Open Data Census/Austria

Open Data Census for Austria / Österreich. Product of a meeting in Vienna / Wien April 8th 2010. Taken from source etherpad: http://piratepad.net/EdMJCWDeH2

Participants

 * Tassilo Pellegrini: Semantic Web Company
 * Bernhard Schandl / mailto:bernhard.schandl@univie.ac.at, http://twitter.com/besbes: University of Vienna, startup http://www.gnowsis.com, personal information manager http://www.cluug.com
 * Robert Harm (@RobertHarm, http://open3.at): software engineer interested in open data
 * Nikolaus Futter: publisher and v. interested in PSI (involved in PSI issues for 17 years). vice chair PSI Alliance, adv.president EADP, Managing Director Compass-Verlag GmbH, Political and commercial side, nikolaus.futter@compass.at
 * Stefan Eichwalder: economist interested in health economics
 * Walter Palmetshofer @vavoida working on internet startups, studying economics
 * Andreas Langegger: academic researching semantic web, linked data
 * Robert Barta (rho@devc.at, developer): SemWeb + Machine Learning -> visualisation
 * Carl-Markus Piswanger (@CarlMarkus, http://open3.at)

Wishlist
http://www.ris.bka.gv.at


 * hard to use and its only one interface
 * entitled to ask to purchase a copy
 * several legal publishers who have purchased

PSI (Public Sector Information) directive (: 15 Nov 2006 (history: started in 1989, green paper in 1999 and directive passed in 2003)


 * http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/actions_eu/policy_actions/index_en.htm
 * Compass Verlag 7-8 request to PSI holders (only one dealt with positively)
 * Main database CV provide is Company register (Firmenbuch) which they obtain from government (pay for it - 2 euros per record and buy ~ 600k per year)
 * Ministry of Justice own Firmenbuch (have DB rights)
 * CV: founded in 1867

WANT:


 * 1) access and reuse of Firmenbuch
 * 2) access to VAT numbers from ministry of finance
 * 3) ministry of economics: sole traders register
 * 4) cadastral information (official address register)

Stefan Eichwalder: health data, difficult to get from federal provinces


 * How much does a Bundesland spend on hospitals?

.... : What does open data mean?


 * What happens if data is wrong? (Criticism)
 * What happens if data is wrongly interpreted or analyzed
 * Government authority ("brand") is misused
 * example of mashup of ethnic + companies + health data

Andreas: I want cadastral information


 * What cadastral info?
 * Gazetteer - names (+ long/lats) - list of names of entities (cities, regions, rivers ...)
 * long/lat + house/flat number + postcode ... (owned by statistical office)
 * openstreetmap is nice, geonames is nice - but I want a clean database which can be used in the long term without loss of data

Current Situation
Format: Dataset - Controller - Access situation

(un)employment rates / labor statistics
 * Firmenbuch
 * Cadastral information (Bundesamt für Eich und Vermessungswesen) Federal Office for Metrology and Surveying
 * shop of the BEV: http://www.bev.gv.at/portal/page?_pageid=713,1576213&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
 * Environmental Data from Umweltbundesamt (federal environmental bureau)
 * Historial pollution
 * http://ris.bka.gv.at (law information system) - free, but you have to be in the know how to use it
 * Statistical Office
 * http://www.wien.gv.at/stadtplan --- city map of Vienna, including all public transport stops etc. (but not the raw data, only a map view)
 * all geo products by/for Vienna: http://www.wien.gv.at/viennagis/index.htm
 * ÖBB (Austrian federal railways): train station locations and timetables
 * public transport in the Vienna region: http://www.vor.at
 * http://fahrplan.oebb.at -- travel planning for all over austria

What We Could Do If We Had Open Data

 * Energy Price monitoring/explanation application: visualization and prognostication
 * econtrol
 * I want to see wildlife population over time and projections for the future.
 * Where is the best place to see wildlife (or hunt it)?
 * I want to see all laws relating to environmental pollution
 * I want to see the voting record of all elected representatives in relation to environmental pollution
 * I want to see a list of votes by elected representatives for all new laws in the last year
 * National and local level
 * I want to build a website where you put in your postcode and we tell you who are your elected representatives (local and national)
 * I want to integrate into the previous website a list of all donations to parties
 * Corporate concentration in Austria: I want to build a map and keep track of who owns what and how much wealth is owned by how few (or how many)
 * I want to know crime rates, population breakdown (age, gender) about my local area
 * Public transportation information for disabled person (broken elevators)
 * I want to build a website showing all government projects over 100k in budget with pre and post cost evaluations and environmental as well as cash costs

Statement

 * For data: reuse (requires access) and its what matters!
 * Ask for what you want and don't worry if it is realistic
 * It is not up to data holders to control the analysis, interpretation or reuse of data other than ensure the data is not actually incorrect. Any healthy democratic society should carry out these activities via free discussion in the public sphere unhindered by censorship direct or indirect for
 * Guidelines should be prepared for best practice provision of open public data especially in relation to licensing.

ACTIONS

 * Clarify situation re. ris (and obtain it and put it up online for download asap)
 * Write up effort so far
 * ACTION: writeup RIS experiences (rho) -> http://kill.devc.at/
 * Start an open dataset "Shopping List"
 * Stefan Eichwalder: to upload his excel files containing health spending to a publicly accessible url and apply an open data license e.g. one of those from http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/
 * Then we could try putting it in at wheredoesmymoneygo.org

Links

 * http://blog.okfn.org/2010/03/22/great-news-for-open-government-data-in-the-uk/
 * http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/01/ordnance-survey-opens-up-uk-mapping-data/
 * http://blog.okfn.org/2008/02/18/a-traffic-data-odyssey/
 * http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/prototype/
 * http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
 * http://www.amtskalender.com/Amtskalendar as source for local representative
 * visualiziation military spending http://bit.ly/aTm525
 * presentation of billions/big sums by the newspaper Die Zeit: http://images.zeit.de/wissen/2010-02/34-infografik-2-finanzkrise.pdf
 * http://www.itoworld.com/static/gallery_traffic.html
 * http://ckan.net/tag/read/country-austria