Session 1: Data Production, Usage and Integration

Background: Builds political applications so citizens can understand what their government is doing. One of the founders of the open data network in Germany.

- access to or production of structured datasets
- provide raw data dor the users alogn with the story: as a spreadsheet, and/or interactive environment (eg map-mashup with a timeslide and filters). Provide the reader with a research environment.

The Wikileaks Warlogs were a wakeup call for DDJ in Germany.

OpenGov data is a subsection of open data but there is no OpenGov initiative in Germany like data.gov. The data available is not very detailed and not in a machine readable format. OpenData in Germany is happing from bottom-up: several groups and people are working on gathering (scraping) data from government sites and developing applications. There is an evolving ecosystem of citizen apps, eg:
OpenBudget offener-haushalt.de
OpenParliament openbundestag.de
Lobbyregister lobbypedia.de

We can use this ecosystem as weatherstations or seismographs:
Measuring political temperature, pressure, etc.
Journalists could find stories in the data and usage of this application
Newspapers/media should sponsor or develop apps like this for reader/user environment as a watchdog position.