Frankfurt Launches Frankfurt-Gestalten.de (Create Frankfurt)

Re-using Local Government Data for Citizen Participation and Political Transparency

Frankfurt: March 2010

What happens when local governments open make their data available for re-use? Often, the results are very positive for both citizens and the local governments. Innovative projects and initiatives emerge when local governments release their data for re-use. The winners are the citizens and local governments.

All round it is a win–win proposition. Citizens are engaged in policy making and community participation. Local governments can reduce duplication and are spared the high cost of doing their own re-purposing of data to keep up with pace of web service innovations.

With increased public access to government data, including local data, the number and diversity of web applications using this data to promote transparency in government actions and policy making and to empower citizen engagement to define solutions and policies is also increasing.

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Frankfurt-Gestalten.de (or ‘Create Frankfurt’ in English) is such an innovative project. It connects citizens with political decisions affecting what happens on their door step and in their neighbourhoods. Frankfurt-Gestalten is a facilitating project making it possible for citizens to learn about as well as respond to political decisions affecting their day-to-day lives.

Christian Kreutz, a political scientist, consultant and knowledge activist as well as member of the German Open Data Network, came up with the idea for Frankfurt-Gestalten and turned it into a live site. He was inspired by similar projects in other countries such as the UK’s ‘They Work For You’ or ‘Fix My Street; and says that he wanted to create a project for his hometown.

In writing about the project on his blog, Christian Kreutz, describes some of the things that Frankfurt-Gestalten can do in this excerpt.

• Connecting to local information service, compromising local political decision of the district committee and offer the information in three new ways:
  1) Geo-reference data, so issues can be tracked easily, right in your neighborhood or street.
  2) Thousands of documents are tagged with key words, so they can be found quicker.
  3) Latest decisions and/or discussions can be tracked in a map.
• An email service is offered to citizens to get the latest updates or changes on their neighborhood, so they are aware of issues, such as when a new parking house is planned.
• The district committee discussion is extended to the Internet. Citizens can comment on decisions and discuss further, for example, the issue of a speeding camera.
• Citizens are welcome to bring in their own ideas about what is needed to be changed and find neighbours with similar interests.

Future Potential

Christian Kreutz believes that the Frankfurt-Gestalten project has great potential and can be further developed; for example:

• The data can be further explored or more data sources added to present local politics from different angles (e.g. interests) by using maps and other visualization methods.
• Extend the initiative section and create a general channel for local neighborhood exchange of ideas with different local stakeholders for social change.
• Developing further applications for transparency and citizen engagement, for example through mobile phones.

How was Frankfurt-Gestalten created?

• The map and the associated geodata are based on the OpenStreetMap project plus involvement of the mappers from Frankfurt. The site itself is based on the open source system Drupal.
• Frankfurt-Gestalten is a non partisan project has no affiliation to a political party.
• A great deal of effort has gone into the development, in particular the procurement and preparation of the data used given that Frankfurt’s data is not available in an open and usable format as it is some of the recent open data initiatives in other countries.
• The German Open Data Network is a partner organisation with Frankfurt-Gestalten

Feedback about and participation in Frankfurt-Gestalten.de are welcome – on this link.

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