Opendata.ch 2018: a year in review

[oleg]

A collection of highlights from the past year, followed by a short summary.

Politics

@StatSchweiz pushes Opendata.swiss to 6000 datasets!
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/1002115613546942464

Renewed strategy 2021-2024
https://twitter.com/eGovCH/status/994170486459334656

Data inventory

Data inventory of the Federal Administration Data - opendata.swiss

Linked Data (LINDAS) project is launched
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/882238732107214851

Reports from the BAR keynote at Opendata.ch/2017
https://twitter.com/schoolofdata_ch/status/879635836194738176

OGD Basel hits their stride
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/877541499877064704

Canton of St. Gallen intensifies OGD strategy
https://twitter.com/hdzimmermann/status/1001722206920069120

The City of Bern joins the OGD parade
https://twitter.com/Bern_Stadt/status/940144377917255682

While also (after a long battle) embracing open source
https://twitter.com/maemst/status/995919951826472960

Canton of Zug joins the portal
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/916205469559087104

Canton of Graubunden
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/899902242094034945

Canton of Thurgau
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/884699821042540544

After a successful #GLAMhack2017 …
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/908257305459937281
National Museum, host of OpenGLAM 2018
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/938711552651350016

OpenGLAM joins the portal, bringing the community and government data together
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/899902242094034945
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/889412300863672321

The political information system of the Swiss public radio and television released in time for SRG Hack
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/914839496117620737
A project which has been garnering impressive awards
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/869186214661943297

Uni Bern students visualize OGD
https://twitter.com/CH_Bundesarchiv/status/870244578410074112

Association

Publishing not-Open Data on an Open Data portal?
https://twitter.com/andreasamsler/status/1001818962248728581

Report on open data for innovative business from EPFL
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/976377785492082688

economiesuisse.ch supports open data
https://twitter.com/hannesgassert/status/973279794958946306

Food Hackdays in Basel
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/965520262744723456

Food Hackdays in Lausanne
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/959699038500261893
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/958255499295772672
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/957219139894042624
https://twitter.com/schoolofdata_ch/status/948897654280507392

TV report about MeatStory, an Open Food Data hack
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/931186647307374592

Tourism Hackdays
https://twitter.com/Zeilenwerk/status/924257382779248640
https://twitter.com/QuantumBIS/status/924227757613166592
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/923917669144940544
https://twitter.com/ArosaLenzerheid/status/923848560571043841
https://twitter.com/schoolofdata_ch/status/919869089862045697

Popular first names tool developed by Statistics office now hosted by our association
https://twitter.com/OKFN/status/885865978684375040

OpenGLAM hackathon in Lausanne
https://twitter.com/bfh_digital/status/910888232916803584

Supporting the Wikidata workshop for HackZurich
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/908210837298536448

Florian Wieser shares insights on open data in Latin America
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/906069400998084608

While Search.ch kindly takes over running our throttled Transport API
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/877392748399050753

Impressions from Opendata.ch/2017
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/894928968830382081
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/879723678371631104
https://twitter.com/OpenDataZurich/status/879672891255738368
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/879679703061323776
https://twitter.com/heluc/status/879631360981434368
https://twitter.com/OpendataCH/status/879640091391660034
https://twitter.com/obedurena/status/879716348544339968

Open Data Day 2018 Bern
https://twitter.com/sodacamper/status/970574394329362432

Open Data Day 2017 Zurich
https://twitter.com/OpenDataZurich/status/840291535140855809
https://twitter.com/OpenDataZurich/status/838770291308433408

Community

Open Data for Smart Cities
https://twitter.com/Tsueri_ch/status/999658839585771520

Open Data Beer Switzerland launches
https://twitter.com/opendatabeerCH/status/961210315374518273

@PersonalDataIO a Geneva startup with roots in Open Knowledge at re:publica 2018
https://twitter.com/PersonalDataIO/status/993092194683838465

öffentlichkeitsgesetz.ch guest lectures at Uni Bern
https://twitter.com/maemst/status/974230661363052545

Digitally Sustainable political candidates
https://twitter.com/maemst/status/962713788989476865

GeoAdmin.ch is crushin’ it! (2017 update?)
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/961229697450434565
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/934032389692624896
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/943788595999100930
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/932534211684306944
https://twitter.com/GilbertJeiziner/status/889873597677936640

OpenTransportData.swiss celebrates its first birthday
https://twitter.com/vasile23/status/936667800793440256
we can haz GTFS-RT
https://twitter.com/hannesgassert/status/867058615613624322

DataJamDays in Lausanne
https://twitter.com/schoolofdata_ch/status/935178412423032839

Swisscom launches a data portal
https://twitter.com/maemst/status/931217092745015296

Which gets prompt usage
https://twitter.com/jlhrzn/status/1000077348065169408

As does the Swiss Post
https://twitter.com/swisspost/status/936540386088103941

ETH library report on Open Data
https://twitter.com/ETHBibliothek/status/918487690399674368

The hitchhiker’s guide to Swiss Open Government Data by @jonasoesch
https://twitter.com/OpenDataZurich/status/926775422263574530

Student run open data workshop for Sustainability Week
https://twitter.com/schoolofdata_ch/status/971751771654819841

Legal Tech Hackathon in Zürich
https://twitter.com/heckerhut/status/914838285519859713

Swiss data journos picking up on community methods
https://twitter.com/mmznr/status/905311321964650497

Learning best practices from each other
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/988868044712706048
https://twitter.com/schoolofdata_ch/status/942721626109603841

Swiss people building awesome things
https://twitter.com/odi/status/988759522159353858

Swiss data being…weird, apparently (scroll down)
https://twitter.com/ODIHQ/status/969893409539411968

All shiny things SPARQL
https://twitter.com/linkedktk/status/968152921220239360
https://twitter.com/FactsMission/status/964426164839198720
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/964083114174832640

We love mappy hacks
https://twitter.com/mmznr/status/920940059964125185
https://twitter.com/loleg/status/967554878091472896

Especially when the maps are SPARQLy
https://twitter.com/jervenbolleman/status/933374116576493568

Games are great fun
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/910049584348573696

The best are console hacks, though
https://twitter.com/ping13/status/941726720226238465

Open Science summer school brings open data to EPFL campus
https://twitter.com/heluc/status/885217336613097472

While the Uni Bern launches their showroom
https://twitter.com/researchdigisus/status/876741926699098113

The future of Open Data [catalogs]: interop
https://twitter.com/andreasamsler/status/879716170638782464

The future of digital Switzerland is open data
https://twitter.com/KilianBrogli/status/933291386912280577

Who knows what’s next?
https://twitter.com/swiss_geoportal/status/885186019682910208

Random

故兵貴勝，不貴久；故知兵之將，民之司命，國家安危之主也。
In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people’s fate, the [person] on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.
Sun Tzu - The Art of War 5

[oleg]

Cross-posted from the Open Knowledge Switzerland English-language blog.

https://ch.okfn.org/2018/06/29/79/

Open Data is a powerful idea that aims to involve more people directly in the production, evaluation, and application of key resources for a digital society. This has direct reprecussions for the way governance is applied in the 21st century, transforming democracies around the world – in the best case, supporting more diversely participative, directly engaged, transparent interactions between the public and its institutions. Over the past five years, I have served the Board of the association Opendata.ch, representing Swiss interests in this area locally, nationally, and abroad. This post summarizes highlights from the past year of open data activism in Switzerland.

In Switzerland, Open Data is advocated by the Digital Sustainability (Digitale Nachhaltigkeit) parliamentary group, formed in 2009 and behind numerous initiatives in cantons and cities, as well as the precedents and directives that led to the Opendata.swiss government project at the federal level. Diverse related grassroots initiatives and associations support focal points such as reforming data access in the culture commons (OpenGLAM, Digitale Allmend), political monitoring (LobbyWatch), open maps (OSM.ch) or networks (ONIA).

Opendata.ch, founded in 2012, acts as incubator, umbrella and partner to open data projects in Switzerland, and is the local chapter of the international Open Knowledge network, hosting OKCon in Geneva in 2013, monitoring the country’s government data in the Global Open Data Index, as well as supporting a variety local projects from monitoring the landscape to promoting data literacy based on international standards. The association partners with a series of government initiatives, where many members participate in committees or work directly on projects.

Since 2016 this has centered on the Opendata.swiss portal, grouping top categories of digital interest with key infrastructure for sustainable publication – and the Open Transport Data portal, featuring mobility data that has from the start concerned and motivated the transport.opendata.ch community. The government geodata portal continues to be the focus of technical interest and innovation, and recently all three portals have joined the LINDAS project to connect key government data on the Semantic Web.

In the past two years, open data has become more established in the media and is starting to get mentioned in job descriptions in government, while science and industry catch up. Academic exchange has intensified with regular events on campus, such as the Open Food Data Hackdays at the EPFL/ZhdK, the OpenGLAM Hackdays at the University of Basel, courses in OGD at the University of Bern, and workshops at educational and research instutitions around the country. Publications such as those from the ETH Library or EPFL have demonstrated research interest and potential for broad collaboration within the open data community, which should be stimulated by further events and a new Student Award.

Image credit: Opendata.ch/2017 - CC BY 3.0 - Ernie Deane

Awareness of the potential of open data to generate new business and improve relations and partnerships around data has surely helped motivate the launch of open data portals from Swisscom and the Swiss Post, cooperation projects with Engagement Migros and department for Economic Development, commercial support for the Transport API, and acknowledgement from economiesuisse. The Opendata.ch association’s members are working hard to translate these seedlings into jobs, accelerating start-ups, and supporting the Swiss Data Alliance.

At the Open Knowledge Summit at the beginning of May 2018, the activities of Opendata.ch were summarized in seven words: active on many fronts, including organizational revision. The acclaimed organization today counts 370 members and thousands of followers. For the past six months we have conducted a review of our mandate, vision and operations with a task force whose recommendations will be key to the future vision of the association. Our sights are aimed at building a community of practice, servicing the needs of our network more efficiently and effectively, and reaffirming our goal to be the best community for open data activists in the country.

At a time open data in Switzerland is enjoying widening interest and debate, these goals are more important than ever. Community projects like the acclaimed vornamen.opendata.ch tool for choosing baby names have opened doors into the hearts and minds of the population whose interests we serve – academic, government and business partnerships chart the course ahead. Our vision of transparency, innovation and efficiency through openness underpins it all. We can look forward to the annual conference at the beginning of July in St. Gallen, bringing together a diversity of opinions around a fascinating subject, and another great year of community building (cheers!) and activism ahead.