From geodata to environmental and traffic data: Every day, public institutions collect and process countless data from a wide variety of areas - whether at a municipal or supra-regional level. Publishing this administrative data creates transparency for the public and gives interested parties the opportunity to utilise this data for research, innovative business models or charitable projects. Many public institutions and local authorities in Bavaria also publish parts of their data on freely accessible data portals. The Bavarian state government has now been gradually consolidating this data in a comprehensive portal, making it easier to locate. Under the title “Open Data Bayern”, the portal for Bavaria's open data is now online and available to users. As a central open data contact point, the portal will offer companies and non-profit organisations as well as scientists the opportunity to quickly and easily find, link and reuse high-quality open data from the entire state.

Fraunhofer FOKUS has developed and technically implemented the portal on behalf of byte - Bayerische Agentur für Digitales - and the Bavarian State Ministry for Digital Affairs as well as together with the Data Competence Centre for Cities and Regions (DKSR). Thanks to its many years of experience in designing national and international data portals, Fraunhofer FOKUS was responsible for connecting existing data portals in Bavaria and for the barrier-free and user-friendly design of the user interface. The platform is based on the piveau® software, an open source solution for open data platforms developed by Fraunhofer FOKUS.

Gradual expansion to Bavaria's central open data portal

“Open Data Bayern” is currently in the development phase and provides the open data sets of the open data portals of Würzburg and the district of Cham as well as the geoportal of GDI-BY (Geoinfradatenstruktur Bayern). In the coming months and years, the portal will be successively expanded to include additional data sources - and thus develop into the central contact point for open data from Bavaria. The experience of users as well as suggestions from the Bavarian open data community will be incorporated into the ongoing process. In addition, “Open Data Bayern” offers the opportunity to publish previously non-open data directly via the platform as open data.

The project partners are linking the platform to both the federal “GovData” portal and the EU's Open Data Portal. In this way, open data from Bavaria can be linked with data sets from all over Germany and Europe - and new potential for innovative applications, services and business ideas can be developed.