The federal administration is obliged to publish its data as open (government) data in accordance with the national E-Government Act (§ 12a EGovG). The Centre of Competency for Open Data (CCOD) is the Central Point of Contact in accordance with Section 12a (10) of the E-Government Act. As such, it supports and consults the federal administration regarding the implementation of open data. Open data describes a principle, in which data is made publicly accessible in a machine-readable, open format for free re-use by any third party. Developers and programmers from civil society, business and the administration itself can use this data to design new services and applications. Journalism, science and research also benefit from a high-quality data basis. To this end, the data is described with metadata and made available on a central portal for Germany – GovData (govdata.de). Generally, the dataset itself remains with the providing authority while the metadata is uploaded to GovData, the central (meta-)data portal of the federal and state governments.
Generally, the CCOD offers advice and counselling services to all authorities at federal level on issues relating to the provision of open data. This is provided either via email, by telephone or on site, for example when the CCOD is organising events or workshops to raise awareness among employees or through a workshop for specialists implementing open data.
Furthermore, the CCOD creates informational material (e.g. handbooks and eLearnings) and plans to host a digital Open Data Forum (in cooperation with OpenCoDE) for public officials and civil society organisations to promote knowledge facilitation and data accessibility. Moreover, the CCOD established a comprehensive network of public and private stakeholders and hosts numerous, target-group-oriented events every year. In addition, the CCOD contributes to the general development of expertise by giving presentations and providing information at conferences and to the Federal University of Applied Administrational Sciences.
The CCOD is located in the unit DI4 of the directorate general D, responsible for digitalization matters in the Federal Office of Administration.
If you have further questions or need support regarding open data, please contact opendata@bva.bund.de.
