Ghent, 29 April 2011

(By Tom Kronenburg)

The Belgium municipality of Ghent has decided to open up their data. Mayor Termont and Alderman Tapmaz explain why Ghent decided to adopt the Open Data way of thinking in this blogpost. "Ghent aims to be a very open city, stimulating innovation and e-participation. Opening up the municipal data was a logical move!" it says on the city website. A special purpose application can be found on the website http://www.gent.be/gentincijfers/, to explore available data. Users can also download datasets in .xls format for further development.

To promote the use of the datasets, the city also organises an 'apps-for-ghent' contest. The kick-off meeting for this app-developer contest will be on may 14th. More information on both the contest and the kick-off can be found on the special website http://appsforghent.be/. The contest is adapted from, and inspired by the appsforamsterdam competition that is almost reaching its deadline (May 4th).