This is a discussion about the submission for Administrative Boundaries / Austria.
In my opinion the answer for “B7. Is the data openly licensed/in public domain?” should be NO and not YES. The license available at http://www.bev.gv.at/pls/portal/url/ITEM/88AB1D338625A5D0E040010A83211FDB states that re-distribution is not permitted and is not compatible with an open license according to the Open Definition.
The relevant section in the terms is 2.3.7:
“Dem Kunden ist es nicht erlaubt, vom BEV bezogene (Original-) Daten an Dritte unentgeltlich oder entgeltlich weiterzugeben oder Sublizenzen zu erteilen. Sofern die vom BEV bezogenen Daten anderen als den intern Nutzungsberechtigten zur Verfügung gestellt werden sollen, ist ein Be- und Verarbeiten der Daten („Folgeprodukt“) im Rahmen eines entsprechenden Nutzungsrechtes erforderlich, außer im Rahmen des Nutzungsrechtes „Freie Werknutzungen“ (Punkt 2.2.1). Die Be- und Verarbeitung der Daten erfolgt durch Verschneiden mit anderen ortsbezogenen oder thematischen Informationen bzw. durch Verwendung als Entwurfsgrundlage. Dabei ist vom Kunden sicherzustellen, dass Dritten das Ableiten (Extrahieren) von 13* Originaldaten des BEV nicht ermöglicht wird. Für einen daraus entstandenen Schaden des BEV ist der Kunde voll ersatzleistungspflichtig.”
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I agree on this. If its not free to share, its not open data.
I have found here another datasource for adminstrative boundary data. it is open, but dont know in detail if it fits all requierements. Verwaltungsgrenzen (VGD) - Stichtagsdaten grundstücksgenau - VGD-Oesterreich_gst_01102018.zip - data.gv.at
Another question: what is meant with level 1 and level 2?
Hi @stefankasberger
by Administrative Boundary Level 1 and 2 we mean different administrative areas. Administrative boundary level 0 is the border of a country. The next lower boundary level can be regions, federal states, kantons, etc. (depending on the way a government organizes its administration). Level 2 would describe again a lower level of administrative areas within each region, federal state, such as départements in France, Kreise in Germany, or counties in the USA.
You can find a list of administrative divisions in this Wikipedia article.
Best
Danny
Thanks @stefankasberger @robertharm for your useful feedback. Digging through the links shared got me to the top level page:
which describes more than the min needed characteristics and which clearly mentions CC-license on the dataset.
Do let me know if that is NOT the official government Data Portal of Austria; looks legit – I can’t understand the language tho 
@dannylammerhirt Found license contradiction here; it is licensed CC in the Data Portal but as pointed out, the actual license says otherwise.
Please confirm that this means B7 will be a No?
Hi @leowmjw,
good catch, this website is run by the Office of Chancellor and hence an official source. The dataset also qualifies for submission (boundary level 1 = Bundesländer, level 2 = Bezirke) because both administrative levels are contained in the dataset.
In order to answer question B7 we recommend two rationales
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you use a reference dataset that contains all relevant characteristics and answer questions B4 until B8 (B9 should be commented on) with reference to this dataset. So this is how you should go about in this specific case, answering the question with “Yes”. Please use the comments and tell us that there are conflicting statements about licensing, depending on the website you are consulting. This is really helpful information.
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you cannot find a reference dataset, because the data is split into various datasets (not necessarily the case for administrative boundaries, but for other data categories). In this case, please refer questions B2 and B4-B8 to the entirety of the datasets. The logic is that we want to assess if the data characteristics in B3 are open. If one characteristic is openly licensed, another is not, then the answer to question B7 would be “No”.
Hope this helps! Btw Austria is a strange case - I was reviewing their weather data yesterday with similarly conflicting license statements.
it maybe is cause of different understandings of what open means in terms of licencing. at the end, all data should be entered by the responsible department at the austrian open government data portal data.gv.at. everything there is truely open data, other ways of publication should be abandoned.
maybe thats a good point for the next census: check the infrastructure and the community state. is there an official ogd portal? is it hosted by the government? is there an portal for non-governmental data? are there regular meetups? something like that, cause this would help us a lot, and i think it is a crucial point for good development in the future.
Hi @stefankasberger
good point, and also it fits with the third Open Data Charter Principle (Accessible and Usable) (data should always be provided in a central portal, easy to find, etc.)
Our survey question B2 was intended to capture how spread the publication of open government data is. Does someone find the reference dataset at one URL? Or are there different ways of access (stating sometimes different terms of use, etc.)? Currently having data in different places on the web increases our error rate too. What if a reviewer just can’t find the most open version of data?
We try and document these nuances in a research diary too and want to highlight this point better in a final report. A central publication of open data helps everyone: users, as well as us who are assessing open data publication.