Hannover, 2 March 2011

In Hannover the CeBit fair on everything around media and (digital) technology took place. Part of this multi-day fair was the 'Medienwirtschaftsgipfel Niedersachsen 2011', the 'media-society summit Lower Saxony 2011'. The first session of this summit was devoted to open government data. Other sessions adressed the themes mobile digital life, media and telecommunications law, and a demonstration of 3D technologies.

The Minister for Economy, Labor and Transport in Lower Saxony Jörg Bode opened the summit, after which the panel on open government data started.

The session was moderated by Stefan Gehrke, of the Open Data Network Germany, and contained three presentations.

Ton Zijlstra, ePSIplatform's community steward, gave a general introduction, citing various examples, on what open government data is, why it is important, and what issues to address and steps to take to make PSI available for re-use. This introduction aimed to increase awareness for the topic with the general audience, and is an example of how in the coming two years the ePSI platform team will reach out to various events, workshops etc. to explain PSI re-use, raise awareness, and provide picture of developments in Europe.

After this more general introduction, prof. Jörn Lucke, Zeppelin University of Friedrichshafen, discussed the economic and societal potential of making PSI available for re-use. He shared his conclusions and insights, based on a recent in-depth report he wrote titled "Open Government Data - Frei verfügbare Daten des öffentlichen Sektors" (Open Government Data - Freely available public sector data) (PDF in German)

Third speaker was Lorenz Matzat, a journalist who works for Zeit Online's data blog, who described the newly emerging role/discipline of data-journalism, and how open government data and data journalism are connected. He sees data journalism as an exciting field. Unresolved issues he currently sees are that data journalism is time and cost intensive, unclear legal issues around re-use, copyright and licensing, paying for PSI, and obstacles in the Freedom of Information Act. The opportunities for data journalism to him are the unique possibility on-line to create interactive ways of engaging with data, providing a format for news that fits the current era and technologies, a growing availability of open data, offering hyperlocal and mobile services, and a new business model for services around data journalism.

Both the presentation by Ton Zijlstra and Lorenz Matzat are available on-line, and embedded below (both presentations are in German).