This text reports on the impact of a training course offered by a multiplier trainer from the School of Data network.
On June 28-29, 2025, Public Lab Mongolia NGO, with the support of the Open Knowledge Foundation, organized two training sessions to introduce the Open Data Editor tool based on the content of the online course Quality and Consistent Data with ODE, developed under the School of Data initiative of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
The training attracted the interests of Mongolian open data enthusiasts and practitioners from various fields, including sociology students and practitioners, data analysts, health researchers, university lecturers, civil society, and private sector professionals. Through the training, participants learned about open data definitions, data governance, data standards such as Five Stars of Open Data, FAIR Data, Tidy Data, common data quality issues and ways to fix them, data validation techniques and data cleaning tools. Participants learned to download the Open Data Editor in their chosen operating system, practiced uploading sample datasets, and saw and fixed errors identified.
During the training, participants discussed how Mongolia’s Law on Transparency of Public Information and its guidelines have adopted key elements of open data principles, but its enforcement across all government organizations that publish open data needs to be improved.
Participants found the training useful as it helps them understand different aspects of data openness and usability and apply these insights as they work with their own and other datasets.
About the Open Data Editor
The Open Data Editor (ODE) is Open Knowledge’s new open source desktop application for nonprofits, data journalists, activists, and public servants, aiming at helping them detect errors in their datasets. It’s a free, open-source tool designed for people working with tabular data (Excel, Google Sheets, CSV) who don’t know how to code or don’t have the programming skills to automatise the data exploration process.
Simple, lightweight, privacy-friendly, and built for real-world challenges like offline work and low-resource settings, ODE is part of Open Knowledge’s initiative The Tech We Want — our ambitious effort to reimagine how technology is built and used.
And there’s more! ODE comes with a free online course that can help you improve the quality of your datasets, therefore making your life/work easier.
↪ Take the course: Learn how to use ODE
All of Open Knowledge’s work with the Open Data Editor is made possible thanks to a charitable grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. Learn more about its funding programmes here.
