1.
www.kdz.or.atwww.kdz.or.at
August 17th, 2019
Bernhard Krabina
Rethinking public sector data
ecosystems -
Open Government Data, Semantic MediaWiki and Wikidata

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www.kdz.or.at
Introduction
 KDZ – Centre for Public
Administration Research
 Open (Government) Data
 Semantic MediaWiki
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www.kdz.or.at
Open Data – a short introduction
 Open Government Data means data from the public
sector that is published for everybody to use
without restrictions
 Several Open Government Initiatives exist on
municipal, regional and federal level
 The European Data portal collects information about
metadata published by member states
 So you need:
 metadata describing the data (type, format, license…) -> data.gv.at
 a place where you can actually retrieve the data -> URL
 Very often open data is the source for
Wikidata/Wikipedia
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www.kdz.or.at
Semantic MediaWiki – a short
introduction
 „Older sibling“ of Wikidata
 Ecosystem of extensions around managing
data in your own MediaWiki
 Enterprise ready, used in many large wikis
(open or closed) outside of WMF
 Commercial support available
 SMW installations can be datasource for
Wikidata
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www.kdz.or.at
The problem:
We live in the age of
big data…
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…but still a lot of data is
missing, closed or old,
especially data from „official“
sources (public sector data)

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www.kdz.or.at
Examples for data needed to
monitor SDGs (on local level)
 Children in child care facilities (SDG 4)
 Number of male/female officials /public
servants (SDG 5)
 Expenditure for renewable engergy (SDG 7)
 Quality of housing (SDG 10)
 Public parks (SDG 11)
 Amount of waste managed (SDG 12)
 Bike routes (SDG 13)
 …
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www.kdz.or.at
Example: Modal split
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Example: Modal split
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 Wikidata: entity, but no data
 Nothing in Wikipedia city articles
 Manual list in article „Modal share“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_Split

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www.kdz.or.at
Example: Modal split
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 Data from 2006, 2016 and 2006 in
 Nothing in Open Data Portals
 Nothing at Statistics Austria

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www.kdz.or.at
Data ecosystems: central register
Example: inhabitants
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 Cities register new residents in a central
database (ZMR)
 ZMR delivers data quarterly to Statistics Austria
 Some cities publish their own statistics on open
data portals (data.gv.at)
 data has to be added to Wikidata manually

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www.kdz.or.at
Possible solution: API, open data
 City delivers data to central register
 register offers (part of) data in API
 Statistics Austria, open data portal and
other users (Wikidata) can access data
 Probability: somewhat likely
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www.kdz.or.at
Data ecosystems: finances
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03/2019 (data from 2018) 10/2019
 City agrees on spending report and send spending data
to regional government
 Regional government sends data to Statistics Austria
 KDZ buys data from Statistics Austria and publishes
them on www.offenerhaushalt.at
 Metadata gets delivered to open data portal (data.gv.at)

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www.kdz.or.at
Possible solution: publish often
 City delivers data several times
 Probability:
 high for open data (already done)
 unlikely for Wikidata: (not going to happen!)
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mandatory
voluntary
voluntary (?)

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www.kdz.or.at
Possible solution:
municipal data infrastructure
 Cities operate a data infrastructure with
data input and API/export possibilities
 data can be exported to/consumed by many
 probability: likely for some data
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www.kdz.or.at
Example: Publication
„Austrian Cities in Figures“
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3 data sources
 Statistics Austria
 regional governments
 questionnaire for participating
municipalities

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www.kdz.or.at
Example: Publication
„Austrian Cities in Figures“
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www.kdz.or.at
Example: Publication
„Austrian Cities in Figures“
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www.kdz.or.at
Result: „Austrian Cities in Figures“

 only PDF publication is
planned
 ~ 75 cities are included
(2098 municipalities)
 data from 2018 will be
published in the document
„Cities in Figures 2019“ that
will be available in early 2020
 Data will not be available
electronically
 No open license

 SMW has proven to be a
reliable infrastructure
 Easy form based entering
of data
 Own publication process
„approve data“, without
wiki know-how
 CSV, RDF, JSON export
for reuse oft data
 Visualisation options
(“result formats”)
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www.kdz.or.at
How to improve the situation:
Basic steps
1. Convince public institutions to open up data
you need: open license, machine-readable
format & infrastructure
2. Publish metadata on open data portals
infrastructure is there, DCAT-AP
3. Put (some of) their data into Wikidata – as
an additional usecase
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www.kdz.or.at
How to improve the situation:
Things to consider
If they need to build an open infrastructure,
there are 3 options:
1. Open up existing infrastructure (API) 
2. Change to different infrastructure 
3. Donate to open infrastructure (Wikidata,
Commons) 
4. Build up open infrastructure 
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www.kdz.or.at
Options?
 Man use case: runs
Wikidata
 Complex installation
 User interface for
entering and querying
data too complex
 Where provenance
metadata is essential
 For integration with
Wikibase
 Main use case: manage
data in your own wiki
 Simple editing using
forms
 Editing restricted to
specific user groupos
 Managing text and data
 https://www.semantic-
mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Refere
nce_and_provenance_data
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www.kdz.or.at
More by Denny Vrandecic
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https://twitter.com/vrandezo/status/1149012495497138178

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www.kdz.or.at
Lets work together on bringing
the best data out of public
institutions so everyone can use
them as simple as possible!
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 Current data ecosystems are very complex,
cumbersome and old-fashioned and
therefore slow
 There is not enough open data available
Summary

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www.kdz.or.at
Contact:
www.semantic-mediawiki.org
4. Oktober 2012 · Seite 24
Bernhard Krabina
 krabina@kdz.or.at
 www.kdz.or.at
 @krabina