The Austrian Open Knowledge Chapter is dissolving itself (link in German), a decision already made at a general assembly in December 2018. Judging by the website activities had petered out in recent years, the blog falling silent at the end of 2017.

Austria over the years has been an active country concerning open government data and open knowledge in general. Specifically I see the Austrian open data community as a globally relevant good practice example, one that I still regularly refer to. Already in 2010, when I spoke at an open data meet-up in Graz, and in subsequent years presenting at OGD Austria conferences and various other events, what stood out to me was the broad scope the Austrian open data community had. Academia, activists, the federal chancellery, state governments, city governments, start-ups, technologists and traditional re-users were all around the same table. Informal get-togethers and resulting relations formed a basis on which more formal structures and cooperative initiatives could grow. I think such a solid community fundament is the key reason Austria was able to achieve a lot on open data in the absence of any legal framework to actively stimulate it, moreover with a constitution that enshrines civil service secrecy.

For a few years I was quite well informed about the Austrian efforts, through regular visits, and regular calls between German speaking community leaders from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and me as the odd one out. Over time my connection grew more distant however.

With Open Knowledge Austria ceasing to exist, a chapter ends. I suspect the community substrate on which it could exist will endure, even if events, individual members lives and contexts are always in flux around us. It is laudable that OK Austria is actively deciding to dissolve. Organisations all too easily stumble into the pitfall that continued existence becomes the organisation’s primary goal. By dissolving, as Stefan Kasberger, OK Austria’s chair, wrote, one releases its hold on specific topics and niches in an ecosystem, and it becomes possible for new things to emerge over time.

At the 2012 OGD Austria conference in Linz, a wall at the venue carried the text, near the floor obviously, “Above starts down below”. It seemed a good description of how the Austrian open data efforts were based on solid bottom-up community building to me at the time.