Use of CBS open data has grown explosively

Statistics Netherlands (CBS) has improved the description and accessibility of its open data. The use of CBS open data has grown explosively in recent months. Although it has been only four years since CBS launched its open data portal, there were more than 12 million open data retrievals in the first two months of 2019 alone.

Number of retrievals of CBS open data per month
		Through CBS-website/StatLine	Through other applications
2016	1	0	108930
2016	2	0	172463
2016	3	0	264661
2016	4	358	85209
2016	5	422	120700
2016	6	208	160220
2016	7	211	121468
2016	8	162	218563
2016	9	635	112267
2016	10	8282	226389
2016	11	68368	138322
2016	12	95150	117440
2017	1	101980	189676
2017	2	49278	118166
2017	3	85601	238126
2017	4	73691	149699
2017	5	77148	357120
2017	6	77231	187208
2017	7	57903	259244
2017	8	59016	480712
2017	9	67601	574865
2017	10	68712	714579
2017	11	68579	362515
2017	12	133146	324363
2018	1	173163	415496
2018	2	208560	487709
2018	3	280386	553986
2018	4	264655	706258
2018	5	266887	837371
2018	6	257188	899705
2018	7	179942	817583
2018	8	209594	985666
2018	9	290387	1042887
2018	10	508039	1755782
2018	11	627769	3910631
2018	12	574649	3939521
2019	1	681159	5821627
2019	2	619654	4947031

There were more retrievals in January 2019 than in the whole of 2017. By far the most favoured types of data are district and neighbourhood information and proximity to facilities. Other open data used more extensively include population, household income and consumer prices. Users are increasingly able to find the more than 4,500 data sets, meaning strong growth in the number of unique users. More unique users means that more web applications have been created which make direct use of the open data.

Number of users CBS open data per month
		Through CBS-website/StatLine	Through other applications
2016	1	0	7118
2016	2	0	5302
2016	3	0	6015
2016	4	78	7536
2016	5	69	7562
2016	6	51	6476
2016	7	48	5684
2016	8	45	4554
2016	9	105	5148
2016	10	2240	5372
2016	11	13950	6339
2016	12	19313	6111
2017	1	20968	6871
2017	2	11091	6937
2017	3	16730	8325
2017	4	15512	5059
2017	5	15675	6157
2017	6	15941	5107
2017	7	12783	22336
2017	8	13484	52590
2017	9	14931	59280
2017	10	16115	82689
2017	11	15966	64881
2017	12	30011	54027
2018	1	36809	68203
2018	2	43245	68738
2018	3	60642	85571
2018	4	56131	94926
2018	5	57232	97601
2018	6	55868	103115
2018	7	34992	81471
2018	8	35965	81601
2018	9	67187	104083
2018	10	117545	175232
2018	11	101280	273791
2018	12	110642	271783
2019	1	130453	330729
2019	2	112653	299682

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