European Commission Open Data study: Switzerland lags behind

On behalf of the European Commission, the Open Data Maturity of European countries has been examined for the second time. Insite IT summarises the aim of the study as follows:

«The study examines the maturity of Open Data in the EU28+, i.e. including Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, in two areas: Open Data Readiness covers the promotion and state of development of national Open Data policies. And Open Data maturity assesses the functions offered on national portals, such as UX or the machine-readability of the data.»
Looking at the EU28+ countries, Switzerland ranks 20th. In a worldwide comparison it even falls back to 29th place. With regard to Switzerland, the study highlights among other things its special path regarding licences:
“Although there are global licences, countries feel the need to have their own specific licence. A particular example of this is Switzerland. The country does not have licences but works with terms of use.”
The study’s general conclusion is:
«Countries need to raise more (political) awareness around Open Data, increase automated processes on their portals to increase usability and reusability of data, and organise more events and trainings to support both local and national initiatives.»

You can find more information on the study in German on inside-it.ch or directly in the European Commission’s report in English. In addition, you will find a factsheet on the situation in Switzerland here.