Spotlight on Switzerland

– Talks
Monday 16 September, 15:30 – 17:00 @ Room 6, Floor 3

Moderator: Barnaby Skinner, Journalist and Tech Editor at Sonntags Zeitung / Opendata.ch Board Member

Talks:

  • Welcome to Geneva

    – Dominik Madon, City of Geneva

A quick message of welcome to the great city of Geneva by the Director of the DSIC (Direction des systèmes d’information et de communication).

To make government information accessible or open it is not enough to put it on a website in some structured way. The talk adresses questions like: How do we deliver information to people with urgent questions, no time, no patience, different languages and different backgrounds? And how do we reach citizens who do not know what they – as citizens – have to know?

In June 2012 the city of Zurich launched the first open government data portal of Switzerland. One year later we can share and discuss the gained experience and our plans for the future.

Datajournalism needs Data AND Journalism. While the data-side is making a big step ahead, most swiss journalists are reluctant to do so. How come? And what has to change?

  • Open Meteorological Data

    – Christian Häberli, MeteoSwiss

Several studies confirm the socio-economic benefits of weather services. Open meteorological data add to those benefits by increased use. This talk describes experiences and goals of MeteoSwiss on the track to a possible open data policy.

  • Usage & users of geo.admin.ch: the open access to geodata in Switzerland

    – David Oesch, swisstopo

Since 2010, geospatial data of Swiss governmental agencies can be viewed and accessed over geo.admin.ch in a fast, free and state of the art manner. Over 200 datasets are accessed by up to 50’000 users daily. In an analysis we show which datasets were actually requested by different user groups and our lessons learned to leverage usage itself.

The Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO), together with the Institute for ICT-Based Management (Bern University of Applied Sciences), has successfully completed a pilot project aimed at creating a true RDF Datastore with some of its population data. The FSO is currently considering extending this pilot project in two directions: internal and external.
From a strictly internal point of view, any such extension can only make sense if data production and data dissemination are closely integrated in FSO processes. The implications of this must still be evaluated. A certain fact is that the use of SDMX as glue between data and metadata is paving the way
towards such highly integrated data flows.
The external implications are of another nature. The FSO must work towards standardization of of its metadata. The introduction of a clear URI structure as well as restful services is of central importance. The FSO is committed to these goals and is taking the appropriate steps in that direction.

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