This post was written by Liliana Bounegru from the European Journalism Centre. It is cross-posted on DataDrivenJournalism.net. As you may know, The Data Journalism Handbook is a free collaborative book that shows journalists how to use data to improve the news. When we first published it last year, we put out an open call to […]
Sometimes, the band continues to play because the audience is enjoying the music so much. This is pretty much what happened to Lobbyplag. Our plan was to drive home a single point that outraged us: Some Members of the European Parliament were taking law proposals verbatim from lobbyists and trying to slip them into the […]
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, gave a talk earlier this week renewing the EU’s strong, principled support for open science. Speaking at the launch of a new global Research Data Alliance, she said that we are entering a new “era of open science”, which will be “good for […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2013 Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) will take place in Geneva, Switzerland on 17th -18th September. The theme of this year’s edition will be Open Data – Broad, Deep, Connected. When: 17th – 18th September 2013 Where: Geneva, Switzerland at the CICG – Centre International de […]
Director of the U.S. Copyright Office Maria Pallante is expected to call today for updates to U.S. copyright law. Her brief written testimony is already available and a longer speech given two weeks ago (titled “The Next Great Copyright Act”) provides additional flavor. Substantial changes to copyright will take years to play out in the […]
The LinkedUp project is very pleased to announce the launch of the LinkedUp challenge. This is a series of three competitions (Veni, Vidi, and Vici) promoting the innovative use of linked and open data in an educational context. The LinkedUp team invites anyone, from researchers and students, to developers and businesses, to join the first […]
Update 21 March: To register for the School of Data Journalism workshops please fill in your name and email address in this form. <em> Cross-posted on<a href=”http://www.journalismfestival.com/”> journalismfestival.com</a> and the <a href=”http://www.okfn.org”>OKFN</a> blog.</em></p> The European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation are pleased to invite you to Europe’s biggest data journalism event, the School […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation, in partnership with the Open Institute in Kenya and the African Media Initiative have submitted a proposal to the Knight News Challenge on Open Government: AfricanSpending – Monitoring the Money. We want to build a platform (leveraging OpenSpending) for journalists and civil society to track public money and mineral wealth across […]
From makerspaces to data wrangling schools to archives, the digital is being remixed by the open – and it is changing society as we know it. New concepts about public information, transparency and the Commons are combining in unprecedented ways, resulting in a breadth of transformative collaborations. Nations across the globe seek formal understandings of […]
Just one month to go before cultural experts from all over the world will come to London for an international celebration of open access and culture. GLAM-Wiki 2013 is a global conference, organised by the Wikimedia UK chapter in association with Wikimedia Sweden and Europeana, and hosted by the British Library. It examines the possibilities, […]
Many open data initiatives forget to include the basic facts about the government itself In the past few years we’ve seen a huge shift in the way governments publish information. More and more governments are proactively releasing information as raw open data rather than simply putting out reports or responding to requests for information. This […]
I’m happy to announce version 3 release of Froide, the Open Source, Python-based platform for running Freedom of Information portals. Froide has been in development for nearly two years. It has powered the FOI portal in Germany for over a year and a half and has recently been used to launch an Austrian FoI site. […]
On March 15, 2012, Bassel Khartabil was detained in a wave of arrests in the Mazzeh district of Damascus. Since then, his family has received no official explanation for his detention or information regarding his whereabouts. However, his family has recently learned from previous detainees at the security branch of Kafer Sousa, Damascus, that Bassel […]
Buildings account for more than 30% of final energy use and energy-related carbon emissions in the world today. This sector has the potential to play a crucial role in mitigating the global challenge of climate change. However, the building industry is a local industry and the sector is fragmented at all levels, from planning to […]
This coming Tuesday the Open Knowledge Foundation are organizing an Open Data Maker Night in London at the Centre for Creative Collaboration! When: Tuesday 19th March, 18:00 – 21:00 Where: Centre for Creative Collaboration (C4CC), 16 Acton Street, London (see map) Signup: Just one-click RSVP on our London Meetup page so we can get an […]
We’re really pleased by this week’s announcement from the Society of Cultural Anthropology that their influential journal, Cultural Anthropology will become open access by next year. The plan is that from the first issue of 2014, the journal will be available online globally under an open access license, along with 10 years’ worth of the […]
Publish What You Fund has undertaken some initial analysis of aid donors’ plans to publish to the IATI component of the agreed common standard for aid information. Here, Mark Brough explains the process they went through to take a series of Excel files, convert them into a format suitable for analysis, and come to some […]
A new monthly digest showcasing initiatives from local communities across the globe As you may have seen, the Open Knowledge Foundation’s many (30+!) Local Group communities have been hard at work over the last month, launching several exciting new initiatives, opening up data and engaging regional communities in interesting ways. Given these new developments, we […]
What is document freedom? Have you ever been stuck with some data that you have not been able to open because it was in a format that needs some specific kind of software to open it? The same thing happens tens of thousands of times each day. Can you imagine how much knowledge exchange doesn’t […]
We’d like to extend a really warm welcome to Tony Hirst, who’s joining the School of Data as a Data Storyteller. Tony will be working part time for the School of Data in shaping the materials, masterminding the blog and running workshops. He’ll also be out and about on site visits to learn more about […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation’s world-wide community of local groups has been growing rapidly over the last year, and every month we’ve seen new people from more and more countries join the movement. To accommodate this development and add a flexible and versatile structure to the rapid growth we now add a new dimension to the […]
We’re pleased to say that the Open Knowledge Foundation will be at SXSWi this year. I’ll be on speaking on the Culture Hack panel alongside my colleagues from Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America talking about why libraries, galleries, archives and museums should open up their content and data and what’s being done […]
Data on the products we buy is rarely viewed as something to be opened. But in fact, the international standards that make it possible for products to be traded across borders can be used by consumers for their own ends – to help improve information-sharing and choice across the planet. There is currently no public […]
2013 is a very important year for Denmark as it has conquered two milestones in its Open Data agenda and this spring, the entire story will come together at the first conference addressing open data since the big release. Here’s the event info in brief: What?: Open Data track at Open Source Days Where?: Copenhagen […]
This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. We are very happy to announce that the Open Economics Working Group is releasing the datasets of the research project “Small Artificial Human Agents for Virtual Economies“, implemented by Professor David Levine and Professor Yixin Chen at the Washington University of St. Louis and […]
Our beautiful showcase for public domain works, The Public Domain Review, has just launched its major fundraising drive. It needs your help to stay alive. Here’s a delightful film telling the tale of our cash-strapped editor’s struggle to keep afloat – share it far and wide! With the initial funding for The Public Domain Review […]
On the recent Open Data Day we ran the Open Data Census Challenge. The challenge enlisted the help of participants around the world in digging up information on open data in their city and region and contributing it to the newly launched city section of the Open Data Census. The results have been impressive with […]
One of the cool projects that OKF France were hacking away on during Open Data Day last weekend was Open Food Facts. It’s a free, open collaborative database of food facts from around the world, which aims to help consumers make better choices about what they put in their body, as well as motivating industry […]
A couple of weeks ago we announced the Open Humanities Awards a fantastic new initiative to support innovative projects that use open data, open content or open source to further teaching and research in the humanities. There are €15,000 of prizes on offer for 3-5 projects lasting up to 6 months. The winners will be […]
This post is a translation of Il nostro contributo per salvare gli #OpenData originally published by Ernesto Belisario on Agorà Digitale. Most links point to documents and websites in Italian. In the past few weeks I have been very involved with transparency (and therefore, open data) together with the friends of Agorà Digitale. Right when […]
The following guest post is by Stef. ###European Union legislation: In whose interest? Brussels is a globally important policy-making center. The European single market is advanced and huge, with industry interests competing with national politics and NGO values. Policy negotiations at this level attract powerful interests. The current Data Protection Regulation, for example, brings in […]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.