Around the world, organisations are rising to the challenge of making data more trustworthy, accessible, and AI-ready. Today, we’re thrilled to introduce the next cohort of innovators piloting the Open Data Editor (ODE). This open-source desktop tool will soon integrate a responsible AI feature to supercharge data cleaning and transformation for non-technical communities. This pilot cohort is focusing on a powerful new addition: a responsible, offline AI feature designed to support users in spotting anomalies, patterns, and inconsistencies — all while respecting privacy, transparency, and human oversight.
And there is more: these organisations are not just testing a tool — they are part of a growing global movement to make artificial intelligence and data literacy more accessible to everyone. By working closely with our technology team, they are helping shape a responsible and inclusive approach to AI. Along the way, they will gain hands-on experience with data and artificial intelligence — no coding required.
Since we opened the call for applications in May, we’ve received 41 applications in total, coming from 26 countries, and we couldn’t be more inspired by the level of interest.
The selected organisations will work closely with our team from July to September 2025, integrating the application into their internal workflows and thus informing the next development steps through their use. And while doing so, they will gain lasting data skills across their institutions.
Read more about the selected pilot organisations for the 2nd cohort, in alphabetical order:
- An AI of Our Own (AAOO)
- DataCrítica
- Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi
- Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI)
- Open Science Community Ghana
An AI of Our Own (AAOO) is building inclusive AI models with cultural heritage data — ODE will help structure it
Country: 🇰🇭 Cambodia
Area of Knowledge: AI and digital heritage
Targeted Datasets: Qualitative cultural data
Phloeun Prim, Project Lead
What will you use the Open Data Editor for?
“We are building inclusive, culturally grounded, and community-driven approaches to AI and digital heritage. We would use the Open Data Editor to collaboratively clean and structure community-generated datasets that often include multilingual, multimedia, and non-Western knowledge formats. We will also organise a workshop to train members of our global consortium on how they can use the ODE tool to clean and structure data for local use.”
Why is a no-code tool useful for you?
“We collaborate with artists, cultural practitioners, and community members, many of whom are not trained in data science. A no-code tool like ODE would allow these contributors to directly participate in preparing, cleaning, and analysing their own data.”
DataCrítica is preparing AI-ready datasets for investigative journalism and transparency
Country: 🇲🇽 Mexico
Area of Knowledge: Data Journalism
Targeted Datasets: FOIA requests and land use data
Gibran Mena, Co-founder and director
What will you use the Open Data Editor for?
‘We will use ODE to clean data coming through FOIAS in Mexico and Europe, for our own investigations into land use data exported from geodatabases, for our current analogue data visualisation project, and to train independent journalists in Berlin and Mexico City.’
Why is a no-code tool useful for you?
“We train a lot of independent journalists to incorporate dataset insight into their reporting, especially to reveal structural inequalities behind the individual cases they many times report on. And journalists usually do not code, as learning is a very time-consuming endeavor, even in times of AI-enabled code writing.”
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi is enhancing academic research by cleaning data for machine learning and AI tools
Country: 🇮🇳 India
Area of Knowledge: Library Science
Targeted Datasets: Large datasets from various research domains
Mohit Garg, Assistant Librarian
What will you use the Open Data Editor for?
“We aim to use the Open Data Editor (ODE) as a data quality tool for our researchers, supporting data curation and research data management efforts. We find ODE to be an easy-to-use, one-stop solution for identifying common data hurdles and various inconsistencies at early stages in the research lifecycle, reducing the risk of downstream challenges such as inaccurate analysis, misguided decision-making, and diminished trust in shared datasets.”
Why is a no-code tool useful for you?
“The target group of people for our work are researchers who are experts in their respective domains, be it social sciences, administration, libraries, bio sciences, engineering, management sciences, etc. But they often lack programming skills or are not comfortable with programming environments like R or Python. These researchers require a tool that simplifies the essential but time-consuming tasks of data cleaning, curation, validation, and metadata enrichment.”
Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) will streamline public data for stronger local governance
Country: 🇿🇦 South Africa
Area of Knowledge: Social Science Research
Targeted Datasets: Local government data
Jugal Mahabir, Local Government Programme Lead
What will you use the Open Data Editor for?
“The PARI team has collected a range of financial, economic, social and demographic data over 10 to 15 years across 257 municipalities in South Africa that will need to be aligned and collated into a comprehensive database for sharing and analysis. Open Data Editor will play an important role in identifying potential discrepancies and errors that are likely to arise in the collation and alignment processes of several local government datasets into one database.”
Why is a no-code tool useful for you?
“The collation of the data will be done by several junior researchers who do not have intermediate to advanced technical skills, such as coding. Therefore, a no-code tool will be very helpful in assisting these junior researchers to check and correct data without coding or other technical solutions.”
Open Science Community Ghana will empower community researchers with AI tools for collaborative open science
Country: 🇬🇭 Ghana
Area of Knowledge: Open Science
Targeted Datasets: Community-Collected Biodiversity Records
Mohammed Kamal-Deen Fuseini, Researcher
What will you use the Open Data Editor for?
“Our field teams regularly gather data on species sightings, habitat conditions, and indigenous ecological knowledge. ODE will enable us to identify and correct inconsistencies such as missing fields, formatting issues, or conflicting taxonomies ensuring that datasets are clean, structured, and ready for collaborative analysis.”
Why is a no-code tool useful for you?
“We believe a no-code tool like ODE is transformative for our mission of supporting ecologically and socially just development through open, inclusive science. ODE’s no-code interface enables non-technical community partners to explore, validate, and prepare datasets without writing code, aligning with how it’s designed: to serve non-technical users in fields like social, environmental, and scientific justice.”
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.
