This blog post is part of our on-going Network series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the Open Knowledge Greece team.
Open Knowledge Greece is a dynamic team of community members who are not only interested in open data, linked data technologies and coding, but are committed to applying scientific results to everyday community activities. This post documents the Chapter’s activities for the 4th quarter of 2016.
Quarter 4 has been a very productive period with many of the Chapter’s activities achieving great results. One of our main successes has been the release of the Indigo prototype. OK Greece has developed algorithms for time series analysis, clustering and descriptive statistics of budgetary data. These algorithms allow the user to perform different calculations and analysis on the budgetary data and it shows the results visually with charts. Indigo is implemented within the framework of EU Project Openbudgets.eu or with datasets from the Open Spending Package. In the next few months, more algorithms will be launched that will create and reuse fixed budgetary indicators, combining data from different sources.
Other events and activities
The leadership and staff of OKI held their summit in Thessaloniki in November 2016. This presented the opportunity for OK Greece to present its recent activities and initiated discussions regarding OKI projects such as Global Open Data Index, OpenSpending, and OpenTrials. The meet up also helped formed new collaborations that will contribute to the development of these projects. Also, OK Greece arranged a meeting between the leadership of OKI and the Deputy Mayor of Thessaloniki, Spyros Pengas for future collaboration between the municipality, OKI and OK Greece.
We contributed to the “Bring us your ideas. Open and participatory Governance” event which was organised by the Ministry of the Interior and Administrative Reconstruction. The event started with the re-opening of proposals from the previous event: “Open Government: Participate, Propose and Be Heard! Conformation of the Third National Action Plan 2016-2018”. This was to give participating citizens the opportunity to get informed and evaluate the proposals before taking part in the process of forming the new national action plan.
We also partnered with the Library and Information Center of the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki to organise the “Open Data Index” workshop as part of the “Open Access Week”. The workshop gave participants the opportunity to check whether the 15 datasets of the Global Open Data survey are open in 10 Greek cities. The goal was to research the scale of data openness and accessibility to the public. The Open Data Index also constitutes a commitment of OK Greece to the Third National Action Plan.
As Open Data index for Cities becomes available to the public, more citizens and businesses will be motivated to put pressure on more open data in their municipalities.
Another important event that OK Greece engaged in was the OGP Global Summit 2016 that took place in Paris. We presented on Open Governance in Greece, using the event “Open Government: Participate, Propose and Be Heard! Conformation of the Third National Action Plan 2016-2018”, as well as its commitments for the Third National Action Plan.
Moreover, OK Greece and the Media Informatics Lab of the Department of Journalism and Mass Media Communication in collaboration with esiemth organised a successful workshop on Data Journalism. Professional journalists and students went through the theoretical and practical stages of creating a data journalism story in a step by step process during the workshop.
With support from the Bodosakis Foundation, we also travelled to Oslo as part of the “NGO’s Program in Greece- We are all citizens”, and met with organisations and other bodies that work on the action for promoting and strengthening Open Governance, Transparency, Open Data and Open Participatory Budgets.
Finally, OK Greece participated in the organisation of the event “Thesshack” along with Wikimedia User Group-Greece, the SheSharp Greece and the official student chapter of ACM at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The main topic was the improvement of Wikipedia and the CEO of OK Greece pinpointed also the importance of DBpedia- a tool that allows to extract structured information from Wikipedia and publish it on the Web. The event included a workshop that gave the opportunity to the participants to learn more about relevant technologies.
Projects
In the scientific domain, the chapter collaborated with the Master Program on Complex Systems and Networks for the development of the project “ Knowledge and Statistical Analysis of Cinematography Linked Data”. The project focuses on finding and analysing data of enterprises in the Cinematography sector for the period of 2000-2014. It was presented at the workshop “SEMANTiCS” in Leipzig in September 2016, along with the paper “Towards Budget Comparative Analysis: The Need for Fiscal Code Lists as Linked Data”.
The chapter also organised the workshop “Data impact: Big, open, linked data innovations” as part of IEEE, which includes four papers on data analysis for journalists, library linked data, tools to promote financial transparency and exploitation of fiscal data.
Forthcoming
- Reporters in the age of Data Journalism; accepted for publication in the Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies (2017, forthcoming)
- Data Journalism, Encyclopaedia of Information Science and Technology, Fourth edition, Edited by Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, IGI 2017 forthcoming
The winter and spring of 2017 are expected to be fruitful in events and collaborations as well. Τhe GitHub Open Knowledge Greece is becoming strongly active, and other initiatives are commencing with the aim of attracting new members into the open knowledge community. In parallel, the chapter endeavours to attain funding from additional research and innovation projects, as there are no fixed incomes and most activities are currently performed on a voluntary basis.
Finally, OK Greece has launched its new website which is also available for tablets and smartphones so that all people interested in our vision and activities can be informed in an easy and enjoyable way. Also, you can check our storify with photos from our recent activities.
To read more about Open Knowledge Greece, visit their website.
Learn more about the Open Knowledge Network by visiting the Open Knowledge International website.
Pioneering stuff – well done and good luck with the new website.
Open knowledge is the way forward and it’s encouraging to see you’ve already been working with the Greek government.