 Hello and welcome to the English translation. We're translating the talk Code for Germany, Good Deeds for Open Data. Julia is on stage and she already introduced herself a little bit. So this talk is about Open Data and what good deeds you are able to do with them. Julia is active in the OK Lab in Osnabrück which is a place where people come together who think about open data and open infrastructure within the city and they are trying to initiate projects and be in communication with the city and are trying to do their own things in the area of open data. And I have the honor to introduce you to Julia and wish you all a very good talk. Thank you very much. A applause at the beginning is very good because especially when it's not only about what I'm doing in Osnabrück because it's called Code for Germany and I want to point out that Ulrike who was just on the stage is also active in Code for Germany. She is from Berlin. So what we are doing in Code for Germany, that is what I'm going to explain within this talk. I will do 20 to 25 minutes of a talk and then at the end you will have a short minute to also do questions. I've already been introduced so my name is Julia and I'm from Osnabrück and I've been living there for a couple of years and I was thinking about what can I do next to my studies. I maybe want to learn some programming and do something with data and see what I'm able to do with that. And then I found Code for Germany. That's a network German-wide which is active in quite a lot of cities which is even over 30 cities now and there are more groups being founded and Ulrike has already said it's also connected to OKLab which is our abbreviation for Open Knowledge Lab because we were thinking about how we wanted to call ourselves. So Open Knowledge Lab is actually the same as OKLab or Code for Germany or Code for Osnabrück or whatever. So I'm not here on my own but there is also Ulrike and I've also seen quite a bunch of other people here and I wanted to ask you who of you is actually active in Code for Germany. It's like a handful of people who are raising their hands in the audience and there's quite a bunch of people here who don't know about us yet. So you can put your hands down now so let's start at the beginning. Open data what is that actually. So the English term obviously is open data and this is what we're thinking about and we want to write applications to use with that and then we see stuff like this and this is open data and this is ecological regions and as you can see here that's not super useful right there and then we come in actually. So you know there's something like open data and cities are releasing them digitally and then it's like what do we do with them. So here's a project from the United States. So some people were thinking about grey water and how we can clean them because they were getting stuck constantly. So they started this project, adopted rain and that was in San Francisco where you could adopt drains to clean them. This is one example for how you can visualize these sets of open data. This has started a couple years ago and it's named Code for America and the idea here is that it's not only just about software which is just about making money but the slogan is government can work for the people, buy the people in the digital age. So the idea is how can city councils and structures work with open data so that easy stuff is available for just the general public. So yeah that's cool. We think that's cool what's happening with Code for America. So let's start Code for Germany and this is the map of Germany how it's roughly looking right now and sometimes labs go inactive or new ones are being founded so it's spread all over Germany and the name we're known by is Code for Germany. And I've talked quite a bit about this but I want to structure this a little bit more. So the three main goals of Code for Germany are the first one is projects, we find open data and make applications out of them. Like we've just seen the example from San Francisco, this project with the drains so that they are being cleaned. The second goal is we try to explain to the cities we're citizens here we are volunteering and we need open data for that. So the third thing is we want to communicate between politics and citizens who are trying to be active so we can actually be using the open data. So let's start this project. So we've had projects that started a while back for example this one that's farmshops.eu, that's from Stuttgart and people started thinking maybe I would like to do something with the environment and think about it a little bit more and I want to know where I can buy groceries locally. And then they figured out that there's data available for that. So there is data from OpenStreetMap and they have information on stores, on store opening hours and now there's just a question of how to put it on a map. So they have the data and then from the data they need to find some way to make it usable. And this project is doing it really well by just making it clickable on the map to figure out where you want to go shopping. For example this one, I guess a farm called a Gostenberg which is based on OpenStreetMap and you can edit the data in OpenStreetMap and that's one of the things that we do. There's another thing which is also still pretty new. It's called ClimateWatch. There's people sitting together making sure that since everybody's talking about the environment everybody's talking about the climate and everybody has the data, our cities have the data. And it's just lying around. So why don't we just take a look at it? Of course they don't do it because it's a huge amount of data and it's a lot of data in different PDFs and it's hard to tell what it is where. So our job is making that data more accessible and making sure that people know what it's about. So it's not just Minster, it's also Cologne and they're trying to do step-by-step more or easier way of accessing that data. Another project is about knowledge driven information, understanding of different schools and the schools have, or for parents who are looking for schools for their children where would they want to move, what schools have the best way of getting there. So what they do get is a visualized map where they see which schools are where and what is around them. So we try to figure out what data is there and what can you actually visualize from it. This might not be the most relevant project for most people so there's other projects out there, for example politics. Politics is basically for everybody. Everybody's talking a lot or writing a lot so the idea is to figure out how voting might be done easier. What can you actually do with voting data? Voting data is basically the numbers that come out after the voting is over but there's more out there, for example up front from the European election, for example which words are being said by which party and how to visualize them best. If you just want to exchange yourself, if you want to get more information on, for example, gamifications, how can you get into topics that you usually wouldn't be thinking about. This one is another visualization from Münster. There's a lot going on there and they're visualizing the traffic, jams and crashes. So they're just getting all the information from the police and then just putting on a map and if you're doing that yourself you understand how much work is behind actually just doing that, taking the data and putting it on a map. For example, that corner between street A and street B, that's one document and then another document says corner B, street A and it's kind of hard to put it all together. There's tools out there for that and there's different ways of solving that and we do have a lot of people who love doing that and actually just talk about how to do that best, how to do it with small sets of data, how to do it with large sets of data and how do you do that and give it back to the community. What we also do is just take information or insights from other people. This is a project from somewhere else, it's from Finland and it's a little bit about how do we do public transportation best. There's different applications from different providers giving you different information but you only get this information if you have a certain application so they didn't want that anymore. They wanted to unite all the information from the different applications. So how do you unite that best? How do you get that software the best way? How do you get the most sensible information for everybody so everybody can actually use it and that's what they did here. It turned into a project for Germany, for Ulm and now they're also trying an administer. So we're also checking out other people's projects, other projects of other countries and we're also trying to understand what can we take from these projects. This is another example, it's a visualization of what people do with different hackathons. There's one in MERS, there's an open data day which is a yearly event that's happening in multiple cities. Usually one day where you can just go and talk about and do open data. In MERS it's actually two or three days, I think it's a whole weekend where people unite and talk about open data and there's different workshops and this is one example of what this can result in. So people are complaining about waiting and how long it takes to get somewhere. So they wanted to see how long does it actually take. So this is from a guy in Berlin who does a lot of open data and that was one of his visualizations. This is another project which is one of our favorite projects which is really simple to figure out which water from the tap, where is it coming from. So you never actually know. It's nice and easy because you can just get it but you never know what is actually in there. So this tool actually lets you see what is in your water and it shows it to you in a really simple way and you can compare it to the water you could buy in a supermarket. And this example is from Leipzig here to actually compare what is in there compared to water from a bottle. And this is also our plan for this year to just take this and turn it into a different project for more cities than just this one because there's still other cities out there who don't have the data and then this is our way of convincing them to get that data and then actually get started with that. So next up is data. I'm always talking about open data and what do I actually mean by saying this? I'm talking about data which our public or at least should be public. So that's the environment that's data from local institutions like city planning like all data which should be publicly available. So we have here a definition open data is data so it should be available to everyone which should be usable for everyone and should be shareable for everyone. So the only limit should be the so it's not the new oil or the new thing which is limit by someone but it should be open and usable by everyone. So what is open data? It's not only that we can look at them but that we can actually use them. So hopefully it's not a PDF but even if it's a PDF we can maybe use it so it would be better if it was an open format like for example a data sheet or even better like an actually open format like CSV. So it's actually structured and which is linked to other data but like yeah that's a dream for the future. So let's what we need to explain to the cities is that we need open data and we also need it for now for the current data. I don't need an official plan which is 5 years old but I need one from this year. It should be without discrimination it should be according to standards it should be an open license it should be sustainable and it should be free so it should be without costs and if we are talking about open data there should also be data which should not be open data. So the main thing that should not be open is personal data which is according which is talking about individual people so where it gets a bit more difficult is when it is licensed and if it's only licensed because there is some weird claims which are questionable and it's actually publicly funded then we think it should be open data and where do we actually find the open data in the internet at least in most counties in Germany we do have these kind of websites and platforms so the green ones we have access to it and in the other ones it's a bit more critical because there is no real access to the open data so a problem here is the freedom of information act because in some states there isn't any legislation about this like Bavaria and Saxony and in other states we have information which should be opened and if you are asking for it which is the second list and in other states there is transparency laws which are saying that the states should are legally obliged to make of these data publicly here I have a map which I have kind of stolen from media.ccc.de and this is a little bit of an overview where we actually need people who explain to public institutions why we need open data because you are right this is the actual overview and this should not be the case so a three biggest area is the communication so we need portals we need websites where we can access open data and then we also need rooms where we can meet where we can try out different things where we can check out what applications we are able to build how we can re-participate in this process this picture is from Karlsruhe where there was an exhibition OpenCold and Code for Karlsruhe was involved with that so we as a community were involved and we are looking at what good deeds can we do with open data so the last words are just come over join us get engaged we do have a website which I didn't get the URL for but also it has Google applications running around it and we are working on a new website if you want to join us working on the new website please join us so locally we talk to local politicians and talk to them and engage in conversations for open data we do our own projects in our own meetups weekly or monthly and we also have some food together and talk to each other and make some codes and then also on a national level we are looking at a different picture so this is my short introduction to our work as Code for Germany so now we have an open stage for questions thank you, you've just shown a slide with 20 different types of open data do you have experience with making data more open by asking a little more so this is a little difficult for question because do you have experience with is a very broad statement and some of us do, some of us don't do you have maybe a concrete question my first question would be towards health and the second one would be basically everything else so I'm thinking about a different project I can't think of anything concrete our days a project I'm thinking of at the moment where we've been trying to talk to politicians about it this year we weren't existing that long back then so we've had a few issues but we did write a letter and said yes we like that what you're doing and it's great that you're trying to help but there's not too much open information happening I think you just have to find the right people in the cities and in the administration talk to and figure out who to actually convince if you want to just approach me afterwards are there any more questions nobody's asking anything have you had problems with approaching the politicians about open data that they understand or misunderstand that where people have to write their own software and now we don't have to do that anymore yes we've had the issue that we had to clarify that we're just volunteers and we're just building prototypes to give our ideas and our prototypes and that we're not actually contractors for them to do their work for example for us in our city it's not happening that much but in other places it's happening a little bit more it does happen that people are actually then afterwards employed in the cities for example there's one time there was an employee actually contracted by the city and now he's part of their innovation team and now he's their open data person for the city same with Ulm and another city and MERS there's just a big overlap of people for taking care of this then there's another question do you have more singular regional projects or the more larger national projects so generally we do what we want to so there are a lot of different projects out there for example the traffic project they're called DG Transit which used to be Finnish our few cities in Germany actually took it over and we did that in Hamburg and then the people from Ulm and the people from Münster just sat together and then everything happened in Münster as well and now we're cooperating on it but I'm not actually into that project but there's a lot happening there so there's a lot of non-regional things but also a few local things happening so the projects are on very different levels for example we have events happening like a Christmas market and there's people who want to do an event for a Christmas market which is super locally whereas of course the traffic and the water is a bit more involved in cooperating with other cities did that answer your question? you said you want to do good yes is it a topic to talk about what good actually means what direction you want to go? yes we are a fairly complex network and very diverse and a lot of our work actually happen on a local level where you actually meet and you actually talk about it and then every group can actually decide what is good and many are actually doing it from an interest in learning programming or learning about it and then just take a project which can be an example and then just start doing it on a higher level we actually do have a few meetings and the expectation of doing good and to actually lead the local groups and coordinate between them or like we do now in Hamburg what is happening that actually has topics like good in it so it is a pretty important topic for us to actually meet as a pretty big company and talk about it to talk about topics like this one what is good even we've had workshops about it and we are looking into it but there's a lot of directions at the moment so that's exactly the point where we are actually happy about our names code for and we also need all the insights from the people and the ideas from where can we actually help and where can we actually do good so if you can contribute to that that would be great so you don't have to be able to program to contribute this might not be a question you can answer but what kind of arguments could you name with people in administrations why open data is great and why is it usable or what are different perspectives for argumenting but there might be different arguments going for different parts of administration yes for example we've had a small advanced calendar where Merce was looking into different effects from open data how is our local economy actually evolving from that and how our local IT branches actually developing from that on and you have to say yes it's difficult so open data is going to improve everything everything is going to be good now because now there's people out there taking care of it but that's not how it goes but in a long term way knowing that it's out there even as a local IT company you can build on that and you can build services on that and those are being sold so it's not just a volunteering yeah we're doing something and it's happening it's really an idea to have a prototype to question on how can that be solved in a long term way how can it be financed in a long term way and how can it actually be beneficial for the local economy so if you had to talk about all the projects about code are the projects of code for Germany more directed at the people who live in the city or is it more directed at the people who work for the city so I'm laughing at that a little bit because I'm saying we're doing software from the people for the people but there are studies that the expectation of open data and the usage of open data the administration is profiting more than the people themselves because they usually don't get the data that easily from the other people so we say we do it for the people but in reality it's even happening at the same pace for the administrations so the administration can follow that duty towards the people a lot easier that way so it is for both so thank you a lot for listening to the translation English translation of the talk code for Germany