Since 2019, the state capital of Dresden has been offering publicly accessible data sets from the city administration on an open data portal. These relate to topics from the areas of environment and climate, population, construction and housing as well as transport. This makes Dresden 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 records (1,117) after Hamburg and Berlin. However, there is a need for improvement “in the findability and user-friendliness of the information provided”.
And this is precisely where the research project of the two TUD business informatics professorships Information Systems in Industry and Commerce and Business Engineering, in cooperation with the Municipal Statistics Office, comes in. In analyses and pre-tests, the team has already been able to identify initial potential deficits: a lack of technical knowledge on the part of users, insufficient data quality and a lack of knowledge about specific possible applications of the data sets.
The researchers are now conducting a large-scale, questionnaire-based survey over a period of six weeks. They are investigating which factors significantly influence the use of open data portals and the extent to which users’ personal characteristics favor or inhibit the initial use and reuse of open data.
Interested Dresden citizens – regardless of whether they already have experience with open data or not – are cordially invited to take part in the survey at the following link: https://www.soscisurvey.de/ODPSurvey/?r=ddps. It takes about 10 minutes to complete and is completely anonymous.
About the Smart City Dresden model project
In the “Smart City Dresden model project” (2022-2026), which is funded by the federal government, innovative measures are being tested in model districts of Dresden to make the city sustainable, community-oriented and liveable.
The project management of the state capital (Eigenbetrieb IT-Dienstleistungen) is working together with the TU Dresden. The WISSENSARCHITEKTUR – Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture is responsible for the accompanying scientific and synthesis research. Research teams from several faculties also support urban smart city measures with technical expertise.
About the Dresden Open Data Portal
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 makes neutral, open datasets from the state capital of Dresden available free of charge in machine-readable and standardized formats. 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/.
Contact
Dr. Katja Bley
Professorship for Information Systems, in particular Information Systems in Industry and Commerce
Tel.: +49 351 463-33535
Email: katja.bley@tu-dresden.de
Richard Rau
Professorship for Information Systems, in particular Business Engineering
Tel.: +49 351 463-39935
E-mail: richard.rau@tu-dresden.de
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Further links
👉 https://tu-dresden.de
Photo: pixabay
