German Public Bodies from FragDenStaat.de

[stefanw]

The ever growing list of German public bodies on FragDenStaat.de can be accessed via the FragDenStaat.de API:

https://fragdenstaat.de/api/v1/publicbody/?format=json

It's a bit verbose. If CSV is a better fit, I can also provide a dump.

[rufuspollock]

@stefanw super useful and I guess a CSV would be preferable but pretty easy to convert json to csv (my big issue would be not hammering your api ;-) )

One question for you: what is the difference between your "contact" and "address" fields?

[stefanw]

Contact will generally contain phone and fax numbers (it's a free text field) while address will be the postal address / physical location address of the public body.

[rufuspollock]

Hmmm, ok there seemed to have been a mess up here when we imported the data as address and contact look similar. Would you be able to take a quick look at the de.csv file and tell me how it should be corrected?

[rufuspollock]

@stefanw ping on question above :-)

[stefanw]

I have to admit the data is also not perfect as it comes from many jurisdiction sources inside Germany. The current data is fine for most purposes. I will come up with a better data pipeline.

[augusto-herrmann]

Hi @LilithWittmann,

since I heard you speak in podcasts recently about the topic, would you know of another data source for open data on German public organizations, more up to date than the FragDenStaat API? Or is that API already up-to-date?

We already do update automatically, once a week, the official data from public bodies in the Brazilian federal government. It would be nice to be able to do the same for the data about Germany as well. If FragDenStaat is up-to-date enough, I would gladly do that as an activity for the Open Data Day or at any other time.

[LilithWittmann]

@augusto-herrmann it's the best database out there as off now. So sounds like a great idea.

[augusto-herrmann]

@LilithWittmann and @todrobbins I have an idea. You and anyone else who would like to collaborate on this are welcome to join our Matrix room #publicbodies.org to discuss a schedule a call to do this together. I would like to explain how the update with Github Actions works, the csv files and schema involved.

If we do this on Open Data Day and stream the procedure we might get more people interested in maintaining the project in the future. WDYT?

[augusto-herrmann]

Since no one expressed interest in participating in the proposed ODD event tomorrow, I'm cancelling the event. That doesn't mean we couldn't do this at another opportunity.