Open Data & Big Data

Open Data is freely available information. The Open Data is often raw data and often in large amounts, so I can best approach it with Big Data analyses. This is usually information from the government or semi-government agencies. The license and terms of use often describe the conditions under which I can use this data. The characteristics of Open Data are:

• The data is public

• There are no copyrights on the data

• The data is easily searchable

• The data is openly available 

• I can use Open Data to:

  • Reinforce story with background numbers

  • To know how the government is doing in a certain area

  • To do statistics.

Open Data Dutch Government

The Netherlands does not have a large Open Data website with all Open Data of The Netherlands. For example, every municipality has its own Open Data site. As a result, there are also different ways of presenting the data. Below I mention a number of places where I can find Open Data:

• Central government Open Data

• Open government data: Here I can dive into government data by theme

• Open Data Netherlands has a catalog with all available Open Data in The Netherlands

• Central government provides the data for each part of the government

• Open culture data offers all Open Data in the field of culture

• CBS has Statline with all the statistics they keep about The Netherlands and that is also Open Data I can use.

If I want foreign data, I can use Google Open Data and the country from which I am looking for Open Data and I will then find more than enough resources for my research. Another starting point is: http://guides.emich.edu/data/free-data. Here I will also find datasets that I can use to perform statistical analyses on or make courses or exams with.