A study from EMC from 2014 predicts the doubling of the available data in the “Digital Universe” every two years between now and 2020. This rapid growth is a challenge for society – how to put the available data to use effectively? This is a challenge in many areas of society - in government and public administration, in industry, with cultural institutions, archives, and in research.

Open Data is an answer to this challenge. It is not only a movement and activity, but also motivating the development of a set of standards and best practices which enable the publishing and deployment of data - regardless if the data is publicly available or used in a more closed environment.

Open Data provides a unique opportunity to use public and private data, to create the standard infrastructure necessary which fuels economic, governmental and societal activity across many different domains and area. This is enabled by joint common standards to describe datasets and the ability to integrate information, e.g., by establishing common ways how to identify entities of interest so that data, information and knowledge from many different domains can be used for problem solving and guiding of activities.

Open Government Data supports a number of different objectives; it facilities transparency in Government, e.g., by showing showing how public money is being spent and contributing factors to decisions. But Open Government Data also facilitates business and planning activities, e.g., by enabling the identification of business opportunities in specific areas or helping to identifying - even within the Government, where underdeveloped areas need specific attention for example for building childcare, schools or hospitals. It also creates new and opportunities to exploit this data in unforeseen way, especially as more and more datasets become available that this data can be combined with.

Nature of documentation: Guide