Despite rejection in the Council of States: Edith Graf-Litscher’s OGD motion was a complete success!

As is well known, Edith Graf-Litscher’s OGD motion 11.3871 was debated in the Council of States on 12 June and rejected by 11 votes to 25 (see extract from the minutes).  The preparatory  Political Institutions Committee had recommended rejection by 7 votes to 0 (with three abstentions), “not because it rejects its aims, but because it considers them fulfilled.” (see report of the SPK-S of 11.4.2014, page 3).

Despite this “technical” rejection of the motion and the misleading signal from the Council of States, Edith’s motion represents a great success for the open data movement in Switzerland. Without this motion and the other OGD-related initiatives of the Parliamentary Group for Digital Sustainability Parldigi, there would be neither the OGD portal www.opendata.admin.ch nor the Swiss OGD strategy 2014 – 2018  nor the present open-data-oriented revision of the Meteorology Act. I would like to thank Edith and everyone who helped with these initiatives most warmly!

André Golliez
President Opendata.ch