1st Data Journalism Meetup Berlin

After two successful Web of Data meetups in London with 200 guests each, it was time to bring the Web of Data meetup to Berlin.

Data Journalism and the new and exciting possibilities that the Web of Data opens up for creators and consumers of news and media online will be the topic of this first meetup.

We have a great lineup of speakers from media organisations like the BBC, The Guardian, the Deutsche Presse Agentur, the Bertelsmann Foundation, Los Angeles Times coming to Berlin and talking about data journalism and the latest development and projects in this field, and our friends from ZEIT Online and the Open Knowledge Foundation will join the discussion.

The event takes place at the office of our friends at Fjord in the heart of Berlin. Starting at 2pm, you’ll hear talks followed by a panel discussion and an open space for working groups, and when the official programme ends at 7pm we’ll of course have drinks with all of you.

Language of all talks at the event will be English, but don’t be surprised to hear a bit of German here and there in conversations.

Many thanks to Fjord and to the Open Knowledge Foundation for their help and support!

If you plan to come, please Sign Up and RSVP Yes on this page, as places will be limited.
Are you working on data journalism, data visualisation or data integration, and would you like to talk about your work at this or the next meetup? get in touch with us!

Read More »

Posted in Datenjournalismus, Termine | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Presentation on Open Data at Xinnovations 2010

Posted in Open Government, Termine | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Presentation on Open Data at Conference “Public & Democracy”

Posted in Freedom of Information, Termine | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Open Government: Regierungsprogramm quer gelesen

Posted in Open Government | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Jahreshauptversammlung des Open Data Network e.V.

Title: Jahreshauptversammlung des Open Data Network e.V.
Location: Newthinking store, Berlin
Description: Liebe Vereinsmitglieder,

Der Termin für die ordentliche Jahreshauptversammlung 2010 des Open Data Network e.V. steht fest.

Zeit: Donnerstag, der 26. August, 19 bis 21 Uhr

Ort: Newthinking Store
Tucholskystr. 48
10117 Berlin

Die Tagesordnung für die Jahreshauptversammlung ist wie folgt:

§1 Begrüßung der Jahreshauptversammlung
§2 Wahl des Versammlungsleiters
§3 Wahl des Protokollführers
§4 Beschlussfassung über die Tagesordnung
§5 Vorstellung des Tätigkeitsbericht 2010 durch den Vorstand
§6 Vorstellung des Kassenberichtes 2010 durch den Vorstand
§7 Vorstellung der Satzungsänderungen durch den Vorstand
§8 Beschlussfassung über die Satzungsänderungen
§9 Entlastung des Vorstandes
§10 Wahl des Vorstands
§11 Wahl der Rechnungsprüfer/innen
§12 Sonstiges

Ich freue mich euch auf der ordentliche Jahreshauptversammlung des Open Data Network e.V. 2010 begrüßen zu können.

Beste Grüße
Daniel


Daniel Dietrich
Vorstandsvorsitzender

Open Data Network e.V.
Erich-Weinert-Str. 17
D – 10439 Berlin

Vereinsregisternummer: 95 VR 292 08 B
Steuernummer: 27/674/52290

Mobil: +49 (0) 171 780 870 3
Mail: daniel@opendata-network.org
Web: http://opendata-network.org
Twitter: @opendatanetwork
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-08-26
End Time: 21:00

Posted in Opendata Network, Termine | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

OpenBerlin: Werde ein Datenpate!

Posted in Webseiten & Projekte | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Germany lags behind on Aid Transparency

According to statements of the new German minister for development cooperation, Dirk Niebel, transparency and accountability are very high on the agenda in German Development cooperation. However, looking more closely it seems that this commitment only holds as long as the transparency and accountability of other stakeholders are concerned.

In 2008 Germany signed the International Aid Transparency Initiative in Accra and promised together with other major donors “We will make aid more transparent.” At the recent steering committee meeting in Paris, however, the German position was more than disappointing. On the 7th of July 2010 donors agreed on data standards for aid information that is already available at the donor level and should be made publicly available. While most donors will aim to adopt these standards before the next High Level Meeting in November 2011 in Seoul, the German representative clearly announced that Germany will not be able to meet this timetable.

Of course, Germany governmental development cooperation is undergoing a major organisational change. Of course, a donor like Germany with many smaller projects faces more challenges than donors with large percentages of budget support. But the reluctance of Germany seems to go beyond technical problems and touch upon a more fundamental recognition of the value of open data. Research on the merits of transparency presented in Accra and the IATI consultations with CSOs and recipient countries clearly point to the importance of detailed financial information. Despite this, the German representative at the steering committee questioned the value of detailed transaction-level data: “Who will use it?” Also on the critical issue of forward-looking data to allow financial planning in recipient countries Germany was very sceptical with regards to the validity of such data.

It would probably be helpful to have more information about how exactly Germany views the IATI process and what the official BMZ position on IATI is. But unfortunately, there is no information about this available on the BMZ website. Seriously, Mr. Niebel, how important is aid transparency in Germany?

Posted in Transparenz | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

GovWild: the wealth of freely available, structured information on the Web

Guestpost from Markus Freitag from the Govwild team. GovWILD was started as a bachelor’s project of seven students from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Potsdam in October 2009. The purpose of the project is to reveal new information and connections in government data by linking existent information as well as providing a new level of transparency. Large amounts of data from the US and the EU are connected with Open Data from various sources.

The goal is to create a new unified data set that comprises enriched information and connections between objects which appear in the original heterogeneous sources. Therefore, an integration process including extracting, cleansing, merging and fusing steps is built. Our project team implemented the process in a scalable Hadoop environment with JAQL as query language. All data sources which are used for this project provide official data published by the corresponding government except for the Freebase data. The following table shows all acquired data sources with information about size, given format, number of tuples (entries/rows) and the number of attributes we used from this source (e.g. names, addresses, amounts).

US-Spending lists the expenses of the US federal government. It provides data about the contracted companies, the responsible agencies and the purpose of the spending. The listed sponsors are
the responsible agencies.

US-Earmarks includes data of earmarks spent by the US government. Earmarks are long-term fundings for programs or projects. This source contains information about the responsible politicians and the recipients, which are mostly companies.

US-Congress provides information on all actual and former members of the US Congress. It includes also biographical information.

EU-Financial Transparency System (FTS) specifies all funds spent by the EU. It contains the amount of funds, the address and the name of the recipient and the funding agency.

EU-Parliament is the equivalent to US-Congress. It contains information about all members of the European Parliament.

DE-Party Donations is the German equivalent to FEC. This source includes data of the spendings German parties received from persons or companies.

DE-Agricultural Subsidies lists all German subsidies which are funded for agricultural purposes. Recipients are either persons or companies.

Freebase provides a huge amount of user generated data. In this project, only data about persons, especially politicians, and companies is used.

The article here (german) points out various difficulties of the project. Besides the web application, we provide the data as a SQL database dump, RDF triples and JSON files for download. The future work will focus on acquiring more sources especially from Germany and providing a better interface and visualization for the data. The project as a bachelor’s work is finished, but we are going to continue it with three students. The HPI supports our work until the end of 2010. After that, the future of the project depends on sponsors and external financial support, which we are optimistic to find :).

GovWild started on July 12 during a live interview on RBB Radio 1.

Posted in Linked Open Data | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Open Government Data Camp 2010

Open Government Data Camp 2010

What is it?

The Open Knowledge Foundation is organising an international workshop on open government data, which will take place in London this autumn:

You can register at:

Basic details are as follows:

  • What? A two day workshop for people interested in open government data.
  • When? 18-19th November 2010
  • Where? University of London Union, London, UK
  • How much? Tickets cost £10 to help cover costs. You can sign up here!
  • Hashtag? ##ogdcamp2010

Tell me more…

Its been a big year for open government data. Around the world governments and public bodies have been opening up official datasets for the public to reuse. There has been an explosion of new applications, competitions, hackdays and other initiatives from local authorities, central government departments, international bodies and others. This event will bring together movers and shakers from the world of open government data — including government representatives, policymakers, lawyers, technologists, academics, advocates, citizens, journalists and reusers.

What will happen?

There will be two days of discussions, drafting, planning and hacking. Crucially we hope to:

  • Build consensus around key legal, technical and policy issues related to opening up government information.
  • Strengthen the community of people working on different aspects of opening up official data around the world — from both inside and outside government. (Many people working on this area will not have met in person!)
  • Encourage the exchange of experiences, expertise and ideas between those involved in leading open government data initiatives in different countries.
  • Make things! We hope there will be plenty of space for developers to hack on things — from refining core bits and pieces of technology to rapid prototyping of new ideas.

What will the format be?

Presentations will be kept to a minimum. Each day will begin with a sprinkling of short talks followed by plenty of time to talk, plan and work on things.

Can I submit a presentation?

We are going to put out a call for short presentations (around 30 x 10 minute slots) shortly. Details/links will be posted on the open-government discussion list.

Can I propose a session?

Yes please! Again, we’re going to brainstorm, plan and schedule sessions on the open-governmentdiscussion list — so head there if you have any cunning ideas!

What kinds of topics will be covered?

Possible sessions include:

  • How can we encourage other countries to open up official information?
  • Open government data in law and policy: obstacles and opportunities
  • Promoting reuse: competitions, community engagement, the role of the media
  • Finding open government data: catalogues, registries and metadata
  • Raw Data Now! Technical aspects of opening up government data
  • The role and value of linked data
  • Open government data and data journalism

What kinds of outputs will there be?

Projected outputs include things like:

  • First draft of an international ‘open data manual’ (organised as a ‘Book Sprint’)
  • A set of key open government data principles
  • A timeline of key developments for open government data around the world
  • A fairly comprehensive list of official initiatives — including data catalogues and competitions
  • A list of key examples of the reuse of open government data
  • Launch of RawDataNow.com — illustrating what we mean by ‘raw data’ aimed at those who publish official information
  • Brainstorming about projects which would make it easier for citizens to find, analyse and visually represent the data they are looking for

Who’s behind the event?

Open Government Data Camp was conceived and is being primarily organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The event is also supported by:

  • Cabinet Office, UK
  • EU LAPSI project, Turin, Italy
  • EU LOD2 project, Leipzig, Germany
  • Guardian, UK
  • Sunlight Foundation, USA

Who is coming?

You can find a list of participants at:

If you add your name to the list, please don’t forget to register! (And vice versa: if you’ve registered, please also add your name to the pad page above…)

Can I sponsor the event?

Yes please! We are still actively seeking sponsorship for lunches, coffee, travel and accommodation for international participants and so on. If you think you might be interested, please contact jonathan dot gray at okfn dot org.

What countries will be represented?

We are currently expecting representation from:

  • Argentina
  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Brazil
  • Canada
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • India
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Luxembourg
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Russia
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Taiwan
  • United Kingdom
  • United States

Why do I have to pay?

The £10 ticket price is to help cover costs. If the ticket price is a problem, don’t hesitate to let us know. We won’t turn anyone away because they can’t afford to come!

This is a crossposting from the OKFNs Blog at: Open Government Data Camp 2010, 18-19th November 2010

Read More »

Posted in Open Data, Termine | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

FOI in Bremen

Posted in Informationsfreiheitsgesetz | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments