The European Journalism Centre Announces Free Online Data Journalism Course

The European Journalism Centre (EJC) is pleased to announce that registration is now open for its free online data journalism course Doing Journalism with Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools. This five-module introductory course gives participants the essential concepts, techniques and skills to effectively work with data and produce compelling stories under tight deadlines. It […]

Hola Escuela de Datos!

Today, we’re pleased to announce the launch of School of Data in Spanish! The Website was launched at the AbreLatam, on the 24th June, with a workshop focusing on building the Latin American network. This follows a series of warm up events thanks to the wonderful generosity of our hosts, in particular – the Hacks […]

We’re Hiring! School of Data seeks Workshop and Project Coordinator

School of Data is hiring a Workshop and Project Coordinator! See below for details about the role and how to apply. ###About School of Data School of Data works to empower civil society organizations, journalists and citizens with the skills they need to use data effectively in their efforts to create fairer and more sustainable […]

AfricanSpending – Monitoring the Money in Africa

The Open Knowledge Foundation, in partnership with the Open Institute in Kenya and the African Media Initiative have submitted a proposal to the Knight News Challenge on Open Government: AfricanSpending – Monitoring the Money. We want to build a platform (leveraging OpenSpending) for journalists and civil society to track public money and mineral wealth across […]

Tony Hirst joins the School of Data

We’d like to extend a really warm welcome to Tony Hirst, who’s joining the School of Data as a Data Storyteller. Tony will be working part time for the School of Data in shaping the materials, masterminding the blog and running workshops. He’ll also be out and about on site visits to learn more about […]

OpenSpending CSO Workshop – Sarajevo

The full story from Sarajevo can be found on the Open Spending blog A while back, we wrote about the kickoff of our project to deliver the budget of Bosnia and Herzegovina to its citizens in a form they can understand. Last week in Sarajevo we had the kickoff workshop, bringing together a group of […]

Data Expeditions at MozFest

Expeditions into the Data Landscape: the School of Data goes to #MozFest. Find out what happened at MozFest – and see the tools and data sets to recreate it yourself! Saturday morning at MozFest. A sold out building, full of a thousand hackers, builders, makers, geeks, journalists, thinkers and more. And right at the top […]

Stadt Land Code : An incubator for civic tools in Germany

Today is the launch of OKFN-De’s new project ‘Stadt Land <Code>’ (‘City State <Code>’), an incubator to create digital tools for Citizens. This project is aimed at getting developers to create and implement applications to make the life of citizens in Germany easier and better. Together, the plan is to create useful applications for civic […]

OKFN India Trip – the Roundup

This is the final post in the Open Data in India series. Our visit to India wasn’t just about meetups… the following post deals with the individuals and organisations that Lucy and Laura met whilst in India, the questions they were asked and the projects they were introduced to. It is cross-posted on the OKFN […]

UK Departmental Government Spending – Improving the Quality of Reporting

Continuing in their mission to make spending data more accessible and comprehensible, the Spending Stories team and the team of Data.Gov.Uk are releasing a reporting tool today that will help journalists and analysts to pick the freshest and best departmental spending data to work with when exploring the UK central government expenditure. Spending data is […]

Open Data – Chennai

This is part 2 of 5 of the Open Data India Series. You can read the first post ‘Open Data – Bangalore’ on the OKFN blog. Chennai, formerly Madras, is only a short train ride away from Bangalore. Laura and I hadn’t been intending on travelling to Chennai on this trip, but a mail from […]

Open Data – Bangalore

Laura and Lucy from the OKFN team recently travelled to India to learn where the challenges and opportunities for open data in India lay. This is part 1 of 5 of the Open Data India Series. The Bangalore data scene is huge. A bustling IT and data mining industry means that you are never far […]

Technology for Transparent and Accountable Public Finance: Report Published

In early March, we embarked on a project to map out projects which use technology to further the aims of fiscal transparency, accountability and participation. Today, we are happy to announce the official release of the resulting report, Technology for Transparent and Accountable Public Finance. Preliminary findings were presented at last month’s GIFT meeting in […]

The Data Journalism Handbook is Go!

On Saturday 29th April, at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia – 6 months of work on the Data Journalism Handbook was unveiled: the Data Journalism Handbook was launched. The Handbook contains contributions from over 70 of the world’s leading data journalists. The book’s contributors are a “who’s who of data journalism”, says Simon Rogers […]

The School of Data Journalism is coming soon!

This article is cross posted on DataDrivenJournalism.net &nbsp;</p> The School of Data Journalism is a series of panel discussions and workshops on various aspects of data journalism organised by the European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation. It is hosted at the sixth edition of Italy's leading journalism event, the International Journalism Festival in […]

Technology for Fiscal Transparency – Where Next?

Who is using technology to follow the money? The hunt is on… Over the last month, we have been working on a report entitled “Technology for Transparent and Accountable Public Finance” for the Global Initiative on Fiscal Transparency. We are hoping to identify the most promising projects around the world that are using technology (web, […]

How Spending Stories Fact Checks Big Brother, the Wiretappers’ Ball

This piece was co-written with Eric King of Privacy International and comes as Privacy International launches a huge new data release about companies selling surveillance technologies. It is cross-posted on the MediaShift PBS IDEA LAB and the OpenSpending blog. Today, the global surveillance industry is estimated at around $5 billion a year. But which companies […]

The Data Journalism Handbook: Final call for contributions

This post is by Liliana Bounegru, Project Coordinator at the European Journalism Centre, and Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. It is cross posted on DataDrivenJournalism.net Where can I find data and how can I request access to it? What tools are available to me? How can I find useful stories within […]

Diving into Data: The School of Data Journalism at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia

This post is by Liliana Bounegru, Project Coordinator at the European Journalism Centre, and Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. It is cross posted on DataDrivenJournalism.net and journalismfestival.com. In the past investigative reporters would suffer from a scarcity of information relating to questions they were trying to answer. While this is still […]

Civil Society and Spending Data: Who is mapping the money?

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator on the OpenSpending project at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re excited to announce that, thanks to the generous support of the Open Society Foundations, OKFN’s activities around financial transparency will expand to include a second pillar: next to the OpenSpending platform, we have just started a 6 […]

Data = Seized, Sanitised and Sanity-checked. Open Data Day 2011

This post is by Mark Brough, Research Officer at Publish What You Fund, Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator for OpenSpending, and Irina Bolychevsky, Product Owner for CKAN. It is cross-posted on the OpenSpending Blog and the CKAN blog and Mark Brough’s contribution is also featured on aidinfolabs.org. Saturday, December 3rd was Open Data Day, and London […]

#OpenDataCBG – Open Data Meetup in Cambridge 15th December

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Cambridge-based Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Cambridge, it has been too long… The #OpenData meetups are returning to Cambridge, following on from the success of the London meetups (#OpenDataLDN) and the recent Helsinki meetup (#OpenDataFi). The Details When: Thursday, 15th December, 7pm-9pm Where: 37 Panton St, Cambridge […]

Seize the (Data) Day for Open Data Day – 3rd December

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation, and Irina Bolychevsky, Product Owner for CKAN. On December 3, Open Data Day, for one day only we’ll have a crack-team of coders ready to break data out of its internet and load it into the Data Hub for you to use! […]

Launch of Open Spending Blog: Thoughts on Journalist-Programmer interaction

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Thanks to the hard work of the OpenSpending team getting the software to an exciting stage of development that we are happy to write about and some aesthetic love from our brilliant designer, Kat Braybrooke, the OpenSpending blog was officially launched yesterday. […]

#OGDCamp Programme Announced!

This post is from Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation on behalf of the organising committee for OGDCamp 2011. We are pleased to announce that the programme for OGDCamp has just been unveiled. You can see the full programme on the OGDCamp website. The Programme Committee have worked to bring people together […]

EuroHack: One-day data journalism competition and workshop on EU spending

This post is by Liliana Bounegru, of the European Journalism Centre, Lucy Chambers of the Open Knowledge Foundation and Nicolas Kayser-Bril, data journalist. Together, they are organising a data journalism pre-conference workshop and competition in Warsaw, 19 October, at the Open Government Data Camp This is the second in the series of EJC/OKF data-journalism workshops […]

Data Driven Journalism: The Series Begins…

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The post contains a link to a report on the OKF / EJC Data Driven Journalism workshop on EU Spending, which took place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on 8th-9th September. The report was written by Nicolas Kayser-Bril who attended the workshop, and […]

OpenSpending v0.10 released

This post is by Martin Keegan, project lead on OpenSpending. We’ve released v0.10 of the OpenSpending code, and made it live on http://openspending.org/ Changes in v0.10: Data loading has been separated from the main web application. Web-based and command-line tools for data wranglers to load/reload datasets have been separated from the main end-user facing web […]

Data-Driven Journalism In A Box: what do you think needs to be in it?

The following post is from Liliana Bounegru (European Journalism Centre), Jonathan Gray (Open Knowledge Foundation), and Michelle Thorne (Mozilla), who are planning a Data-Driven Journalism in a Box session at the Mozilla Festival 2011, which we recently blogged about here. This is cross posted at DataDrivenJournalism.net and on the Mozilla Festival Blog. We’re currently organising […]

Open Data London meetup 3rd October 2011, 7pm

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Back by popular demand, the OKF is hosting the second Open Data London Meetup for those interested in getting involved with open data communities in the city. We now expect that this will turn into a bi-monthly event – so make sure […]

Call for Participation: Open Government Data Camp 2011

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We are pleased to announce that today we are launching the call for participation for OGDCamp 2011. This event and will bring together the international Open Government Data Community, so please: be bold! We encourage people to submit talks, workshops and satellite […]

International Travel Bursaries for Open Government Data Camp Announced

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. It gives us great pleasure to announce a series of international travel bursaries for Open Government Data Camp 2011. These travel bursaries available to support participants who could otherwise note afford to attend the camp. Bursaries include: A European bursary for EU27 […]

Public Data Consultations: Making Open Data a Reality

This post is from Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Earlier this month, the UK Government published the ‘Open Data Consultation Paper’. Its aim is to establish a “culture of openness and transparency in public services” and the Government is turning to the general public for their preferences on how this should […]

Montevideo: proud of our data

The following post is by Guillermo Moncecchi of Intendencia de Montevideo in Uruguay. Here, in Montevideo, we are proud of our data. The Intendencia de Montevideo drives the economic, social and cultural life of the city, producing data. Lots of data. The government has spent years developing its information services, almost all government processes produce […]

OpenSpending seeks Spending Cartographers: Register Now!

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator for OpenSpending at the Open Knowledge Foundation The OpenSpending team is currently looking for volunteers for a crack-team of ‘spending cartographers’ to guide people with datasets through the OpenSpending loading process and to help them make the most of their data once it is loaded. Interested in […]

New OKF T-shirt designs

Thanks to our smashing new designer Kat Braybrooke and the wit and design skills of the community, the OKF now have a new range of T-shirts (including women’s fit and re-adaptations of the old classics!) available via the OKF spreadshirt shop. Congratulations again go to Hans Overbeek for his winning “Yes, we’re Open” design. Thanks […]

New Visualisations for OpenSpending

This post is by Gregor Aisch, graphic designer and visualisation architect on the OpenSpending project. Today, at the OpenSpending worksop at OKCon2011 he gave a sneak preview of some of the work he has been doing to create new visualisations for OpenSpending, including a re-adaptation of David McCandless’ famous bubble visualisation from ‘Where Does My […]

OpenSpending goes live

After several months of hard work, we are glad to announce the official launch of OpenSpending and turn to everyone interested in government accountability and financial transparency to help shape the future of the project. The OpenSpending project will make it easier for the global public to explore and understand government spending. Our developers have […]

Open design communities, entrepreneurial coalitions, and the partner state

This guest post is from Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives. Michel will be joining us at OKCon 2011 for his talk No Open Society without Open Knowledge, no Open Knowledge without Open Infrastructures. To understand the reality or illusion behind projects claiming to practice co-creation or co-design, one must […]

OKF: T-Shirt Competition

This post comes from Lucy Chambers: Community Coordinator at the OKF. This week, she will be collecting designs for OKF T-Shirts We are in the process of creating some new OKF T-Shirts and would like to know what you would like to see on them! Whether you have a witty slogan, beautiful version of the […]

Hacking for Transparency at Brazil’s Major e-Government Conference

The following guest post is from Daniela B. Silva and Diego Casaes from the Transparency Hacker Community in Brazil. CONSEGI, an open source software and e-Government conference organized by (and mostly for) public IT departments and officers, took place on May 11, 12 and 13th, in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. For the first time, […]

Hack4Europe!

The following post is from Europeana, cross posted from the Europeana blog. What are the ben­e­fits of mak­ing cul­tural her­itage data open and reusable? How can it sup­port the devel­op­ment of new con­tent mar­kets, gen­er­ate new jobs and enrich people’s life? Euro­peana and its part­ners Col­lec­tions Trust, Museu Picasso, Poz­nan Super­com­put­ing and Net­work­ing Cen­ter and […]

One week left for early bird tickets for OKCon

There is only one week left to get early bird tickets for OKCon, so please hurry if you want to make use of this offer! Early bird applications will close on June 1st. OKCon 2011 in Berlin will include keynotes, panel discussions and workshops on topics ranging from open data’s role in democracy and culture, […]

OKCon 2011: Travel Bursaries & Early Bird Tickets Available

OKCon 2011 is now just over one month away. Registration is ongoing at so you can still book your tickets online here. Early bird prices will be available until 1st June 2011 only, so book early! The official deadline for submissions has passed (but if you’ve missed it – please contact us and we will […]

Workshops Preceding OKCon2011

OKCon2011 is glad to announce that registration has now opened for the pre-OKCon workshops. More details can be found below. Pre-OKCon2011 CKAN Workshop Tuesday, June 28, 2011 from 9:30 AM – 6:00 PM (GMT+0100) A chance to get hands-on with the technical side of working with CKAN. In each session, a core CKAN developer will […]

The Annotator – Preview

In November 2010, Rufus Pollock announced the Annotator project on the OKFN blog. Since this initial release the project has been developed into a fully fledged product. The Annotator is a JavaScript widget that can be added to any webpage to allow inline annotation of its contents. Combined with a storage system, such as AnnotateIt, […]