Enschede, 14 March 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

In the city council meeting of March 14th, the Dutch city Enschede adopted an open data motion titled "Innovation and Agility with Open Data". Enschede is a city of about 155.000 inhabitants in the eastern part of the Netherlands, on the German border.

The open data motion was drafted in response to questions from citizens, and in the end had all nine parties represented in the city council as co-signatories putting it on the agenda. The motion passed with 34 to 3 votes (those members voting against were concerned with possible privacy issues when combining data sets).

The motion points to the social and economic potential of PSI re-use, especially in times of limited public funds, and asks the city to embrace the principle of 'all data is public, unless...' and provide that data in open and machine readable formats. It also calls upon the city to declare itself an 'Open Data City' and provide an action plan in the coming 6 months, specifying it should list actions such as:

• identifying which data sets are easiest to release right now
• index what other data sets are there, and how to release them
• make sure that third parties that provide data and systems to the city do so in ways that freely allow re-use

Also it calls upon the city to:

• enter into dialogue with willing parties on how to move forward, also as input for the action plan
• create a data catalogue on the city's website (a page with basic information was on-line the next day after the decision)
• enter into agreements with other public bodies and third parties to share open data with them and encourage them to also share more of their data with the public.

An english translation of the motion is embedded below.

Cities and municipalities are in many countries (such as Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands) the level at which PSI re-use is most visible. It is locally that citizens see possible impact on their surroundings most clearly. It is in local contexts that coming up with applications is most easy, as scope and needs are easier to grasp. It is also the place where citizens have a low threshold entry point to (local) government, and can work effectively towards PSI release.