Enhancing regional capabilities: The open bydata competence centre in
Bavaria
Publication Date/Time
2024-05-13T08:00:00+00:00
Insights into the strategy of Bavaria’s new open data team
At data.europa.eu, we focus on multiple dimensions of data, including
how regional and national data portals contribute to Europe’s
digital strategy and the transition to a data-driven society. Today,
we will take a look at a real use case: the new open_ by_dat_a_
competence centre (oc.bydata) in Bavaria, an initiative dedicated to
enhancing the accessibility, usability and integration of open data.
For insights from our previous exploration of the respective
open.bydata portal in Bavaria, visit our earlier story here
[https://data.europa.eu/en/publications/datastories/bavaria-goes-open-bydata-new-open-data-portal]. 

We interviewed the team behind oc.bydata and specifically Mr Luis
Moßburger, the Product Owner at the Bavarian Digital Agency
‘byte’, home to the competence centre. We discussed the team’s
support for ministries, public agencies and small cities and regions
embarking on their open data journey and gained insights into how the
team operates behind the scenes. 

 

Q: WHAT IS THE MISSION OF THE NEW OPEN BYDATA COMPETENCE CENTRE? 

A: Our newly formed competence centre is central to our mission of
enhancing the way data is utilised across the public sector in
Bavaria. We’re focusing on three strategic objectives. 

First, we are enhancing data competency within Bavarian public
administration to help it effectively publish, manage and utilise open
data. This involves providing extensive training materials,
consultancy services and practical support. This includes five
bookable consultancy modules and the ‘open data presences’,
free-of-charge and individualised subareas of our portal of data
providers; mini open data portals, so to speak. 

Second, we are pushing the envelope on technological innovation by
developing advanced tools for better data integration and usage.
Besides the data portal and open data presences, this includes
experimentation with automatic quality optimisation of metadata, data
visualisation and more – and, of course, we share what we do as
open-source solutions. 

Third, we are cultivating a robust network with open data communities
to foster collaboration that translates data into actionable insights
and community benefits. A key example is our new Open Data Roundtable,
a regular networking event with administrations, along with civil
society, economists and scientists. In general, we want to be an
active centre of the open data network in Bavaria and create success
stories together. 

 

Q: WHO ARE THE MEMBERS OF YOUR TEAM, AND WHAT UNIQUE PERSPECTIVES DO
THEY BRING? 

A: Our team comprises four core members, each bringing a unique set of
skills necessary for a multifaceted approach to data management. Our
information manager focuses on improving the quality and accessibility
of data. Our data customer relations manager helps onboard new data
providers and assists in the transition to open data formats. The data
community manager engages with users and community stakeholders to
facilitate the practical use of our data. As the product owner, I
oversee the technical infrastructure and strategic direction of the
competence centre. Importantly, three of the four core members have a
background in library and information science, which is an excellent
skill set for the job: data management combined with information
literacy and a commitment to openness. 

Additionally, as oc.bydata is part of the Bavarian Agency for Digital
Affairs, we can leverage its matrix structure to temporarily include
project managers, user experience designers, data scientists or cloud
engineers on the team as needed. 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Image%20%286%29.jpeg]
 

Q: WHAT IMPACT DO YOU EXPECT THE COMPETENCE CENTRE TO HAVE ON
BAVARIA’S APPROACH TO DATA? 

A: So far, we have collected over 5 000 datasets from more than 75
data providers, ranging from government bodies to universities to
small cities. This is quite impressive, considering that the
open.bydata portal was only launched in September 2023. 

A key reason for this success is our team’s active engagement and
our ability to address many questions relating to open data, for
instance, through our handout on the high-value datasets directive
[https://oc.bydata.de/sharing/handouts/hvd] and its implementation in
Bavaria. 

I believe that the competence centre will play a crucial role in our
progress. In the coming months, we expect significant developments in
Bavaria’s open data networks. We highly value the connections
between data providers, enabling them to support one another, spark
new ideas and create partnerships. This was boosted by our ‘speed
dating’ event at the Open Data Day in Munich on 4 May 2024,
followed by the establishment of the previously mentioned
roundtable. 

 

Q: HOW DID YOU INTRODUCE THE COMPETENCE CENTRE TO THE PUBLIC? 

A: We were convinced that the ideal occasion to introduce the
competence centre was during the Open Data Day, held on 4 May 2024
in Bavaria. This event embodies what oc.bydata aims to achieve:
bringing together a diverse range of communities involved with open
data and providing a platform for them to connect. At the Open Data
Day, which we organised with the city of Munich and the Open Knowledge
Lab Munich, we featured a wide array of activities, including
workshops, coding sessions and discussions on various topics such as
open data start-ups, managing sensitive health data, training large
language models with open data and learning from the culture hackathon
‘Coding da Vinci’. The competence centre needs to be central in
such events and networks to be effective. We also maintain active
social media accounts on LinkedIn and Mastodon and showcase our work
and that of others at oc.bydata.de [http://oc.bydata.de/]. 

 

Q: WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE OPEN BYDATA COMPETENCE CENTRE? 

A: Moving forward, we aim to further enhance the functionality and
user-friendliness of the open.bydata portal. Our ongoing projects and
experiments are set to further refine our approach and expand our
reach. 

Besides consistently promoting and engaging more data providers and
increasing the visibility of the open.bydata portal to potential data
users, we have several initiatives underway. 

One is the (semi)automatic optimisation of metadata quality. Our aim
is to improve descriptions where possible, for instance, if the format
of a distribution is specified but the media type is not (yet can be
automatically retrieved). 

Another project is the second version of our open data presences.
These will feature a more professional design, branding them as
standalone pages rather than just subareas of our portal, and include
new content like engaging data visualisations of cities. 

Lastly, we have developed a concept for a data entry form designed to
be as simple as booking a hotel. We believe that adding data should be
straightforward; open data should not be a burden. The prototype
received positive feedback in user testing and is now being
implemented. 

Before closing, I would like to invite readers interested in learning
more about our initiatives to contact us at oc@bydata.de or provide
feedback at https://oc.bydata.de [https://oc.bydata.de/]. 

 

CONCLUDING REMARKS 

We hope this case study has offered interesting ideas and inspiration
to other regional authorities planning their open data initiatives. 

At data.europa.eu, we continue to observe and report on innovative
data initiatives across Europe, including efforts like the open bydata
competence centre in Bavaria, as part of our broader mission to
understand and share developments in data-driven practices. 
