Open Government Data
The term Open Government Data refers to data that is made available to the general public for them to use freely and free of charge. Open data has been issued with a Creative Commons licence, which means that anyone who is interested knows they can use it safely for any purpose. In Austria, the internationally recognised CC-BY licence is the established standard. It states that the only condition for using the data is that you quote the source if you reuse it. Open and structured data formats such as CSV, JSON, XML and RDF make reusing data easier and can be regarded as making access to it barrier-free. Ideally, the data is offered via an API (application programming interface).
What is data.gv.at? (Open Government Data)
The data portal data.gv.at was set up in 2012 in the interests of national transparency, as the central "Austria" catalogue for metadata from decentralised public administration data catalogues in Austria. It became even more firmly established as the single point of data access for public administration services in July 2022, when the Federal Law on the Reuse of Public Sector Information (IWG) was updated.
As of July 2023, it contains 44,615 datasets from 2,394 organisations. This data provides an interesting source of information which can also be used as the basis for new business models and contribute to improving the transparency of public institutions. It is therefore of great social and economic benefit. 717 reported applications (as of July 2023) have already been developed on the basis of this data.
Examples include:
- Zeitlinien.at, which shows the development of the tram network from 1865 to today,
- Flano.at, which shows artworks in the public arena and
- wasserin.wien, which shows all the public water taps, swimming pools, bathing areas, toilets, drinking fountains, outdoor mist showers and dogs' drinking fountains in Vienna.
The data.gv.at portal forwards the metadata from open government data to the European data portal. This portal constitutes the central access point for open data published by EU institutions, national portals of EU member states and non-member states and other international organisations with a predominantly European focus.
Open data can be easily used and reused by anyone, for example, by incorporating it in applications or data visualisations. This means that journalists, researchers, students, NGOs, businesses or simply citizens with an interest in data can use the data for any purpose. Users also benefit from applications which, in many cases, would not have been created without the open data.
Open data from the public sector not only provides an interesting source of information but can also be used as the basis for new business models and contribute to improving the transparency of public institutions. It is therefore of great social and economic benefit.
Cooperation OGD Österreich
