Hej, I'm Lilith, I'm a hacker and civic tech activist from Berlin.
Open Data in Germany on a federal level
– a bit of history
We want all data created by the government to be open and available to everyone. Without restrictions.
> 15 years ago
[S-5]
What we wanted…
We want the data to be structured and datasets linked with each other. We want linked open data.
> 10 years ago
[S-5]
What we wanted…
What we wanted…
Linked Open Data
[S-3][S-2]
covid numbers by city
geographic shapes
Berlin;250
Hamburg;400
…
122
;122
<
What we got… (8 years ago)
[S-4]
🛑
🐌
What we got…
CSV
[S-6][S-7]
public domain.
Data licence Germany – attribution – version 2.0
What we got…
What we wanted…
Licensing
We want
allsome data created by the government to beopenandavailable to everyone.Without restrictions.
What we got…
We want
thesome data to be structuredand datasets linked with each other. We want linked open data.
What we got…
In 2019…
The PSI-Directive defines the concept of “High Value Dataset”, which includes information from different thematic topics and is expected to play an important role for the society and economy that have to be published completely freely and through the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in every member state. The availability of APIs stimulates the reuse, dissemination of dynamic data and increases business opportunities. Access to real-time and dynamic data is strongly promoted by the PSI directive, and once the directive will be fully transposed, member states have to publish dynamic open government data through APIs.
And the civic tech community…
2 years later…
23.7.2021 (2 years and one month later)
A Datennutzungsgesetz appears.
Act governing the use of public sector data
And the civic tech community…
but only for 30seconds.
Data falling within the scope of this Act shall, as far as possible, be produced in accordance with the principle of ‘open by design and by default’.
– Section 1 (1)
This Act does not create an obligation to provide data or a right to access data
– Section 1 (2)
The thematic categories of high-value datasets, as referred to in Article 13(1) of the Directive, are:
2021
[S-0]
| Data Type | 2016 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| geospatial | 💩👩💻 | 💩💩👩💻👨⚖️ |
| earth observation and environment | 💩 | 💩 |
| meteorological | 💩👩💻 | 💩👩💻 |
| statistics | 🟠 | 🟠 |
| companies and company ownership | 💩👩💻 | 💩👩💻 |
| mobility | 💩👩💻 | 💩👩💻👩💻 |
If the government would actually care about open APIs - what would they do?
Andi Scheuer, former Federal Minister for Transport and Digital Infrastructure
Doro Bär, former State Minister for Digitization at the Federal Chancellery
API 🎉
App
Server
a few hours later…
Why dosen't the government do that?
it's better to ask forgiveness than permission
bund.de
bund.dev
✅ a few documented APIs
✅ a twitter account
✅ a github account to publish code and documentation
✅ a goverment-style landing page with really bad stock photos
one weekend later…
Over the last 4 months…
… we documented >30 APIS
… we grew to more than 50 contributors
… we started to build API monitoring solutions and api-bindings
… we weren't sued (yet)
| Data Type | 2016 | 2021 | 2021 EoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| geospatial | 💩👩💻 | 💩💩👩💻👨⚖️ | 💩💩👩💻👨⚖️📕 |
| earth observation and environment | 💩 | 💩 | 🟠📕 |
| meteorological | 💩👩💻 | 💩👩💻 | 💩👩💻📕 |
| statistics | 🟠 | 🟠 | 🟠📕 |
| companies and company ownership | 💩👩💻 | 💩👩💻 | 💩👩💻📕 |
| mobility | 💩👩💻 | 💩👩💻👩💻 | 💩👩💻👩💻📕 |
🥳?
federal agency for work
- rebuilt/renamed all their API endpoints
- protected some of their API endpoints with captchas
- they couldn't give us any (legal) reason why we shouldn't use their API
We implemented the PSI directive.
Not in the way it was intended… but…
We showed what's possible.
Doing what's necessary.
We need laws that actually obliges the government to provide open data.
We need to enable the public sector to be able to provide great APIs.
APIs are only the first step. We want open software. Linked open data, …
Thank you!
@LilithWittann
mail@lilithwittmann.de
bund.dev Implementing the PSI Directive in 🇩🇪 – the civic tech way 😉
By lilith
