Zurich: 1 July 2010

The Swiss Digital Sustainability blog has published a news topic titled: Kick-Off Meeting zu Open Government Data in der Schweiz. The announce reports that the first informal meeting of Open Government Data in Switzerland took place in Zurich on 1st July 2010.

Approximate English translation of the news topic (German language original):

“Today was held in Zurich, a first, informal meeting on the subject of Open Government Data in Switzerland. Participants: Experts from science, politics, law, and the private sector to civil society: André Golliez (Managing Partner ITopia informatica08 and initiator), Dr. Kathy Riklin (National Councillor CVP Canton of Zurich and SwissICT Board), Dr. Christian Laux (attorney at Bratschi Wiederkehr & Buob and Creative Commons-expert), Prof. Dr. Reinhard Riedl (Competence Center E-Government and the Berne University of Applied Sciences), Beat Estermann (TAO project manager and member of the Berne University of Applied Digital common land), Hannes Gassert (founder Liip AG, semantic web expert and CEO / ch / open) and Dr. Matthias Stürmer (Parliamentary Group Leader Digital sustainability and board open / ch /). The meeting was opened by a detailed discussion of recent developments, international initiatives and international projects in the areas of Open Government Data. Conclusions of this meeting was that in Switzerland by the Transparency Act (Transparency Act), although the legal foundations have been laid, but because of the 'pick-up principle' in fact hardly a public institution has incentives to pro-actively to publish their data. Currently the available forms for the purchase of publicly accessible documents (see, eg, "access to official documents at the Federal Office for Social Insurance") in accordance far short of the eight Open Government Data Principles. It was decided that in future, in Switzerland on the Parliamentary group Digital sustainability, the theme Open Government Data coordinated and should be pursued. The existing impact areas of the Parliamentary Group on Open Content and Open Access "this is a further step towards a holistic understanding of digital sustainability. The next meeting is an inventory of available or not yet accessible authorities datasets to be addressed. In addition to a position paper will be developed in which the short, medium and long term goals of this informal working group of the Parliamentary group Digital sustainability are recorded. Even if the different organizations by then summarize briefly, on what dates they are interested and what they want to achieve with it. Other ideas such as organizing a BarCamp on Open Government Data, collection or preparation of case studies from abroad and a contest for applications that use the public in an innovative way has been raised. The upcoming meeting in September 2010, are deliberately designed to be open. Interested parties can log on to info@digitale-nachhaltigkeit.ch future invitations to such meetings to obtain.”

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