Your government has got data for you!

As a bicycle enthusiast, John likes to explore Vienna on his bike. During his often unplanned journeys he often wonders what is the best bike route from A to B, where the bicycle parking stands are, or where he can find drinking water to refill his bottle. As he expects, there is no application for such a niche task. BUT all the data needed to create an application with such functionality (bike routes, locations of water fountains, and bike stands is now provided for free by the City of Vienna as "Open Government Data (OGD)". So John, who also happens to be a programmer, writes an application that makes use of these datasets and helps him on his biking trips. He also makes this application openly available to other bikers thus engaging of what is known as a "social innovation" process.

The Open Government Data movement started in 2009 in the USA as a commitment to ensure government transparency. Additionally, OGD stimulates the reuse of public sector information, allowing businesses and social entrepreneurs, such as John, to create value from these data sets. The European Commission forecasted, for example, that OGD could result in €140 billion direct and indirect economic gains for the EU.

The City of Vienna has an active OGD policy, publishing a wide range of datasets in domains as varied as population statistics, health care, or sports and culture on the data.wien.gv.at portal. To date, 93 software applications making use of these datasets have been developed by businesses and social entrepreneurs alike.

Despite the promising economic benefits of OGD, at this point, little is known about this data-centric ecosystem involving governments, businesses and citizens alike.

MODUL University is at the forefront of this area with research that will be conducted in the context of the ‘’Open Government Data for Business and Social Innovation’’ project. This project is one of the 10 ‘’Wirtschaftskammerpreis’’ projects awarded by the Vienna Chamber of Commerce in 2013.

The project leader is Dr. Marta Sabou of the Department of New Technology. Together with her team, she will be addressing questions such as: What kind of business models does OGD Vienna enable? Which are the most popular business models? What are the most/least used datasets? What is the ratio of applications motivated by business needs in comparison with those stemming from social entrepreneurship?

Learn more about this innovative new project through a short informative film on our Youtube channel! And don't forget to check out Vienna's OGD pages - there might be some interesting datasets in there for your hobby or your business!