Slovenian Statistical Office, Code for Germany, EU Open Data Portal

Open data have become a vital resource for acquiring knowledge in our day and age, and the movement towards open-source data is establishing itself increasingly quickly. The idea is that data can be used and republished individually without copyright or patent restrictions. Today, many websites are dedicated to providing easy access to data free of charge in order to further innovative use. One form of open data is Open Government Data, which is created by ruling government institutions around the world. The European Union Open Data Portal, for instance, provides access to an expanding range of data from each EU country and its institutions. It is designed to make these institutions more transparent and accountable, and to unlock the data’s economic potential for individual usage. Another independent government service is the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, Slovenia’s main producer and coordinator of national statistics. It offers statistical data on trends the economy, the environment, agriculture and other areas in order to encourage pioneering ideas. The open-data platform Code for Germany develops applications and visualisations around open data and thus makes complex information on governments and other forms of authorities accessible and reusable.