The following is a post by Daniel Dietrich, coordinator of the working group Open Government Data and chairman of the German Chapter of the OKFN.
We are delighted to announce the launch of “Apps für Deutschland” – the first open data competition in Germany. Apps für Deutschland (Apps4De) will officially be launched on November, 8th at the exhibition “Modern State“. The winners of the competition will be inaugurated in March 2012 at CeBIT.
Apps für Deutschland will be organised by 3 non-for profit organisations: The German Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Data Network and the Government2.0 Network. It will be organised under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior and supported by BITKOM and its members from the private sector.
In this regard Apps4De is a perfect example of “Government as a platform” – a joint effort, a collaboration between Government, Civil Society and the Private Sector. Unlike most “App4…” Competitions, Apps4De will not start with a fully developed open data catalogue, but with a small selection of open government data; “opening up Public Sector Information” (PSI) is one of the goals of the competition itself. The idea is to encourage public authorities to take part in the competition by opening up interesting datasets, that have not been open before.
We have already received positive feedback from some agencies and want to make this event both a amazing apps competition to demonstrate how useful applications built on open government data can be, and a major booster for opening up PSI in Germany.
A first handout can be downloaded here (PDF in German language).
More information will be released soon at: www.apps4deutschland.de – watch out for #apps4de
Daniel Dietrich is a digital rights and freedom of speech enthusiast. He focuses on research and policy around open data, open government and transparency and is author of several studies on those topics. He is the Chairman of the German Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation and works for the OKF since 2009 as an open data evangelist.
