Brussels, 27 September 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

Belgian demissionary minister (for IT, telecommunications, economy and reform), Vincent van Quickenborne launched the Belgian national data portal data.gov.be today.

The website, maintained by FedICT, the Belgian federal ICT services, says in its terms of use:

"Fedict hosts a website with open data that are made available by the federal public services and the federal government institutions. Fedict undertakes to handle the technical maintenance of the Opendata Website and to ensure maximum availability.

Unless otherwise specified you are free to use the information available on the Opendata Website free of charge and for personal purposes only, subject to source attribution. In cases where prior permission is required for the use or reproduction of certain information, the restrictions on the use thereof are expressly specified. Fedict reserves all intellectual property rights over the Opendata Website."

The website has a section where citizens can provide ideas for data sets to be published, as well as a section that shows applications built with the data that is made available.

The website is available in four languages: the three official Belgian languages Dutch, French and German, as well as English.

Related Links:

Just before the weekend the Flemish government decided on the Flemish regional open data policy.