How accessible and usable is the city's open data portal Dresden? The Technical University Dresden (TUD) has conducted a survey as part of the research project "Open Data for Citizens, Business and Administration". The aim of the project is to make the state capital's freely accessible datasets easier to find and more useful for various user groups.
The survey is aimed at all Dresden citizens - regardless of whether they already have experience with open data or not. The results should help to develop concrete improvements to the portal's functionality, user-friendliness and range of information.
Take part now: https://www.soscisurvey.de/ODPSurvey/?r=ddps
The survey takes about 10 minutes and is anonymous.
Open data portal of the state capital Dresden
The Dresden Open Data Portal was launched in 2019 on the basis of a city council resolution with the aim of digitizing the administration and increasing transparency. It provides neutral, open data sets of the state capital Dresden in machine-readable and standardized formats free of charge. The database covers 14 categories - from population, traffic and elections to infrastructure and the environment. The open data portal can be accessed at https://opendata.dresden.de/.
Dresden one of the pioneers of open data
With its open data portal, Dresden is one of the pioneers in Germany. In February 2025, an analysis of German cities by the Berlin-based consulting firm Finatycs showed that the state capital provides the third most data sets (1,117) after Hamburg and Berlin. However, there is a need for improvement "in the findability and user-friendliness of the information provided".
Improving data quality and knowledge about possible applications
And this is precisely where the TUD research project, in collaboration with the municipal statistics office of the state capital Dresden, comes in. In analyses and pre-tests, the team has already been able to identify the first possible deficits: a lack of technical knowledge on the part of users, insufficient data quality and a lack of knowledge about specific application options for the datasets.