‘The Future of Open Data’: Video Documentation

The future of open data must be trustworthy.

This was one of the key themes that emerged from ‘The Future of Open Data’ online conference, an official Open Data Day 2026 event hosted by the Open Knowledge Foundation last week. Another consensus was that we need to navigate the threats and opportunities posed by LLMs without losing our sense of community.

Conversations around open data and AI are urgent, and we are glad to provide such a platform. We brought the open data community together for a celebration of two decades of CKAN, the tool that was born from OKFN work and today powers data portals all over the World, and to discuss the role of open data and data infrastructures today, vis-à-vis the current technical and political landscape.

OKFN would like to express our sincere gratitude to the 20 speakers who generously gave up their time, and to the hundreds of people who tuned in to the three sessions online, contributing to the lively discussions:

Today, we are publishing the full documentation below, including video recordings now hosted at the Internet Archive. Whether you missed the event or want to revisit the discussions, this post serves as your complete reference.

Thank you to everyone who is making this community grow!

11 March 2026

[Panel] Navigating Open Data Regulation for the Public Interest

This panel focused on the policy and governance dimension of open data in the age of AI — from data access and licensing to accountability, procurement, and digital public infrastructure.

Speakers in alphabetical order:

Deshni Govender – Country Lead of GIZ project: FAIR Forward ‘AI for all’; advisory board member of the South African AI Association; co-founder of the GIZ Diverse Women in Tech network.
Jonathan Gray – Author of ‘Public Data Cultures’ (Polity, 2025), Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College London.
Renata Ávila – CEO, Open Knowledge Foundation (moderator)
Renato Berrino Malaccorto – Research Manager at Open Data Charter
Ruth Del Campo – General Director for Data at the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, Government of Spain

[Lightning Talks] Community Voices: Open Data & AI

Short presentations from projects working on open data and AI. These may include new tools, pilots, and experiments from across the ecosystem.

Speakers in alphabetical order:

AI-Powered Analysis of Judicial Practice Using Open Court Data
by Ihor Samokhodskyi
Policy Genome (Ukraine)
Enhancing CKAN Interoperability with data.europa.eu through High-Quality Metadata
by Javier Conde, Andrés Muñoz-Arcentales and Álvaro Alonso
Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain)
Climate Open Data and #semanticClimate
by Renu Kumari
semanticClimate and Frictionless Data (India)
Uhai/Life: Building a Comprehensive Citizen Science Open Data Dashboard for People & Planet
by Richard Muraya
The Demography Project (Kenya)

[Roundtable] CKAN at 20: The Future of Open Data in the Era of AI – The Future of Open Data

This session reflected on two decades of CKAN: how it has evolved, how the community has grown, and what priorities are emerging now. Conversations explored how open data initiatives are responding to the trend of AI and the ethical, societal and technical challenges that lie ahead.

The roundtable combined forward-looking reflections with live demonstrations of tools, integrations, and experiments that illustrate how open data initiatives are adapting in practice.

Speakers in alphabetical order:

Andrea Borruso – Expert in Geographic Information Systems and Open Data, President of onData.
Antonin Garrone – Product Manager, data.gouv.fr (the French open data platform)
Jamaica Jones – CKAN/POSE Community Manager, University of Pittsburgh (moderator)
Joel Natividad – Co-CEO and co-founder of datHere
Patricio Del Boca – Tech Lead and Open Activist, Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN)
Rufus Pollock – Author of ‘The Open Revolution: Rewriting the Rules of the Information Age’ (2018). Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and Datopian, and co-founder of Life Itself.
Steven De Costa – Executive Director of Link Digital and a Co-Steward of the CKAN project

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities. ODD is led by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and the Open Knowledge Network.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date over one week. In 2026, it is happening from March 7-13. All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.