Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems
Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems

Open.NRW

Open Government in North Rhine-Westphalia

Tourist girl walking by footbridge in MediaPark in Cologne city - it is a popular and modern district with pond, futuristic skyscrapper with media companies
© istock / frantic00

Task / Problem

Traffic data, geodata, environmental data or infrastructure data – public administration collects a large amount of data on a daily basis. Publishing such administrative data not only offers public actors and companies the opportunity to develop new services or products based on this data, but it also creates more transparency and participation for citizens and promotes innovation within the administration itself. The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia is also pursuing the goal of making administrative data available to citizens as open data in the sense of an open government. To this end, it has created the “Open.NRW” portal as an information and open data platform. The portal contains a growing stock of open data from the public sector, including administrative data from the state as well as from municipalities and companies providing services of general interest - from regional income figures to the state's geographic base data. Currently, more than 6,000 open data sets can be downloaded from the portal.

Approach & Implementation

Fraunhofer FOKUS supports the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia in implementing the Open Data regulation of the North Rhine-Westphalia E-Government Act under the umbrella of the Open.NRW project: Together with the project partners Capgemini, con terra and ifok, Fraunhofer FOKUS advises on the concrete implementation of Open Government within the state administration - from strategic support and consulting on technical solutions to accompanying qualification measures.

Together with the project partners, the scientists of Fraunhofer FOKUS support various state departments as well as the Open Data Advisory Office at the Ministry of Home Affairs, Municipal Affairs, Building and Digitalization of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with the following tasks:

  • Composition of structures: In order to ensure the long-term supply of open data, appropriate provision structures are required. The targeted coordination of activities between different stakeholders promotes the establishment of these structures.
  • Data management: A process model as well as guidelines for a systematic data management enable the identification of suitable data as well as user-oriented disclosure and ongoing quality management.
  • Conception and advice on the technical implementation of data publication: Specialist consulting on IT architectures, software solutions and data standards support the technical implementation of Open Data.
  • Promotion of Open Data usage: Measures for better searchability as well as recommendations and use cases for the application of data in the Open.NRW portal enable the administration to deploy Open Data for internal decision-making.
  • Knowledge management and qualification: Training courses, toolboxes and e-learning offerings anchor the knowledge of how to deal with data throughout the authorities.
  • Evaluation: The implementation of the Open Data regulations will be evaluated.