Linked Open Data in Schleswig-Holstein (DE0057)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address? Land Schleswig-Holstein has made great strides in the area of open government data in recent years, which are of interest and relevance to the public and to business. A large quantity of information and numerous data sets have been generated and published. The challenge to be addressed is that, although many of those data have already been published in machine-readable form, they have none or not enough of the properties required to be found swiftly and linked to other data. Civil society, researchers and members of the busi- ness community are often unable to find open data, as the data concerned are not con- nected up.

What is the commitment? Schleswig-Holstein will take technical and organisational steps to make publicly available data and information accessible in the linked open data (LOD) format in future. LOD means that the data are described in such a way that they can be cross-referenced. To that end, the metadata and data are prepared using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) – auto- matically, using the information already available on the open data portal – and made accessible to the public via a “SPARQL endpoint”. SPARQL is a query language for content in RDF data sets, which can be used to express all kinds of queries.

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem? Transforming the open data into linked open data will enable civil society, researchers and companies to find them more easily, connect them up and use them intelligently, without depending on commercial providers. Data gathered and published by the Land authorities will be uniformly identified using the RDF and easily searched and combined using SPARQL. One example of use will be the budget data gained in commitment 3.13. In collaboration with the Berlin Senate Department for Finance, 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? The availability and improved usability of Land open government data will strengthen the transparency of government activities, empower the public, help make information access- ible to a modern standard and free of charge, and generate new potential for value creation for businesses in the evolving data economy.

Additional information: Schleswig-Holstein open data portal (in German): opendata.schleswig-holstein.de Schleswig-Holstein Open Data Act (in German): http://www.gesetze-rechtsprechung.sh.juris.de/ perma?a=OpenDataG_SH

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

Provision of a triplestore with a SPARQL endpoint | 4th quarter of 2023 - 1st quarter of 2024

Agreement of semantics for budget data with Land Berlin | 1st quarter of 2024 - 3rd quarter of 2024

Provision of budget data as LOD | 1st quarter of 2024 - 3rd quarter of 2024

Provision of other open data as LOD | 4th quarter of 2023 - 2nd quarter of 2025