Activists in Germany are urging the government to make the data sets it releases more useable and join the Open Government Partnership.
In a recent joint statement signed by more than 300 groups and persons from the German open data community criticized the government data portal started last year and recommended improvements, such as releasing the data under an open license. The portal does not conform to international standards, according to the statement. “The current approach risks devaluing the concept of open government.“
In addition, pressure is continuing for Germany to join the 58-nation OGP.
“Germany’s official policy on transparency and accountability is lacking commitment and leadership,” begins a blog post on the OGP website by Maria Schröder and Christian Heise. They are both members of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany which co-initiated the joint statement about the German government data portal.
The German portal “lacks two of the most important things for an open data portal: A coherent and compatible licensing policy and interesting, politically relevant data sets,” they wrote. They recommend Sebastian Haselbeck’s opinion piece German government screws up open data and the subsequent comments.
A group has been formed to encourage Germany to join the OGP.
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