Harvesting: Copying of metadata for making the data accessible, too
   Portal
   Document
   Dataset
   Dataset
   Document
   

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6. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   6 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   Starting Point
   Data Portals of the Länder
    Germany is a federalism
   – Consisting of 16 states (Länder)
   – Administrative power divided
    Different Data Provider and Portals
   – Bavaria
   – Berlin
   – Bremen
   – Federal Statistical Office (Destatis)
   – Hamburg
   – Rostock
   – Environmental Information Portal (PortalU)
   – Geo Data Infrastructure Germany (GDI-DE)
   – Rhineland-Palatinate
   – and more…
   ?
   DeStatis (David Liuzzo)
   

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7. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   7 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   Government Data Portal for Germany
   GovData.de
    Launch February 19, 2013
    http://www.govdata.de
    Prototyped at Fraunhofer FOKUS
    Different type of data
   – Datasets
   – Documents
   – Applications
    Focus on free licenses
   – German Data License (de-dl,…)
   – Creative Commons (cc-by,…)
   – ...
   

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8. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   8 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   Quantification
   in Numbers
    February, 2013
   – Datasets: 1,123
   – Documents: 12
   – Applications: 25
   – Daily visitors: 2,000
    March, 2013
   – Daily visitors: 500
    August, 2013
   – Datasets: 3,797
   – Documents: 230
   – Applications 15
   – Daily visitors: 300
   Open Data Licenses on GovData.de
   

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9. Fraunhofer FOKUS
   9 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
   Building GovData.de
   Strategy
    Repository software: CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network)
   – Data catalogue for storing and distributing data
   – Developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN)
   – Prevalent format: JSON
   – API offers REST Interface
    Metadata Schema (OGD-Metadata)
   – Structure used to standardize and unify metadata by data providers
   – https://github.com/fraunhoferfokus/ogd-metadata
   – JSON Schema, keep it simple (few fields), e.g. document data origins
   – Why the hassle? Different data providers: very heterogeneous data
   – Make data accessible: unification needed
   – Schema not a mere tool, but communicator
   

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10. Fraunhofer FOKUS
    10 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
    Metadata Schema − Example
    Field Subfield Value
    Name waste-management-statistics-2013
    Title
    Waste Management: Disposal and Treatment
    Facility
    Author Statistical Office
    Maintainer Juliane Sanger
    Tags Hessen, Berlin, Visualization, Classification
    … … …
    Extras
    Terms of Use
    ID: cc-by
    URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
    Spatial Coordinates: [[15.02, 47.16], [15.02, 47.16]]
    Original Portal http://www.regionalstatistik.de
    … ….
    

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11. Fraunhofer FOKUS
    11 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
    Architecture
    GovData.de
    Portal (Liferay)
    Information Pool
    (Web Portal + CMS)
    User Interface
    for the Data Catalog
    Indexer + Thesaurus
    CKAN
    CSW/CKAN Harvester
    REST
    Interface
    Browser
    Apps
    Web Sites of
    Public Authorities
    Subject Catalogs
    (Geo Data, etc.)
    Open Data Catalogs
    (Berlin, Bavaria, Bremen, etc.)
    REST
    Interface
    

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12. Fraunhofer FOKUS
    12 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
    What’s next?
    Outlook
     Open data has to be understood as a process
     Active communication with current, but also to-be data providers to
    get more data, but especially more interesting data to GovData.de
     Quality of metadata plays a crucial role
    – Influences the discoverability and searchability
    – Needs to be improved constantly
     GovData.de and its metadata schema should not be an isolated application
    – Schema compatibility with Government Data Austria (data.gv.at)
    – DCAT: RDF vocabulary to facilitate interoperability between data catalogs
    

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13. Fraunhofer FOKUS
    13 konrad.reiche@fokus.fraunhofer.de | Berlin
    Metadata Harvesting
    Techniques
     CKAN to CKAN
     JSON to CKAN
     ISO 19115 to CKAN
     CKAN API
    

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