For some eighteen months now there has been growing activity in Switzerland around open government data. Starting from the existing Swiss open systems working group /ch/open and the Swiss Information Society in 2010 a group of some 100 people has coalesced. Right from the start the initiators worked together with the parliamentary working group on digital sustainability, ensuring a connection between civil society and official public structures from the beginning.

Last year saw several events, bringing open data into the spotlight in Switzerland. A successful conference in June, attracting high level support, as well as a coding event (called Make.ch) in the fall, taking place in Zürich and Lausanne simultaneously. Swiss participants were also present and presenting at the Open Government Data Camp, in Warsaw last October.

To create more continuity as well as better visibility and recognition the group now gets ready to establish opendata.ch as an association. This allows for the transparant allocation of roles, tasks, responsibilities and finance.

The founding meeting is taking place on Thursday, 19 January in Bern, Switzerland. Before the start of the meeting the team that is performing an open data study in Switzerland, will present their work and intermediate results.

The invitation to the founding meeting can be found in German and French on the opendata.ch website.