Haushaltsdaten Berlin / Open Budget Data Berlin

The Open Berlin Budget solution (in German: Haushaltsdaten Berlin) is an open source solution with a powerful visualisation tool at its core. The solution makes the open data for Berlin's city budget more accessible and understandable to citizens, constituents and civil servants across the German capital. It marks a contribution to government transparency and open-source development. Developed collaboratively with the Berlin Senate Department of Finance in an agile and open-source manner, it breaks new ground in Germany's public sector, where open-source software solutions are still a rarity. This solution provides government partners with the opportunity to gain invaluable experience in agile software development, a methodology they had not previously explored, and participate in making the budget more transparent, and streamlining their data governance and reporting.

Notably, the visualisation stands out for building upon an existing open-source solution, a departure from the government's usual preference for creating entirely new systems. This exemplifies best practices in reusing open-source code within government contexts, setting a precedent for future projects. Most significantly, the Haushaltsdaten application, developed collaboratively, offers citizens an accessible way to navigate complex city budget data. Its user-friendly features and interactive tools empower citizens to engage more deeply with government financial information. Built jointly by a government department and a government-funded open data initiative, this collaboration between the public sector and a civil society organisation may serve as a catalyst for change, redefining collaboration in open-source projects, and promoting agile development, which bridges the gap between government and citizens as consumers of technology.