Popular federal first-name tool now on vornamen.opendata.ch

On the initiative of the private sector, the most popular web tool of the Federal Statistical Office has been reprogrammed and, as of today, can be used again at https://vornamen.opendata.ch . The interactive database makes it possible to look up how frequent first names are among the resident population of Switzerland.

Since 1902, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) has not only collected first names but also made them available to the public in an interactive tool. However, the popular first-name search is no longer available, owing to budget cuts and a new FSO website. Since then, the FSO website has stated: “The FSO has modernised its website. The first-name tool is no longer available in the new technical environment.” Those interested can still download and view the raw data in table form. In that form, however, the data are not easily accessible and viewable for everyone.

The company snowflake productions gmbh therefore decided to bring the interactive database «Vornamen in der Schweiz» (First names in Switzerland) back to life. The data source is the Population and Households Statistics (STATPOP 2015) provided by the FSO. The search engine shows all first names that occur at least three times. The database thus makes it possible to compare the frequency of 56,890 first names of people resident in Switzerland. The interactive tool can also break down the chart of the most popular first names given to newborns by canton and by language region.

Adrian Zimmermann, CEO of snowflake productions gmbh, cannot understand why such a heavily used federal tool suddenly became unavailable with the relaunch of the website. “The FSO’s first-name tool was immensely popular. I used it myself to choose my son’s name. Many acquaintances who were expecting a child researched names intensively with the tool.” Once it became clear that the FSO’s new website left no budget for reprogramming the tool, the decision was quickly made. “A replacement is needed – and if the federal government won’t do it, we’ll take it into our own hands!”, says Adrian Zimmermann.

The current interactive database has been completely reprogrammed and will be continually expanded over the coming weeks and months. The new first-name tool has been designed in such a way that it could even be seamlessly integrated into the FSO’s existing website.

Performance: learning from history

In 2013, the servers at the Federal Statistical Office crashed shortly after the first-name tool went online. Owing to “very high demand”, the application was “currently” unavailable, the FSO announced on its website in April 2013. Thousands of people had apparently searched online for the nationwide distribution of their first name at the same time.

Steps have been taken to ensure that this does not happen again with the new interactive database. “In building it, we relied on lightweight technologies so that the data can be delivered quickly even during major traffic peaks,” says application developer Simone Cogno. Node.js, which is also used here, is well suited to such applications. Node.js is a software platform with an event-driven architecture. It is used to develop server-side JavaScript applications that have to handle large volumes of data in real time.

Open data: usable by everyone

As of today, the first-name tool can be used again at https://vornamen.opendata.ch. Adrian Zimmermann: “We have been strongly committed to open source for more than 17 years and therefore actively support open standards and open source software on a technical, organisational and political level.” With the relaunch of the first-name tool, snowflake wants to do its part for transparency, innovation and efficiency.

Responsive: usable on mobile devices too

So that this “pastime” can also be pursued on mobile devices in future, a responsive approach was adopted right from the start of the redevelopment. “With Twitter Bootstrap and AngularJ S we ensure that the application works well on smartphones and tablets too,” explains Nicolas Karrer (application developer). There is still room for improvement, especially in how it displays on smartphones. These optimisations will be made continually over the next few weeks.

Future

Everyone involved has greatly enjoyed developing the interactive tool. In recent years, snowflake has developed many complex and challenging web applications for clients. But few of them had such a pronounced playful and exploratory aspect. The interactive database «Vornamen in der Schweiz» still holds a lot of potential for “playing with data”. Accordingly, snowflake will continue to develop the first-name tool and will update it with new FSO data as soon as they become available.