Last week the Danish government further extended the data available through their open data distributor, and announced some impressive resulting impact from already available data.

In 2012 the roadmap Good Basic Data for Everyone was launched, which set out to create an open national data infrastructure of the 5 core data sets used by all layers of government (maps, address, buildings, companies, people, see image). I attended the internal launch at the Ministry, and my colleague Marc contributed to the financial reasoning behind it (PDF 1, PDF 2). The roadmap ran until 2016, and a new plan is now in operation that builds on that first roadmap.

An illustration from the Danish 2012 road map showing how the 5 basic data registers correlate, and how maps are at its base.

Steadily data is added to those original 5 data sets, that increases the usability of the data. Last week all administrative geographic divisions were added (these are the geographic boundaries of municipalities, regions, 2200 parishes, jurisdictions, police districts, districts and zip-codes). This comes after last November’s addition of the place name register, and before coming May’s publication of the Danish address book. (The publication of the address database in 2002 was the original experience that ultimately led to the Basic Data program).

The primary goal of the Basic Data program has always been government efficiency, by ensuring all layers of government use the same core data. However the Danish government has also always recognised the societal and economic potential of that same data for citizens and companies, and therefore opening up the Basic Data registers as much as possible was also a key ingredient from the start. Interestingly the business case for the Basic Data program was only built on projected government savings, and those projections erred on the side of caution. Any additional savings realised by government entities would remain with them, so there was a financial incentive for government agencies to find additional uses for the Basic Data registers. External benefits from re-use were not part of the businesscase, as they were rightly seen as hard to predict and hard to measure, but were also estimated (again erring on the side of caution.) The projected savings for government were about 25 million Euro per year, and the project external benefits at some 65 million per year after completion of the system. Two years ago I transposed these Danish (as well as Dutch and other international) experiences with building an open national data infrastructure this way for the Swiss government, as part of a study with the FH Bern (PDF of some first insights presented at the 2016 Swiss open data conference in Lausanne).

Danish media this week reported new impact numbers from the geodata that has been made available. Geodata became freely available early 2013 as part of the Basic Data program. In 2017 the geodata saw over 6 billion requests for data, a 45% increase from 2016. Government research estimates the total gains in efficiency and productivity from using geodata for 2016 at some 470 million Euro (3.5 billion Danish Kroner). This is about 5 times the total of savings and benefits originally projected annually for the entire system back in 2012 (25 million savings, and 65 million in benefits).

It once again shows how there really is no rational case for selling government data, as the benefits that accrue from removing all access barriers will be much larger. This also means that government revenue will actually grow, as increased tax revenue will outstrip both lost revenue from data sales and costs of providing data. A timely and pertinent example from Denmark, now that I am researching the potential impact of open data for the Serbian government.