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 (OK Greece) consists of 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 1st quarter of the current year; specifically the period between January to April 2017. Quarter 1 has been a very creative and productive period for OK Greece with many of the Chapter’s activities achieving great results. 

One of our main successful achievements has been the release of the KPIs application. Key Performance Indicators or KPIs are a type of performance measurement, a set of quantifiable measures used to gauge an organisation’s or company’s performance over time. These metrics can be used to determine an organisation’s progress in achieving its strategic and operational goals and also to compare an organisation’s finances and performance against other organisations of the same scope.

Regarding Public Administration Organizations, such as Local City Councils, Municipalities, or other higher-level authorities; KPIs can provide useful information about an organisation’s performance. KPIs are also a compressed form of information. This is because a huge volume of fiscal data can be summarised in a standardised way, offering a quick overview and better understanding and study over an authority’s effectiveness and performance, as it is reflected by the published fiscal data. It should be noted that KPIs has been developed within the framework of EU Project Openbudgets.eu.

Other events and activities

OK Greece partnered with the Library and Information Center of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki to organise a day’s conference, titled Opening our Data Today: Open Governance, Transparency, Participation, as part of the March 2017 International Open Data Day celebrations (ODD 2017).

Panellists for 2017 International Open Data Day event: From right: Telis Savidis (journalist), Charalampos Bratsas ( OK Greece CEO), Katerina Nasta (Library of Aristotle Uni), Stefanos Loukopoulos (vouliwatch), Kostantinos Todoulos (Bodosakis Foundation)

Members of the academic community and professionals supported the openness of research data, stressing that open data can promote science and improve the control of research results. They also noted that the openness of government data contributes to democracy and transparency. On its side, OK Greece emphasised on the need for opening, even more, datasets, other than just working with the available open data.

Moreover, OK Greece members presented the OpenBudgets.eu EU Horizon 2020 Project, speaking about the crucial role of linked data in the field of Financial Management and Control of Public Agencies.

We also collaborated with the Library and Information Center of the Aristotle University for the “Creating and Verifying Links of Authority Records of the National Library of Greece at Wikidata” workshop. The workshop gave participants the opportunity to be informed about the recent developments in the Semantic Web and in particular about the role of Libraries as a focal point in the development of the Data Web. OK Greece presented its efforts within the Wikidata project and Alignment applications, while participants validated a great number of links, included in the National Library of Greece’s LOD Authority Records at Wikidata.

Another important activity of OK Greece was its participation in the“Fake News” in Social Media as Reality Shapers event held by the European Parliament on 8th March. More specifically, OK Greece members and Head of School of Data Greece, Professor of Media Technologies Andreas Veglis travelled to Brussels to speak about the rising trend of “Fake News” in the media and especially on the web. 

Mr Veglis gave a speech before MEPs, journalists and professionals, mapping the field of “mocking news”, proposing solutions and emphasising the importance of open data in the fact-checking process.

From left, Andreas Veglis, Head of School of Data Greece /Head at the School of Journalism & Mass Media Communications, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece; Lidia Ucher, Journalist, Spain; Clara Jiménez, Journalist, Spain; Stelios Kouloglou, Moderator, MEP; Paul Horner, Internet satirical, United States and Michel Christophe, Independent Educator in Critical Thinking, Media Education, France

Veglis gave a speech before MEPs, journalists and professionals, mapping the field of “mocking news”, proposing solutions and emphasising the importance of open data in the fact-checking process.

Moreover, OK Greece attended the 9th International Week Dedicated to Maths, held last March by the Hellenic Mathematical Society. We presented on the following: “Analysis of Fiscal Data and Indicators with the implementation of Statistical Learning Algorithms on Semantic Budget Data of OpenBudgets.eu for Municipality” and “Semantic Representation and Implementation of Statistical Learning Algorithms on the Greek NSRF Fiscal Data”.

Kleanthis Koupidis(OK GR COO) and Evangelos Chondrokostas(OK GR Data Scientist) [first and second from right] talk about semantic and data mining techniques to identify possible red flags in NSRF fiscal data.
Both presentations described the Semantic technologies that were used to improve the quality of fiscal data of Greek Municipalities and National Strategic Reference Framework of Greece and the data mining techniques that were implemented to extract useful information from these data.

Red Flags Application by OK Greece (http://redflags.okfn.gr)

Finally, we collaborated with the Journalists’ Union of Macedonia & Thrace  (esiemth) and the Media Informatics Lab of the School of Journalism & Mass Media Communication (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) in April to organize a two-day Data Journalism Hackathon, entitled “Hackathon Data Journalism: Red Flags in NSRF Programs”, addressing journalists and journalism students.

In this framework, OK Greece launched its new Red Flags online application. The Red Flags application uses data from anapyxi.gov.gr, the official website of the Greek Ministry of Development and Competitiveness, which provides detailed information on the implementation process of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) projects, analysing all data available for potential “red flags”.

Journalists, who participated in the hackathon, worked in paired groups, investigating possible “red flags” in different NSRF projects. They had the opportunity to conduct a journalistic investigation for some ten days before they present their outcomes on the second day of the hackathon.

Forthcoming

  • Collaboration with Open Knowledge International on Frictionless Data project. We will be  developing a set of tools, standards, and best practices built in open source programming language.
  • Session in Re:publica, regarding Open Data, transparency and technical tools to better understand the world we live in.

The forthcoming months are expected to be fruitful in events and collaborations as well. Τhe GitHub Open Knowledge Greece is strongly active, and other initiatives are commencing with the aim of attracting new members into the open knowledge community. In addition, the chapter endeavours to attain funding from additional research and innovation projects, as there are not fixed incomes and most activities are currently performed on a voluntary basis.

Finally, OK Greece has launched a new promotional activity, sending a weekly newsletter to its subscribers, so that all people interested in our vision and activities can join our mailing list. 

To read more about Open Knowledge Greece visit their website.

Learn more about the Open Knowledge Network by visiting the Open Knowledge International website.

 

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Stories and updates from Open Knowledge chapter in Greece