Hello Open Knowledge community,
As spring/autumn settles in and the pace of digital policy and practice quickens, our communities are at a pivotal moment, where the urgency to shape AI’s role in the public interest is increasingly concrete. This month, we’re leaning into that momentum with honesty, collaboration, and a renewed commitment to open knowledge.
We’re proud to announce our AI Learning Labs – a hands-on partnership with organisations worldwide to develop replicable, multilingual AI literacy resources based on learning by doing. We’ll be sharing more about this initiative at RightsCon next week in Lusaka, Zambia – an Open Knowledge delegation will be taking part in several sessions, including our own booth (see full details below).
Alongside this, we’ve joined forces with the Wikimedia Foundation to champion knowledge as critical digital infrastructure, and we’re distilling insights from the global consultations run by Open Technology Research.
And there’s still time to register for tomorrow’s webinar held by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), ‘Moving from Harmful Platforms to Social Technologies’.
Enjoy the reading.
How do social sector organisations gather practical knowledge about AI that is relevant for their field?
This month, we are proud to announce Open Knowledge’s AI Learning Labs. OKFN is partnering with selected organisations worldwide to experiment with AI and develop replicable methods together. We will catalyse learning and produce public, multilingual AI literacy resources to help organisations build AI skills, use AI responsibly, and develop their own AI projects.
In this launch interview, Renata Avila and Solana Larsen unpack the philosophy behind the initiative.
An Honest Reflection on the Integration of LLMs into Open Data Portals
‘We don’t trust AI,’ claims OKFN’s Tech Lead in this text, in which he offers his sharp views on one of today’s most pressing challenges
Join Open Knowledge’s team and network at RightsCon 2026, Zambia
From 5–8 May 2026, a delegation from the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and our Network will be in Lusaka, Zambia, discussing pressing issues such as reimagining AI, brain-computer interfaces, leveraging digital public goods, and more.
If you are around, make sure you step into the Open Knowledge Foundation booth to experience consumer brain-sensing devices firsthand. Together, we will explore what neurodata really is, what these technologies actually measure, and why openness and accountability matter as frontier technologies shape our future.
You can find here the full list of sessions we’ll be taking part at, including partners such as the Wikimedia Foundation, Article 19, Inria, and the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA).
Knowledge as Critical Digital Infrastructure: A call to action for a resilient future
In April, we also announced a joint project with the Wikimedia Foundation Policy to safeguard the future of our global knowledge commons. Our goal is to ensure that digital knowledge commons — the shared, publicly accessible systems that allow information to be freely and openly created and distributed — receive the same strategic attention and investment, and benefit from strong governance, as essential public services such as water or electricity.
Our initiative is a multistage process, and we are committed to gathering diverse perspectives to ensure our strategy remains globally relevant. Over the coming months, we will conduct a series of regional dialogues to assess the political desirability and feasibility of our recommendations.
We invite everyone to help us define the future of the digital commons. Stay tuned for our upcoming schedule of regional dialogues.
Open Technology Research Global Consultations: Key Insights
Researchers, practitioners, and advocates from Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Americas joined the three global consultations convened by the Open Technology Research initiative. The purpose was to build a participatory process in which we could ensure that the research agenda is actionable, diverse and inclusive, grounded in necessary context from across regions, and connected to the policy moments where evidence can make a difference.
Read the key takeaways from the meetings in this series of posts. We identified issues such as fragmentation, procurement as an urgent research priority and the lack of research capacity.
Tomorrow: ‘Moving from Harmful Platforms to Social Technologies’
Join us tomorrow on the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) Webinar, organised after a recent report by the Forbrukerrådet/Norwegian Consumer Council about the growing phenomenon of “enshittification” — where digital platforms degrade over time, impacting both users and society at large. How can we advance social technologies that genuinely connect people, strengthen participation in society, and enable informed public debate?
📅 Thursday, April 30, 2026
⏰ 3:00pm – 4:00pm CET (60 min)
📍 Zoom Webinar
📝 Register Here
Open Data Editor, featured among hundreds of digital public goods
Open Knowledge’s no-code app for error-free spreadsheets is part of the DPG Spotlight series by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA). This desktop tool makes data validation accessible to non-technical users, helping organisations detect errors, improve data quality, and save time without relying on data engineers. ODE is used globally by journalists, public servants, and researchers across diverse contexts, while training initiatives helped scale data literacy through local communities.
‘The future of open data must be trustworthy’ – Conference Video Documentation
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. 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.
Whether you missed the event or want to revisit the discussions, this post serves as your complete reference.
Say Hello Again to Open Knowledge’s Discussion Infrastructure
The forums hosting two decades of conversations about open knowledge projects worldwide are back at discuss.okfn.org. The site is now self-hosted on OKFN’s infrastructure to keep our conversations truly ours and is open to all. We are reactivating it as a central hub for our communities, so please feel free to make use of it. It’s yours!
Check out the latest highlights from our global movement.
🇬🇭 Open Knowledge Ghana is implementing a project with the Internet Society Ghana chapter. This is a six-month project on Disability and inclusion. The project focuses on persons living with disabilities and how relevant accessibility is in policy and implementation of ICTs. Objectives are to build the capacity of civil societies and PWDs, policy advocacy, awareness among digital service providers and produce an evidence gaps analysis in national accessibility.
🇸🇪 Open Knowledge Sweden is organising an event in June: ‘Digitization and Digital Sovereignty – Four shades. Multiple perspectives’. There will be four panel discussions around law, AI efficiency, defense and business with high-level speakers, including national ministers. Apply for a spot here.
🇨🇭In Switzerland, Opendata.ch is organising the Open Cultural Data hackathon (GLAMhack) 2026 event on November 12-14 in Winterthur, and hope to see some international participants: please save the date, connect with us to collaborate & spread the word.
🇯🇵 Open Knowledge Japan hosted an online event bringing together many Open Data Day (ODD) event organisers. Japan is historically the country with the highest engagement rates on ODD and a huge open data community. You can watch the recording here.
Save the dates!
RightsCon 2026
Zambia
5–8 May
In engaging fireside chats, hands-on workshops, strategic roundtables, private meetings, and a lively exhibition space, RightsCon is where a global movement comes together to build strategies and drive forward change toward a more free, open, and connected digital world.
1st Global Digital Rights Forum
Barcelona
13–14 May
Against a backdrop characterised by AI, big data, disinformation, the digital divide and growing technological dependence, the event has been created as a key forum for generating knowledge, reaching consensus on proposals and promoting safe, inclusive and people-centred digitalisation.
Other possible technologies
Barcelona
14, 20, 28 May
This is a series of three international sessions on feminism, geopolitics, and digital sovereignty, exploring alternative ways of understanding, inhabiting, and building technology. It will explore how technology defines power at every level—from bodies that transform public space to empires coding the global future.
The AI-BRIDGES Symposium
London
28–29 May
AI-based platforms are rapidly reshaping how knowledge is accessed, consumed, produced and reshared, often without drawing on the structured, open, and community-governed data that institutions and Open Knowledge communities have built over decades. The symposium brings together the people working to change this for two days of hands-on learning, expert dialogue and collaborative problem-solving.
Wikimania 2026
Paris
21–25 July
Wikimania is celebrating 25 years since the creation of Wikipedia. Yet the world has never been so dangerous for the free encyclopedia and its entire ecosystem. Wikimania 2026 is an opportunity to take action to preserve free access to knowledge.
About us.
Open knowledge is any content, information or data that people are free to use, re-use and redistribute — without any legal, technological or social restriction.
The Open Knowledge Foundation’s mission is to create a fair, sustainable and open digital future, advancing open knowledge as a design principle beyond just data. We do it by guiding and supporting the creation of digital infrastructure, developing policies and methodologies, harnessing communities and advocating for literacies and standards in a sustainable, ethical and agile manner.
