Opendata.ch/2015 Conference

9:00 Arrival (foyer)

Coffee & croissants

9:45 Welcome address (room 110)

Beatrice Simon-Jungi, Member of the Cantonal Government, Director of Finance, Canton of Bern

10:00 Open data as a catalyst for sustainable development (room 110)

Prof. Dr. Peter Messerli, Director “Centre for Development and Environment”, University of Bern

10:20 Open data and the principle of hope (room 110)

Andreas Kellerhals, Swiss Federal Archives

10:40 Citizen science: from “Gango” to fully fledged co-researcher (room 110)

Prof. Dr. Abraham Bernstein, Department of Informatics, University of Zurich

11:00 Open data & business models (room 110)

Hannes Gassert, Vice-President Opendata.ch

11:20 Planning for socio-economic impact:

Open data as a policy instrument in the Netherlands and elsewhere (in English, room 110)

Ton Zijlstra, founding partner “The Green Land”, Senior Open Data Expert at the World Bank

11:40 MyData and the Digital Health Revolution in Finland (in English, room 110)

Molly Schwartz, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology

12:00 Wikidata – the link between wiki and data (room 110)

Pavel Richter, CEO Open Knowledge

12:30 Lunch on site

In the foyer

12:45 General Assembly of the Opendata.ch association (room 110)

Exclusively for members. Joining on site is possible.

12:45 Live demo MIDATA (room 104)

Serge Bignens, MIDATA.coop

Room 106
13:30 – 14:45 Where does Switzerland stand in the Open Data world? (in English)

Roundtable with participation of:
Pavel Richter, CEO Open Knowledge
Karl G. Gutbrod, CEO Meteoblue
Jean-Luc Cochard, Head of IT at Swiss Federal Archives and representative of the project board of Switzerland’s open data portal
Moderation:
Hannes Gassert, Co-founder Opendata.ch

Description:
Pavel Richter is now leading Open Knowledge, the main force behind a lot of what’s happening in the open data field in Europe, but also in portal projects all around the world. Karl G. Gutbrod is leading Meteoblue, a successful user of mainly open weather data. He says: without open data his business would not be possible. And Jean-Luc Cochard is part of the leadership of the Open Government Data Switzerland project, building Switzerland’s open data portal.
With these three leaders we want to find out where we actually stand in Switzerland: how is the process of opening up progressing, where do we stand in quality, quantity and accessibility of our data? How do we compare to our neighbours, how to the EU, and how to the international state of the art? What can we learn from leading nations, and what, maybe, could they learn from us?

Room 101
14:00 – 15:30 National data infrastructure (German)

Speakers:
Bertrand Loison, Head of Statistical Infrastructure, Federal Statistical Office (FSO)
Alain Buogo, Head of Federal Spatial Data Infrastructure, swisstopo
Ton Zijlstra, founding partner “The Green Land”, Senior Open Data Expert at the World Bank
Moderation:
André Golliez, President Opendata.ch & Prof. Dr. Alessia Neuroni, E-Government, Bern University of Applied Sciences

Short description:
National data infrastructure. There are public administration datasets that play a fundamental role in all economic, social and cultural areas of Switzerland. These base data are referred to as the “national data infrastructure” and include, among other things, base registers of companies, persons and buildings, geodata and archived datasets. At the workshop, those responsible at the Federal Statistical Office and swisstopo will present the current state of their “area” of the “national data infrastructure”. Ton Zijlstra (open data consultant, Holland) will report on the experience in Denmark, Holland and France in building national data infrastructures and financing them. The workshop is intended as a starting point for similar efforts in Switzerland within the framework of OGD.

Room 114
14:00 – 15:30 OGD portals (German)

Speaker:
Andreas Amsler, Liip.ch & board member Opendata.ch

Short description:
26 cantons, 2,352 municipalities and numerous organisations close to the administration will publish more and more datasets and interfaces under open licences. This workshop presents the needs that data providers and users have of open government portals, which functions such portals should sensibly take on and which not. After an introduction we discuss needs, functions and the theses behind them.

Room 104
14:00 – 15:30 Open Land Grabbing Data (German)

Speakers:
Lukas Vonlanthen, Research Scientist CDE, University of Bern
Oscar Meier, Software Developer, Research Center for Digital Sustainability, University of Bern
Moderation:
Mirjam Läderach, Institute of Information Systems (IWI), University of Bern

Short description:
The platforms www.landmatrix.org and www.landobservatory.org provide information about landowners in developing countries. This makes the land grabbing activities of international companies visible.

Room 115
14:00 – 15:30 Open Transport Data (German)

Speaker:
Christian Trachsel, Open Data Officer, SBB IT

Short description:
When forecast and actual times are added to the existing timetable, various questions arise:
– in which format (GTFS-R, VDV, …) should the data be provided
– should the data be ‘pushed’, or should they be pulled
This talk briefly outlines the framework and the options and serves mainly to discuss the questions above.

Room 120
14:00 – 15:30 Open Data Journalism (english)

Speakers:
Marianne Fraefel, Bern University of Applied Sciences
Julian Schmidli, Swiss Radio and Television (SRF)
Moderation:
Mehdi Atmani, board Opendata.ch & Yann Heurtaux, board Opendata.ch

Description
Data-driven journalism has been a hot topic for the last couple for years. Today, all Swiss media houses have dedicated data teams, and all of them deal daily with the challenges, promises and intricacies of data both open and closed. In this workshop, held in English, we will discuss just these and prepare the next data highlight of the year: the federal elections in autumn and the accompanying Election Hackdays!

Room 110
14:00 – 15:30 Linked Data (German)

Speakers:
Dieter Wälti, SME Policy Unit (DSKU), SECO
Dr. Donat Agosti, President Plazi.org
Adrian Gschwend, Managing Director Zazuko GmbH
Moderation:
Dr. Matthias Stürmer, Head of the Research Center for Digital Sustainability, University of Bern & board Opendata.ch

Short description:
Instead of always understanding data merely as tables and lists, researchers have long been working on linking data in networks of concepts, the “Web of Data” or “Linked Data”. Various trials in science and administration show where and how the approach can already add value to data in practice today and make new use cases possible.

Room 117
14:00 – 15:30
Open social innovation through open data (German)

Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Joern von Lucke, Director “The Open Government Institute”, Zeppelin University

Short description:
Presentation & introduction of TosiT (http://www.tosit.org) with more than 170 tools for open innovation in the public sector, in particular also with innovation approaches based on open data.

Room 214
14:00-14:45 and 14:45 – 15:30 (the workshop is offered twice, 45 minutes each)
Sharing, discovering and using open geographic data

Speakers:
Martina Forster, GIS Consultant, Esri Switzerland
Philipp Marty, GIS Consultant, Esri Switzerland

Short description:
Many data relate to a specific geographic area. An open data strategy built around geography makes sense and works! Geographic information systems (GIS) are well suited as the open data backbone of an organisation, with a standardised framework for providing and managing its existing data such as statistical, environmental or health information. GIS technology offers a very simple way to publish your own data for inter-agency collaboration and the public and make them directly usable.
In the workshop, participants get to know ArcGIS for Open Data as a geographic platform for open data. With it, administrations, companies or universities can manage publicly accessible data in no time and – if desired – run them in their own open data portal (see website examples). How open geographic data are used, e.g. in story maps or focused apps, is presented in the second part of the workshop and tried out hands-on.

16:00 Keynote

Open data: a topic for the legislator (room 110)

Prof. Dr. Isabelle Häner, University of Zurich

16:15 Panel discussion: data legislation – where to?

FADP, FoIA and the need for an open and MyData law (room 110)

With Hanspeter Thür (FDPIC), Simone Machado (member of the Grand Council, Canton of Bern), Anne Wiedmer (Swiss Federal Archives), Martin Stoll (SonntagsZeitung) & Christian Laux (Opendata.ch). Moderation: Hannes Gassert

17:00 Apéro (foyer)