‘Data and information are an essential resource of the information society. As a result, there is a growing desire among business, academia and civil society to have more and easier access to public administration data. Many specialist departments of Science City Darmstadt already make data and information available to the public. The provision of open data is an appropriate means to better respond to the growing demand for data and information, to promote transparency and to stimulate knowledge and innovation processes.’
The adopted open-data strategy creates a basis for the systematic provision of administrative data for Science City Darmstadt. The adopted open-data strategy creates a basis for the systematic provision of administrative data for Science City Darmstadt. It is guided by best practices in order to participate in the experiences of other municipalities. The guiding principle is to understand the handling and provision of open data as a learning system in which processes are continuously monitored and improved. The available resources must be sufficient for sustainable operations, which requires pragmatic thinking and actions. For this reason, the aim is not to provide as much data as possible, but rather to concentrate on important databases for users and to permanently keep them up to date.
The open data of the city of Darmstadt should be made available to its users in a machine-readable and easily accessible manner and be permanent and free of charge. Personal data or data subject to confidentiality cannot be made available as open data. The open data of the city of Darmstadt is all made available to its users centrally via the open-data platform of the City of Science. A centralised data offering promotes the traceability of data and helps to secure and comply with uniform standards for data provision. In future, the open-data platform will be linked to the recently launched data platform of Digitalstadt Darmstadt GmbH and will be an important data provider for applications placed there.
The open-data strategy was developed by the Statistics and Urban Research departments in cooperation with the IT department of Science City Darmstadt and with the support of Digitalstadt GmbH. Accordingly, the Statistics and Urban Research departments will in future be responsible for the open administrative data, while the IT department will be responsible for the technical aspects of the open-data platform.
Once a municipal ‘Open Data’ officer has been appointed, the strategy will be implemented step by step in cooperation with the individual departments of the city administration. An ‘Open Data’ working group from the central departments for the topic will also meet under their leadership in order to strategically and organisationally support the process around the provision of open data.
