Government & open data
data.overheid.nl
Data.overheid.nl is the national data portal of the Dutch government, run within the knowledge and operations centre for official government publications. It describes datasets from central government, provinces, municipalities, water authorities and executive agencies: when checked in September 2026 it listed over twenty thousand dataset descriptions, alongside data services, applications and organisation profiles. The metadata can be queried through a CKAN API, and all information on the portal is reusable under CC0.
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BEVER — Direct consultation
The source is consulted directly while the work is being done.
IRMA — Direct consultation
The source is consulted directly while the work is being done.
Availability depends on your organisation’s configuration and access rights.
What this source does not give you
The portal is a catalogue, not a repository: it describes where a dataset lives and who maintains it, but the data itself sits with the source holder and may have been moved, changed or taken offline without the description following. Part of what is described is not open either — closed and restricted-access datasets are listed too — and a description says nothing about the quality, currency or legal usability of the underlying data.
Frequently asked questions
- Does data.overheid.nl give me the data itself or only a reference?
- As a rule, a reference. The portal describes the dataset — title, custodian, theme, update frequency, licence, format — and points to where the source holder offers the files or the API. For a continuing application that means two checks instead of one: is the description still correct, and does the link still work. A dead link on the portal does not automatically mean the data is gone, and a working link does not mean the data is current.
- Is everything on data.overheid.nl open data?
- No. The portal explicitly describes both open and closed government data: it lists datasets available only after registration, under an agreement, or not at all. The licence is recorded per dataset in the metadata and varies — from public domain to terms that restrict reuse. Check that licence before using data in a product or report; the portal's CC0 status covers the catalogue information, not automatically the catalogued data.
- How do I query the portal programmatically?
- Data.overheid.nl exposes the metadata of every listed dataset through a CKAN API, reachable under the /data/api/3/ path on the portal. It lets you search, filter by theme or custodian and retrieve the full description of a dataset. The CKAN model is not fully RESTful, so expect calls with action parameters rather than clean resource paths.
- Is this a source for legal research?
- Not for the norm, but for the facts around it. Legislation, decisions and rulings are found on the government's official publication channels, not here. What data.overheid.nl adds is the factual material that makes a case file or policy document quantitative: registers, measurement data, geospatial information, delivery figures from a tier of government. In an administrative-law or policy matter that is often exactly what is missing.