Waag and OKFN Netherlands opened the Waag building on February 23rd for the International Open Data Day. With over a 100 cities participating, we decided to tackle the Open Data Census, Open Spending in the Netherlands and Datavisualisation within City SDK. We were happy to welcome a lot of participants, who talked about realtime data, linked data, data journalism, open NGO data and much more!
Because of the 'open' atmosphere, people were moving throughout the building to talk, demonstrate and share experiences. It was very interesting to see the different approaches that people take to get the open data buzz going locally. The Province of Groningen e.g. has opened up data on all types of objects in the public space. This has worked out well for their organization, showing amazing results in reducing the cost of maintenance.
At the end of the day, participants in the data expedition of Open Spending had some great ideas how to find so-called 'postal box companies' that use The Netherlands solely as a tax haven. Like showing the location of the postal boxes on a map and than comparing this to number of residents in an area could reveal to some extent where these kind of companies are located.es.
