Sample Data Catalogue continues to grow – with new data from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg

The map of communities covered by the Sample Data Catalogue has been revised and reshaped. In recent months, the German states of Bavaria and Baden–Württemberg launched portals providing access to open data. That means information from additional cities and towns in the country’s two southernmost states can now be found on govdata.de – and, as a result, in the Sample Data Catalogue. 

The Sample Data Catalogue of open data from Germany’s municipalities is updated twice a year. The last time the catalogue was updated was in May 2023, when the underlying taxonomy (of the sample datasets) was also completely revised. Cities or towns that published open data for the first time after the beginning of May are now included in the Sample Data Catalogue. 

Compared to the version from May 2023, 73 new cities and towns have been added to the Sample Data Catalogue, including larger municipalities such as Bamberg, Gütersloh and Augsburg, as well as smaller ones like Glinde, Wriezen and Wurzbach. All local-level datasets that can be accessed on govdata.de are entered into the catalogue. That makes more than 24,000 datasets as of October 17, 2023 (May 2023: 19,862).  

The map visualizes the municipalities that publish the open data which can be found on govdata.de, and which are thus included in the current version of the Sample Data Catalogue. 

The number of communities in a state that offers open data has no bearing on the quality of the data. For example, there are numerous cities and towns (especially in Rhineland– Palatinate) that have only published one dataset – often a PDF of their zoning plan.  

Are you wondering how your data should be classified in the Sample Data Catalogue? You can use the platform Hugging Face to enter the names of your datasets and receive suggestions about where they should be integrated into the Sample Data Catalogue. You can then identify the URI of the corresponding sample datasets and insert the appropriate link in the metadata (if you are using DCAT-AP.de) in the dct:references field. The best way to do this is explained in more detail in the DCAT-AP.de conventions manual. This procedure will make it easier to update the Sample Data Catalogue in the future. Until now, this has been done using an algorithm that only takes the dataset’s name into account.  

The new version of the Sample Data Catalogue can be accessed through musterdatenkatalog.de. The next update will take place in approximately six months and will include local-level data that have been added to govdata.de. The Sample Data Catalogue was initially developed in 2018 as a joint project with GovData, the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland, and KDZ – Centre for Public Administration Research.

The Bertelsmann Stiftung is open any suggestions you might have about how the Sample Data Catalogue can be used at the municipal level. Please feel free to contact us.