The Census Lays the Foun­da­tions for Linked Open Data

12. January 2021

In 2021 the Census is working with the company Takin.solutions to make the Census data Linked Open Data.

Although the current Census data­base is an open access resource that is freely available online, its data cannot curr­ently be linked to that of other rese­arch projects. The first step towards the trans­for­ma­tion of the Census data into Linked Open Data was the project Kultur­erbe als Linked Open Data — Pilot­pro­jekt für den Census, funded by a grant from the Regie­rende Bürger­meister von Berlin — Senats­kanzlei Wissen­schaft und Forschung, which ran between February 2018, and December 2020 and was carried out by TELOTA – IT/DH at the Berlin-Bran­den­bur­gi­schen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Takin.solutions in 2021 and 2022 will be deve­lo­ping a semantic repre­sen­ta­tion of the Census data using inter­na­tio­nally-reco­g­nised stan­dards. This will open up new possi­bi­li­ties for the Census data­base, not only by enab­ling new ways of querying and inter­ac­ting with the data, but also by allo­wing the Census to inter­sect with other important data­sets in the field.

The work with Takin.solutions is taking place at the same time as a complete upgrade of the EasyDB soft­ware by the Berlin soft­ware firm Programm­fa­brik. In the future, users of the Census data­base can expect to work with a new inter­face, and be offered new possi­bi­li­ties for sear­ching and acces­sing the data.