This is a joint blog post by Open Knowledge CEO Laura James and Open Knowledge Founder and President Rufus Pollock. In September we announced that Laura James, our CEO, is moving on from Open Knowledge and we are hiring a new Executive Director. From Rufus: I want to express my deep appreciation for everything that […]
One of the best opportunities that being part of a community offers is the chance to collaborate and make things happen together – and when we want this to happen in sync, what’s better than convening an (in person or online) event? Just before the end of the year, let’s collect a few highlights from […]
The Global Open Data Index 2014 team is thrilled to announce that the Global Open Data Index 2014 is now live! We would not have arrived here without the incredible support from our network and the wider open knowledge community in making sure that so many countries/places are represented in the Index and that the […]
Open education data is a relatively new area of interest with only dispersed pockets of exploration having taken place worldwide. The phrase ‘open education data’ remains loosely defined but might be used to refer to: all openly available data that could be used for educational purpose open data that is released by education institutions Understood […]
This is a cross-post by Ivonne Jansen-Dings, originally published on the Apps4Europe blog, see the original here. With 10 Business Lounges happening throughout Europe this year, Apps for Europe is trying to find the best open data applications and startups that Europe has to offer. We invite all developers, startups and companies that use open […]
Samuel Moore, Rosie Graves and Peter Kraker are the 2013-2014 Open Knowledge Panton Fellows – tasked with experimenting, exploring and promoting open practises through their research over the last twelve months. They just posted their final reports so we’d like to heartily congratulate them on an excellent job and summarise their highlights for the Open […]
Open Knowledge and Code for Africa launch pilot Open Government Fellowship Programme. Apply to become a fellow today. This blog announcement is available in French here and Portuguese here. Do you want to help us build African governments and societies that are more accountable and responsive to citizens? We are looking for the best ideas […]
Open Knowledge project The Public Domain Review is very proud to announce the launch of it’s very first book: a selection of weird and wonderful essays from the project’s first three years.
Every two years the International Budget Partnership (IBP) runs a survey, called the Open Budget Survey, to evaluate formal oversight of budgets, how transparent governments are about their budgets and if there are opportunities to participate in the budget process. To easily measure and compare transparency among the countries surveyed, IBP created the Open Budget […]
This is a guest post, originally published in French on the Open Knowledge Foundation France blog Nowadays, being able to place an address on a map is an essential information. In France, where addresses were still unavailable for reuse, the OpenStreetMap community decided to create its own National Address Database available as open data. The […]
To what extent is it important to get familiar with our environment? If we think about how the world surrounding us has changed throughout the years, it is not so unreasonable that, while walking to work, we might encounter some new little shops, restaurants, or gas stations we had never noticed before. Likewise, how many […]
Sam Leon, one of Open Knowledge’s data experts, talks about his experiences working as an School of Data Embedded Fellow at Global Witness. Global Witness are a Nobel Peace Prize nominated not-for-profit organisation devoted to investigating and campaigning against corruption related to the extractives industries. Earlier this year they received the TED Prize and were […]
France may not have any money left for its universities but it does have money for academic publishers. While university presidents learn that their funding is to be reduced by EUR 400 million, the Ministry of Research has decided, under great secrecy, to pay EUR 172 million to the world leader in scientific publishing Elsevier […]
Today we are delighted to put out our formal announcement for a new Executive Director. In our announcement about changes in leadership in September we had already indicated we would be looking to recruit a new senior executive and we are now ready to begin the formal process. We are very excited to have this […]
This is a guest blog post from Open Steps, an independent blog aggregating worldwide information around Open Cultures in form of articles, videos and other resources. Its aim is to document open knowledge (OK) related projects and keep track on the status of such initiatives worldwide. From organisations using Open Data, promoting Open Source technologies, […]
October was a very exciting month for us in the Index team. We spoke to so many of you about the Index, face to face or in the virtual world, and we got so much back from you. It was amazing for us to see how the community is pulling together not only with submissions, […]
Today we are delighted to publish our report on OKFestival 2014! This is packed with stories, statistics and outcomes from the event, highlighting the amazing facilitators, sessions, speakers and participants who made it an event to inspire. Explore the pictures, podcasts, etherpads and videos which reflect the different aspects of the event, and uncover some […]
Following last week’s Open Access Week blog series, we continue our celebration of community efforts in this field. Today we give the microphone to Dr. Salua Nassabay from Open Knowledge Ireland in a great account from Ireland, originally posted on the Open Knowledge Ireland blog. In Ireland, awareness of OA has increased within the research […]
This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. It is written by Celya Gruson-Daniel from Open Knowledge France and reports from “Open Access Xsprint”, a creative workshop held on October 20 in the biohackerspace La Paillasse in Paris – as announced […]
This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. It is written by Miguel Said from Open Knowledge Brazil and is a translated version of the original that can be found the Brazilian Open Science Working Group's blog. Nature Publishing Group reported […]
This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. Open Access Week was celebrated for the first time in Nepal for the opening 2 days: October 20, 21. The event, which was led by newly founded Open Access Nepal, and supported by […]
This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. Despite the huge amounts of public money spent on allowing researchers to access the published results of taxpayer funded research [1], there is little fiscal transparency in the scholarly publishing market and frequent […]
Thank you so much for the amazing number of submissions we have received this week. Entering the final week of the global sprint! Next week is the FINAL WEEK of the global Index sprint. Please make sure your country is represented in the Global Open Data Index 2014. Find out how you can contribute here. […]
This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. It is written by Alma Swan, Director of Key Perspectives Ltd, Director of Advocacy forSPARC Europe, and Convenor for Enabling Open Scholarship. Whither the humanities in a world moving inexorably to open values […]
This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. Push Button. Get Research. Make Progress. If you are reading this, I’m guessing that you too are a student, researcher, innovator, an everyday citizen with questions to answer, or just a friend to […]
Often Community is thought of as a soft topic. In reality, being part of a community (or more!) is admirable, a wonderful effort, both very fun but also sometimes tough and building and mobilising community action requires expertise and understanding of both tools and crowds – all relationships between stakeholders involved need to be planned […]
This week I, and a group of development data experts from around the world, met for three days in a small farmhouse in the Netherlands to produce a book on Responsible Development Data. Today, we’re very happy to launch the first version: comments and feedback are really welcome, and please feel free to share, remix, […]
As we well know, Data is only data until you use it for storytelling and insights. Some people are super talented and can use D3 or other amazing visual tools, just see this great list of resources on Visualising Advocacy. In this 1 hour Community Session, Nika Aleksejeva of Infogr.am shares some easy ways that […]
This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. To coincide with Open Access Week, Open Knowledge is launching a new initiative focusing on the future of open access in the humanities and social sciences. The Future of Scholarship project aims to […]
This week is Open Access Week all around the world, and from Open Knowledge’s side we are following up on last year’s tradition by putting together a blog post series to highlight great Open Access projects and activities in communities around the world. Every day this week will feature new writers and activities. Open Access […]
This is your week-by-week update of progress on the Global Open Data Index 2014. You can check for the most recent country submissions here. We’re now welcoming your participation in sprints across all countries for the month of October, concluding with a ‘Global Madness’ sprint on 30 October. We’re making great progress – thank you […]
The following is the joint Submission to the UN Secretary General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution from the World Wide Web Foundation, Open Knowledge, Fundar and the Open Institute, October 15, 2014. It derives from and builds on the Global Open Data Initiative’s Declaration on Open Data. To the UN Secretary General’s […]
This is a cross-post from the DM2E-blog, see the original here On Friday 28 November 2014 the second Open Humanities Hack event will take place at King’s College, London. This is the second in a series of events organised jointly by the King’s College London Department of Digital Humanities , the Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana […]
How is your country doing with open data? You can make a difference in 5 easy steps to track 10 different datasets. Or, you can help us spread the word on how to contribute to the Open Data Index. This includes the very important translation of some key items into your local language. We’ll keep […]
Today Open Knowledge and the Open Definition Advisory Council are pleased to announce the release of version 2.0 of the Open Definition. The Definition “sets out principles that define openness in relation to data and content” and plays a key role in supporting the growing open data ecosystem. Recent years have seen an explosion in […]
This is a guest post by Nitai Silva of the Brazilian government’s open data team and was originally published on the Open Knowledge Brazil blog here. Recently Brazilian government released the Kit de Dados Abertos (open data toolkit). The toolkit is made up of documents describing the process, methods and techniques for implementing an open […]
We are now a little over a year into the Local Groups scheme that was launched in early 2013. Since then we have been receiving hundreds of applications from great community members wanting to start Local Groups in their countries and become Ambassadors and community leaders. From this great body of amazing talent, Local Groups […]
Earlier this week we announced that October is the Global Open Data Index. Already people have added details about open data in Argentina, Colombia, and Chile! You can see all the collaborative work here in our change tracker. Each of you can make a difference to hold governments accountable for open data commitments plus create […]
This is a post put together based on great contributions on the blogs of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (Adi Kamdar & Maira Sutton), Creative Commons (Timothy Vollmer) and the Open Access Button project (David Carroll). Join the global Open Access movement! In July the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote about the predicament that Colombian student […]
The Open Definition performs an essential function as a “standard”, ensuring that when you say “open data” and I say “open data” we both mean the same thing. This standardization, in turn, ensures the quality, compatibility and simplicity essential to realizing one of the main practical benefits of “openness”: the greatly increased ability to combine […]
In 2012 the Open Knowledge launched the Global Open Data Index to help track the state of open data around the world. We’re now in the process of collecting submissions for the 2014 Open Data Index and we want your help! How can you contribute? The main thing you can do is become a Contributor […]
Many of today’s global challenges are not new. Economic inequality, the unfettered power of corporations and markets, the need to cooperate to address global problems and the unsatisfactory levels of accountability in democratic governance – these were as much problems a century ago as they remain today. What has changed, however – and most markedly […]
We are glad to announce our first official Community Mentoring and Skillshare Gathering to be held in Mexico City on October 3, 2014 in connection with the ConDatos and AbraLatam conferences. The event will kick off a series of similar regional events on other continents later this year and into next and will serve to […]
Today I would like to share some important organisational news. After 3 years with Open Knowledge, Laura James, our CEO, has decided to move on to new challenges. As a result of this change we will be seeking to recruit a new senior executive to lead Open Knowledge as it continues to evolve and grow. […]
As part of the The Open Data Civil Society Network Project, School of Data Fellow, Dona Djambaska, who works with the local independent nonprofit, Metamorphosis, explains the value of the programme and what we hope to achieve over the next 24 months. “The concept of Open Data is still very fresh among Macedonians. Citizens, CSOs […]
This is a guest post written by Justyna Krol of the UNDP and originally posted on the UNDP blog. >> Is data literacy the key to citizen engagement in anti-corruption efforts? Access to open data is transforming the way we live of our lives, and the conversation in our region is just beginning. Governments are […]
Do you have a skill to share? Want to host an online discussion/debate about an Open Knowledge-like topic? Have an idea for a skillshare or discussion, but need help making it happen? Some of you hosted or attended sessions at OKFest. Why not host one online? At OKFestival, we had an Open Matchmaker wall to […]
Open Knowledge Festival 2014! We built it, made it and ran it – it was a blast, thank you! 1056 participants from 60 countries 215 facilitators and moderators 17 Programme Team members 70 volunteers made it all happen. Who says that numbers are dry? Just by writing them down, our hearts are melting. Group work! […]
We’re hosting a September Community Call. Join us to discuss a number of community programming ideas and help make a plan. All welcome. (Amazing drawing by Artepilpilean) What: September Community Summit On Air Date: Wednesday, September 10th Your Local time: 8:00 – 9:00 EDT, 13:00 – 14:00 BST, 14:00 – 15:00 CEST (Also see worldtimebuddy.com) […]
This is a guest post by Alberto Abella, head of the Spanish Chapter of Open Knowledge, and originally appeared at gobernamos.com. Open Government (ogov) is possibly next democracy’s milestone. Should you care about open government? Possibly, because it guarantees transparency and accountability. But not only IMHO. In 2014 this passive role for the citizens is […]
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