The government of the Netherlands still lags behind in opening data to the public. The number of accessible datasets via the Dutch government open data portal is even reduced compared to a year ago.
Research by Open State Foundation and Weyeser shows that the Dutch government portal, data.overheid.nl, refers to 5,714 datasets containing 8,159 files, however, only 3.3% give a valid response when accessed. The bulk of public sector information on the government portal refers to links of the national geo-register (93%).
Only few departments share data via the government open data portal. The government departments with the largest budgets, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Affairs, have not added datasets to data.overheid.nl. Also reference to datasets of municipalities and provinces are missing. While in other countries open data portals contain information on government spending, the economy, health and employment, on the Dutch government open data portal information is hardly available.
More serious, datasets that are mentioned on data.overheid.nl are hardly accessible. The government open data portal mentions 5,714 datasets, containing 8,159 files. However, 3,591 show broken links and of the 1,334 files with valid locations, only 826 give a valid response. Of these, only 271 are unique data files.
Most geodata from the Ministry of Infrastructure and its agency Rijkswaterstaat comprising 3,947 datasets cannot be accessed via data.overheid.nl. The number of datasets of the Ministry of Education increased with 16 during the past year. The Ministry of Economic Affairs lists 30 datasets and the Ministry of Interior 13. These departments are responsible for stimulating open data within the government.
The province of Utrecht is with 347 datasets the leading listed province on data.overheid.nl followed by Gelderland (181) and Zuid-Holland (88). However, all the datasets from the provinces data.overheid.nl refer to national georegister, mostly with broken links. Of the municipalities with datasets on the government open data portal Nijmegen (35) is leading, followed by The Hague (24) and Enschede (19). However, on the Dutch government open data portal not all municipalities with available open datasets are referred to and neither refer links to all datasets of municipalities.
Three quarters of the datasets is available under CC0 and can be reused, by anyone for any purpose. Other datasets are under public domain (23%), similar to CC0, and only 1.1% have a CC BY-entry, where datasets can be reused only if the author or licensor is given credits.
DATA
The data on the content analysis of data.overheid.nl obtained via the API data.overheid.nl on 19 June 2014. Download the file (CSV/ZIP, 1.1MB)
Data of the analysis of links, locations, files and valid responses are also derived from the API of data.overheid.nl and was accessed on 10 June 2014. Download the file (CSV/ZIP, 3MB)