How to Build an Open Data Initiative for your City

The following guest post is by Montréal Ouvert, the open data organisation for the city of Montreal in Canada. Montréal Ouvert is a citizens’ initiative to obtain a formal open data policy for the city of Montréal, Canada. Launched by four Montrealers in August 2010 to mobilize public and political support for the adoption of […]

Extension of Copyright Term for Sound Recordings in the EU

The following is a guest post, by John Hendrik Weitzmann from iRights.info. Term extension for sound recordings is imminent on the EU level. iRights.info compiled a dossier about how this was possible and what it is about. It’s a hostage-taking of the subtle kind and a brilliant piece of lobbying: after the EU Commission’s proposal […]

Mozilla’s Media, Freedom and the Web Festival, November 2011

The following guest post is by Michelle Thorne from Mozilla. The OKF is really excited to be a partner in the upcoming Mozilla Festival on Media, Freedom and the Web. Look out too for our forthcoming collaborative challenge, Data-Driven-Journalism-in-a-Box – more details soon! Media, Freedom and the Web is Mozilla’s second annual innovation festival. Three […]

Freeing Train Data

The following guest post is by Peter Hicks, IP Network Engineer and Open Transport Data advocate. In the late 1990s, I decided to learn more about why my commute to and from London wasn’t always a smooth process. Having an inquisitive nature, I set about casually talking to people ‘in the know’ – friends inside […]

Geo-enabling Aid Data: What is, and what’s next

The following guest post is by Josh Powell from Development Gateway, who works on their AidData programme. Last week, the geocoded locations of all African Development Bank (AfDB) projects continent-wide approved from 2009-2010 were made available at open.aiddata.org. The data include more than $10 billion in AfDB Group funding to 43 African countries, and were […]

Greater Manchester – Open Data City

The following guest post is by Julian Tait, the key coordinator of the Open Data Cities project for FutureEverything in Greater Manchester and ongoing advocate for the DataGM datastore. ###Open Data in Manchester How would cities evolve if all data were made open? Would the same inequalities and asymmetries persist? What would need to happen […]

Open Kent

The following guest post is by Noel Hatch, Projects and Research Lead at Open Kent, and member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. A couple of months ago, we launched openkent.org.uk, a project working with 14 public service agencies across our county to open up data that matters to local people – […]

Open Aid Data Conference and Hackday, Berlin, 28th-29th September

The following post is by Christian Kreutz, co-founder and board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. Help us find innovative solutions for aid transparency and make development aid more effective. Germany is one of the largest donors in development aid worldwide. Every year over 6 billion euros are spent by the Federal Ministry for […]

Exploring open aid data with aidinfo labs

The following is a guest post from Tim Davies, open data action researcher, currently curating the aidinfolabs.org website for aidinfo, and a member of the OKFN Working Group on Open Development. The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) was set up in 2008 by 18 leading international development organisations. It aims to make information about aid […]

Austria adopts CKAN and CC-BY as nation-wide defaults

The following post is by Theodora Middleton, the OKF blog editor. Fantastic news from our fledgling Austrian chapter, the Open Knowledge Forum Österreich! The cities of Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, and Graz, together with the Chancellor’s office, have established the “Cooperation OGD Austria” – a new alliance bringing together federal, state, and city governments, as well […]

Visualising Italian Spending Data

The following guest post is by Daniele Galiffa, CEO at Visup. Some weeks ago we had the opportunity to develop a 24-hour quick prototype regarding the way the Italian Public Administration spends our money. Our goal was to highlight the value of using simple and effective information visualization solutions to gain greater insight into data, […]

Announcing… Text Camp 2011

The following post is from James Harriman-Smith, coordinator of the OKF’s Open Literature Working Group, and Lecteur at the ENS de Lyon. The OKF’s first ever ‘Text Camp’ hopes to bring together many different people, all interested in the relationship between digital technologies and literature, with a strong focus on the creation of open knowledge. […]

Estonian Spending Bubbles

The following guest post is by Tanel Kärp from the Estonian Academy of Arts. He’s a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. MeieRaha.eu (OurMoney) is the first interactive visualization of the Estonian budget which was initiated and built during 48 hours at a local hackathon called Garage48 for Public Services. The […]

OKF at the Open Government Partnership

The following post is by Theodora Middleton, blog editor at the OKF. The new Open Government Partnership, a “multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance,” was announced last week by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Brazilian […]

Rufus Pollock on Open Science

The following guest post is by Maria Neicu, who’s studying at the University of Amsterdam. She’s a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Data in Science. Rufus Pollock of the Open Knowledge Foundation recently gave a video interview on the topic of open science. Here are the videos, and summaries of what he […]

Measuring the success of your project on Open Data

The following guest post is by Armand Brahaj, who works on Open Data Albania. He’s also a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. I had the chance to visit the Transparency Camp in Washington DC this year. The event was organized by the Sunlight Foundation, who invited international activists that were […]

Doing Good With Data: Data Without Borders

The following guest post is by Jake Porway from Data Without Borders. We live in a time of unprecedented access to data and computational power. The open data movement is quickly digitizing and making available tomes of information about the way our governments work, the way our cities move, and the patterns of our daily […]

Call for action: Got Linked Data? Tell the world about it!

The following guest post is by Pablo Mendes and the rest of the team working on the new LOD cloud diagram. The LOD cloud diagram is a depiction of datasets that have been published in Linked Data format, by contributors to the Linking Open Data (LOD) community project and other individuals and organisations around the […]

Why censoring Slovak spending app means bad news for open data

The following guest post is by Eva Vozarova from the Fair Play Alliance in Slovakia. Eva is also a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. When we first started working on ZNasichDani.sk in October last year, it looked like a promising, useful idea. Creating a tool that would enable journalists and […]

Open Government (Data) Wien/Vienna – data.wien.gv.at

The following guest post in by Brigitte Lutz from the City of Vienna. The city of Vienna wants to open governmental data to be freely accessible for further use. The “Open Government Data (OGD) – initiative” is part of the coalition agreement. The open data catalog was presented to the city in a press conference […]

Release of Whole of Government Accounts

The following guest post is by Dan Herbert, who works on our Where Does My Money Go and Open Spending projects. He is the Programme Manager for MSc Accounting at Oxford Brookes University. This week sees the publication of the first Whole of Government Accounts for the UK. WGA represents the end of a decade […]

Free! Music! Contest – fewer choices, more freedom

The following guest post is by Christian Hufgard, chairman of Musikpiraten, and member of the OKF’s Working Group on the Public Domain. The Free! Music! Contest is a contest for bands and artists releasing their songs under a creative commons license. In its third year the focus is set on enabling remixes – and freeness. […]

Report from JISC Open Bibliography

The following post is the majority of the final report from our Open Bibliography Working Group‘s collaborative Open Bibliography project with JISC. Further information is available on the original report post Congratulations to all involved on the successful completion of the project! Bibliographic data has long been understood to contain important information about the large […]

Switzerland is no longer a white spot on the OGD map.

The following guest post is by Cécile Aschwanden and André Golliez, from itopia. They are members of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. Most people in Switzerland (including politicians) still do not know what Open Government Data is all about – but now the OGD virus has reached Switzerland and the discussion has […]

The long road to open aid data!

The following guest post is by Claudia Schwegmann from OpenAid, a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Knowledge in Development. The road to open data in development cooperation has been a long one! 10 years ago, transparency, let alone open data, in development cooperation wasn’t an issue. In 2001 the Millennium Development Goals […]

Open data research at Aalto University Business School

The following guest post is by Yulia Tammisto, from the Open Service Innovation Observatory at the Aalto University School of Economics, Finland. A few months ago, myself and my colleague Dr. Juho Lindman at the Aalto University School of Economics started to explore open data academically. We are particularly interested in the business applications and […]

Draft Bill on PSI access and reuse introduces openness of public information in Poland

The following post is from Theodora Middleton, Editor of the Open Knowledge Foundation blog. We’ve just heard from our friends at Centrum Cyfrowe in Poland, that the Polish Council of Ministers has adopted a draft bill amending the Bill on Access to Public Information and certain other laws. The amendments mean that all Public Sector […]

Polit.ru Open Data project

The following guest post is from Ivan Begtin, founder of OpenGovData.ru and member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. On 27 June 2011, news and analysis channel Polit.ru launched a special project called “Open Data”, regarding the issues of publishing the data of governmental structures in a format that allows further processing […]

metaStudio.org

The following guest post is from Nagarjuna G. from the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai. Nagarjuna will be joining us at OKCon 2011 for his workshop on metaStudio.org. ###About metaStudio.org is a collaborative workspace for shaping up education and research inspired by free software philosophy and open science. Here we design and […]

FTA: Teaching Free Technologies

The following guest post is by David Jacovkis and Wouter Tebbens from the Free Knowledge Institute. David and Wouter will be joining us at OKCon 2011 for their workshop on Building a master Curriculum on Free Technologies, and presentation on the Free Technology Academy and Shared QA for producing Free Educational Materials. The Free Technology […]

Open Government Data Conference 2011, Austria

The following guest post is from Martin Kaltenböck and Thomas Thurner from the Semantic Web Company, members of our brand new Austrian chapter, Open Knowledge Forum Österreich! The OGD2011 – the first Open Government Data Conference in Austria -took place on 16 of June 2011 in Vienna and was great success! The fully booked conference […]

Apps4Russia and Open Government Data in Russia

The following guest post is from Ivan Begtin, founder of OpenGovData.ru, and member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. I know that not too many people know about Russian open government projects. To be honest we don’t have many of them. But, at the same time, they do exist, and we have […]

Open data and Kasabi

The following guest post is by Leigh Dodds, programme manager for the Talis platform Talis has recently launched a new data marketplace called Kasabi. In this post I wanted to explore why Kasabi should be of interest to the Open Data community. Our goal with Kasabi is to help make data as easy to use, […]

Sand dunes, civil society and legal structures in the cloud

The following guest post is by Charles Armstrong, social scientist, entrepreneur, and Founder of the One Click Orgs project, which the OKF supports. Charles will be joining us at OKCon2011 for his talk, One Click Orgs: simple democratic organisation Along the shoreline of the North Atlantic marram grass plays a vital role in the coastal […]

Survey of Civic Hackers

The following guest post is by David Osimo, European policy analyst and member of the OKF’s Working Groups on Open Government Data and EU Open Data Who are the civic hackers? What are their motivations and barriers? What impact are government 2.0 initiatives having? And most importantly, what policy choices should the EU make? To […]

Open Quake and GEM Collaborative Effort

The following guest post is by Roberta Borgognoni and Ben Wyss, from the GEM Foundation. They will be joining us at OKCon 2011. We are involved in the global collaborative effort GEM. GEM is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage a global community in the design, development and deployment of state-of-the-art models and […]

Open Government Groups Urge Congress to Restore Funding for Transparency Projects

In a letter presented to Congress last week, signed by individuals and organisations including the Open Knowledge Foundation, the US government has been urged to restore funding to the Electronic Government Fund, “which provides critical support for the construction of a more transparent and efficient government and serves as a building block for private-sector innovations […]

Your stories here!

Want to share your tales of openness with the world? Got a cool project you’d like to tell people about? Or perhaps some interesting ruminations about open knowledge? The OKF blog is a fantastic place to tell your story, open up conversations, and make sure all your hard work is getting noticed. We want to […]