Sharing data on waste and resources with the public

Amsterdam wants to be a circular city by 2050, where valuable materials and raw materials are reused and no waste produced. Being committed to reuse, means creating more local jobs in the repair and processing sector. At the same time the city invests in its digital position. Digitalisation offers endless opportunities in every area from improving the quality of life in the city to creating equal opportunities on issues such as the circular economy. The waste department of Amsterdam is using a digital shell where data are shared with external stakeholders. We cooperate with other departments specialized in either IT, data and customer service. With them, we try to work on a basis where Amsterdam provides data about and for Amsterdam: findable, reliable, safe and usable. For the sake of transparency, development and management of these products, we record information about the data sources. This means we publish datasets (via API’s), and share our coding –to let people know what the data means.
The aim is to:
• Empower locals: the more datasets are opened up, the more transparent and accessible the economy is, anyone can see resources available in the region;
• Foster economic development e.g. geospatial data can be used to improve private sector business models. Also jobs done by the government can easily shift to local initiatives;
• More digital commodity: it not only leads to better and more robust government decision making, but also to new functionalities