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Smart City Bonn

Open data strategy and development

Open data primarily describes public sector data sets that are made available by politics and administration in the public interest with a license for further free use, redistribution and reuse by private individuals, companies and institutions.

This does not apply to personal data or data that is otherwise worthy of protection.

On January 30, 2014, Bonn City Council adopted open data guidelines and a procedural model to introduce open data as a standard for all public information in the city of Bonn. The Bonn Open Data Portal went online on May 28, 2014.

The Open Government Data guidelines include a thematic introduction as an orientation, an assessment of the opportunities and risks as well as practical recommendations for an initial introduction and implementation step. Representatives of Bonn's city council factions, representatives of Bonn institutions, employees of Bonn city administration and private individuals took part in the development of the guidelines.

In the run-up to the basic political decision, the Administrative Board addressed the topic at its meeting on November 5, 2013 and endorsed the proposed implementation steps. The Open Government Data guidelines therefore already contain a roadmap for the publication of datasets that has been agreed with the city administration and will be gradually implemented.

The development of the guidelines on Open Government Data and the draft resolution for the political consultations was the first of its kind at municipal level in Germany. You can download the document here:

Guidelines Open Government Data Bonn (opens in a new tab)

Three implementation stages

The Bonn City Council has adopted the Bonn OGD procedure model. It comprises three implementation stages:

Stage 1: Basic political decision by the city council on open data

The implementation of OGD in the Bonn city administration has been given a politically legitimized basis by a council resolution. This fundamental commitment to OGD enables the Bonn city administration to set up an OGD portal in terms of content and technology for permanent operation.

Stage 2: Entry into OGD test and regular operation

In a further implementation step, the datasets already published at www.bonn.de will be provided with a license and released as OGD, as far as this is technically possible and permissible under the existing legal situation, if possible in open formats. The dataset to be implemented was defined under point 1.6 of the Council resolution.

Stage 3: Continuous OGD expansion with long-term political support and involvement of science and initiatives

In a subsequent implementation step, further datasets based on the OGD cockpit analysis will be permanently monitored and coordinated in the Open Data Working Group and then politically approved.

Political resolutions and communication documents

Further development and current status of open data

With the basic political decision, the first stage of the Bonn Open Government Data process model has been completed. The Open Data Portal and the OGD Cockpit monitoring platform have been in operation since May 2014. The council resolution also approved the following data catalog, which is currently being implemented in the second stage:

  • Bonn Council and Information System (implemented with the IT interface OParl)
  • Budgets, investment reports and annual reports (implemented)
  • All publications of the press office and publications of the departments (implemented)
  • Publicly accessible statistical data (implemented)
  • City map of the City of Bonn with public map layers/street table (various map themes available, expansion continues)
  • Management of citizen concerns online (implemented with the Open 311 IT interface)

In addition, further data topics such as election results, participation reports, letters to citizens, media holdings of the city library, real-time road traffic data, scheduled public transport timetable data, noise level data, development plan information, data from bonnorange, Stadtwerke Bonn and Bonner City Parkraum GmbH were subsequently published. The data topics will be expanded further.