Open Budget Data in Berlin (DE0055)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address? In the interests of the transparency and accessibility to scrutiny of financial data and govern- ment activities, Berlin’s budget data from 2010 to the present is published in a structured machine-readable form on the Berlin open data portal. In 2023, a new open data strategy for Land Berlin was adopted in the Berlin Senate. Linked open data is one of the core elements of the new open data strategy, under which the senate and district authorities are to make their data available in five-star quality – that is to say, as linked open data – on the Berlin open data portal in future. This measure responds to the desire for data to be connected, complete and of better quality. Having structured data that can be readily linked, e.g. within administration, is also important for the sake of future harmonised data management. Open data sets need to be arranged in such a way as to be compatible, well-described and clearly identifiable. Only then can links be generated automatically and data “speak” to each other – as linked open data. To make Berlin’s budget data more usable and informative, the data set needs to be raised to this highest level of open data quality.

What is the commitment? This project will create the infrastructure necessary for publishing the open data set of Berlin’s biennial budget on the Berlin open data portal as linked open data for the first time. Procedural steps and outcomes will be documented and made available in order to ad- vance the implementation of additional sets of linked open data – including those of other divisions and authorities and therefore independently of any sector-specific procedure. In publishing Berlin’s budget data as linked open data, the foundations for future linkages between authorities and serving in the vanguard of progress on open data are being laid: in collaboration with Land Schleswig-Holstein, arrangements are being made for experience to be shared, links to be put in place and the project to be scaled up.

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem? Publishing the budget data as linked data will lay the groundwork for linked government data from which other public authorities will benefit in future. The quality of the data set – its informativeness and usability – will be vastly enhanced, making this a project with great potential reach. The project will also encourage network-strengthening activities between partners within and outside the Land. With the collaboration of the State Chancellery of Land Schleswig-Holstein, the necessary semantics for linked open budget data will be worked out so that the data sets can speak to one another.

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values? Linking (budget) data sets is intended to open up new insights for stakeholders and raise the added value of the data and the transparency of decision-making for both internal and external observers. Collaboration with partners within administration and the Berlin data community will strengthen participation.

Additional information: Visualisation of Berlin budget data (in German): haushaltsdaten.odis-berlin.de

Milestone activity with a verifiable deliverable | Start date - Implementation by

BarCamp run by the Open Knowledge Foundation (networking in pursuit of standardised ontology) | 4th quarter of 2023 - 4th quarter of 2023

Agreement of semantics with State Chancellery of Land Schleswig-Holstein | 1st quarter of 2024 - 3rd quarter of 2024

Programming of data set in a linked data format | 2nd quarter of 2024 - 4th quarter of 2024