Entry for National Statistics / Belgium

Open Data Index Global Open Data Index 2016
1

It is mentioned that statistics cannot be retrieved in bulk, however the publications about population, unemployment (and pretty much everything else) on StatBel (Federal Public Service Economy) can be downloaded in bulk.

There is also a negative score for the licensing part.

GDP
Regarding the one dataset “GDP” on the National Bank site, I’d argue that they can be retrieved in bulk (one can download them) although indeed it is mentioned that you should not download it systematically
I’d say this boils down to “fair use” of the service, because many websites will block traffic anyway when one user impacts the server infrastructure, even if it is not explicitly mentioned in their policy…

Now, the GDP is also published on the main website of the National Bank, under Macroeconomic situation | nbb.be
(download at the bottom) which carries a slightly different copyright notice.

If that is not acceptable, the GDP dataset can also be download for free from the Federal Planning Bureau, which does not impose this restriction Federaal Planbureau -

License
In addition: the reviewer explicitly stated that both the population data (on statbel) and the GDP data (NBB) do have an open license.

To summarize:

  • please change the negative score on “openly licensed” to positive, as the reviewer explicitly indicates that the data is available under an open license
  • please reconsider the negative score for “bulk download”, given the additional info above

Thanks.

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2

Dear @barthanssens

thanks so much for your feedback. We will follow up on your input, and will get back to you in the coming days.

All the best
Danny

3

Hello @dannylammerhirt, please let me know if you require any additional information.

Especially about the licensing part, since the reviewer already mentioned in the comments that the licenses are open, but the “openly licensed” indicator is nevertheless still red… Thanks.

4

Hi Bart,

Thank you for your feedback. We have changed the submission to go according to your feedback. The survey page should reflect the changes and we will update the Index accordingly soon.

Best,
Oscar

5

Ok, that’s good news, thank you Oscar.
The survey page isn’t showing the changes yet, so I guess we just have to wait for the next update of the index…

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