OPEN DATA COLLABORATION CREATES NEW SERVICES

Thirty-five municipalities and three regions in Denmark have joined forces in Open Data DK, a data portal that makes public data open. Greater transparency has been achieved by allowing citizens and businesses easy access free of charge to data. New services have also sprouted up, including a parking app that has used data over a million times from Aarhus Municipality from a multi-storey car park.

Usually, whenever citizens or businesses wanted access to public data, they had to contact the individual municipality or region to get permission from researchers or apply for the right to access documents. This was a time-consuming, often cumbersome process. There was no universally available single point of entry offering free, quick and easy access to public data generated by local authorities. This meant that much of the data were never used.

In 2015 five municipalities and one region joined forces to create Open Data DK, a data portal that aims to create greater transparency in public administration. Making public data open and accessible helps to provide fertile soil for data-driven growth. Local authorities and regions are free to publish their own data sets, made available on the same open-source platform and in the same formats. This means that citizens, companies and others can use the open data easily and free of charge to develop new applications or services. The data can also serve as a foundation for research and analyses. The app mentioned above allows people to find available parking spaces. Elsewhere, local authorities, regions and companies have joined forces in regional communities to create innovative solutions, for example in the tourism and mobility sectors. In the cities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, a new app provides directions to all playgrounds in the area. Regions and municipalities can become members of Open Data DK for an annual subscription of 25,000 DKK. The aim is to release as many comparable datasets as possible and to create a common standard and increase value using previously collected public data.