Press release: Opendata.ch congratulates the Confederation on its new open government data portal and calls for consistent implementation of the Swiss OGD strategy

Today the Confederation is launching the new national open government data (OGD) portal opendata.swiss. It replaces the previous provisional OGD pilot portal with a permanent solution. The Opendata.ch association congratulates colleagues in the OGD Switzerland project on this successful step and is particularly pleased about the additional public organisations that publish their open data via the new national OGD portal, such as SBB and the Canton of Geneva. In addition, the improved publication functions raise hopes that further datasets of the Confederation, cantons and municipalities will be made accessible as OGD as soon as possible. 

The release and publication of further datasets as OGD – i.e. machine-readable and usable free of charge and without restriction – such as company and address registers, road accidents or  public administration expenditure, are urgently needed. With every day on which such data are not openly available, Switzerland misses out on valuable impetus for innovation and economic growth. In the Global Open Data Index 2015, Switzerland lags far behind in 29th place (2014: 24th). The reasons for this lag are that the range of open data in Switzerland has so far been extremely modest and that many public administration data are neither machine-readable nor usable without restriction.

In April 2014, the Federal Council adopted the Swiss Open Government Data Strategy 2014 – 2018, see https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/federal-gazette/2014/3493.pdf. It states: “The public administration in Switzerland holds valuable data of high quality. The Federal Council wants to make as much of these data as possible openly accessible and freely reusable in the sense of OGD (…), use OGD to promote the development of an information society in our country and strengthen Switzerland’s leading position in the global information economy.”  The Opendata.ch association supports this strategy and appeals to all responsible bodies to implement it consistently now by publishing as many useful data as possible.

CONTACT
For questions, please contact:
André Golliez, andre.golliez@opendata.ch, +41 79 669 05 52
Muriel Staub, muriel.staub@opendata.ch, +41 79 752 78 69