Bavaria goes ‘open bydata’ with a new open data portal
Publication Date/Time
2023-10-02T07:00:00+00:00
Country
Germany
Interview with Luis Moßburger, Product Owner Open Data at the
Bavarian Digital Agency
Bavaria, the German state best known for ‘laptops and lederhosen’,
makes open data a priority. With its new Digital Plan, the State
Ministry for Digital Affairs aims to motivate Bavarian public
administrations to share their open data and thus increase
transparency and foster open data reuse. To achieve this aim, it is
developing, together with a specialised open data team, a new
state-of-the-art open data portal. 

In May 2023, the team launched the first version of the new portal.
Now, with the second version [https://open.bydata.de/] that brands the
portal as ‘open bydata’, Bavaria wants to make open data even more
of a success story. 

We had the opportunity to ask some questions about the new version of
open bydata to Luis Moßburger. He is the Product Owner Open Data at
‘byte [https://byte.bayern/]’, the Bavarian digital agency
responsible for establishing the portal.

 

WHY IS THE PORTAL CALLED ‘OPEN BYDATA’?

It’s wordplay. The abbreviation for Bavaria (German: Bayern) is
‘BY’ and our portal provides ‘open BY (Bavarian) data’. With
the portal, Bavaria is becoming ‘open by data’. As such, it seeks
to provide transparency and openness by sharing data freely for
everyone.

 

WHAT IS NEW ABOUT OPEN BYDATA?

At byte, we believe in user-centred and agile product development. In
May 2023, we launched a ‘minimum viable product’ – a first
version. It was functional, but there was a lot of room for
improvement. With the second version, we addressed many of its
limitations. For example, we now have better search and filter
functionalities, dataset recommendations and a 'SPARQL API' that
allows users to query our database directly. The layout and the
usability and quality of metadata were improved. We also have proper
branding, with our own name and logo. And these are just a few of the
enhancements.

We are especially proud of the ‘open data areas’ for data
providers. Many cities, for example, do not want or need an own open
data portal. With the ‘open data areas’, they can now get their
own, individually branded area as part of open bydata. This keeps
their costs and effort low and provides us with data from that city
– a win-win situation!

By the way, did you know that open bydata uses ‘piveau
[https://www.piveau.de/en/]‘, the same software that is used to run
data.europa.eu [https://data.europa.eu/en]? 

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Homepage.png]
_The new ‘open bydata’ open data portal for Bavaria._

 

ARE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS INTERESTED IN BECOMING ‘OPEN BY DATA’?

I would say yes. Many cities and public authorities want to become
part of our network and are keen to share their open data. Of course,
some need more convincing than others. We offer very strong arguments
to show that sharing data has many advantages for public
administrations: the data can be used to boost the economy, research
and civil engagement; administrations become more transparent; and
last but not least, their datasets are distributed EU-wide through
data.europa.eu. All of these allow them to stay relevant in our
data-driven society. 

We see that administrations greatly appreciate the ability to get help
at any moment from our dedicated open data team. Often, a quick chat
about publishing and reusing data is all that is needed to turn a
civil servant into a strong advocate for opening up their data.

 

NOW THAT THE SECOND VERSION IS IN PLACE, WHAT ARE YOUR NEXT GOALS?

Our vision is a better Bavaria by data: easy, trustworthy, connected.
To reach this goal, we have set ourselves three focus areas. Firstly,
to strengthen the (open) data competence in the public administration,
in order to enable publishing, distributing and reuse of data.
Secondly, connect different data sources with each other and with the
knowledge of the world by following the principles of linked open
data. And lastly, to actively seek collaboration with open data
communities from civil society, the economy, research, journalism and
in the administration itself to generate real value with open data. 

As a librarian, I am convinced that besides these communities,
libraries are also strong partners in reaching these goals, as they
have broad expertise in data quality and management, along with
semantic enrichment of data.

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/open%20bydata%20Launch_team.jpg]
_The team behind 'open bydata', from left to right: Patryk Brzoza,
Kai Wanschura, Luis Moßburger, Julian Grote._

 

WHAT DO YOU SEE AS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES AHEAD?

As it is important for us to provide ever more and better data, we
want to make the process for administrations to share their data as
simple as possible. To achieve this, we offer individual consulting
and aim to use automatic data harvesting instead of relying on manual
exports and workflows. In addition, the quality of (meta)data is
vital: to improve this, we are working on (semi-)automatically
improving the content of our portal.

We will also keep working on improving the user experience of our
portal. And we are reinforcing the open data team – more people will
join us and our service portfolio will steadily grow. 

In the end, our big final goal is to link as many Bavarian data as
possible. With all that on the roadmap, we are making Bavaria ‘open
by data’.

 

_Are you interested in learning more? Do you want to use our data or
become part of our network? We’d love to chat: please send us an
email to __openbydata@byte.bayern__ and feel free to give us feedback
at __https://open.bydata.de_ [https://open.bydata.de]_. You also find
us through __data.europa.eu_ [https://data.europa.eu]_, the official
portal for European data, managed by the Publications office of the
EU._
