OGD events

There’s a lot of activities in the realm of Open Government Data OGD in the past few days.

opendata.ch

In Switzerland the second opendata.ch event was held in Zürich on 28 June (agenda and documents in German).

Presentations from Rufus Pollock and Nigel Shadbolt (in English) will be available on opendata.ch.

Zürich used opendata.ch 2012 as a marketing occasion for its eZurich OGD Portal opend the same day. It could become a catalysator for more such portals in Switzerland.

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Open Government Data Studie Schweiz

On the same day a comprehensive study about OGD in Switzerland was published with some recommendations:

Handlungsempfehlungen für Politik, Verwaltung und Öffentlichkeit

1. Politischen Willen für OGD äussern
2. OGD freigeben und publizieren
3. OGD nutzen
4. Umgang mit OGD lernen
5. Die Wirkung und den Nutzen von OGD empirisch untersuchen
6. Die Technologie für OGD erforschen und weiterentwickeln
7. Schlussbemerkung: …. dass wir den “Swiss Way of OGD” postulieren: Nicht (vergeblich) auf das grosse, koordinierte, zentral und top-down geführte Programm warten. Sondern dezentral, föderalistisch und lokal ansetzen, Daten freigeben, Beispiele schaffen, anregen und anstossen und auf die überzeugende Kraft des demonstrierten und erlebten Nutzens von OGD setzen.

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And newly published: UK government’s white paper on open data

‘The government’s newly published white paper on open data makes a number of commitments that if carried through will keep the UK at the forefront of a recent and growing open data revolution.’ In these words Nigel Shadbolt announces the new white paper in The Guardian (28 June 2012).

Yearly Re-use Turnover

And one argument in favour of OGD can be heard more and more often: The positive effect of OGD on the economy. Nigel Shadbolt gave some examples in opendata.ch 2012: i.e.  32 billion Euros in the EU countries…

See also the figures from open data Spain:

‘At the national meeting of open data initiatives in Spain new figures were reported on the size and volume of the re-use market in Spain. … that the volume of business activities directly connected to the re-use of public sector information is between 332 and 550 million Euros per year.’

And here’s more of this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/blog/2012/jul/10/european-governments-race-open-data?