Events have a significant role for the Open Knowledge Foundation. They focus attention on the key issues of the day, gather interested individuals and organisations around specific topics, and represent the public face of the open knowledge community and its many and various projects. They also provide occasions for open data enthusiasts to meet face-to-face, […]
Event. OKCon 2013 – 17th-18th September 2013, Geneva, Switzerland. Call for Proposals. Find the call, FAQs and the submission form on the OKCon 2013 Call for Proposal webpage. Deadline. New deadline to submit your proposals is May 31st, 23:59:59 GMT. Results will be published by 17th June, 23:59:59 GMT. Tickets. Early Bird tickets are on sale […]
Today, we are excited to announce that our work with the US Federal Government (data.gov) has gone live at catalog.data.gov! You can also read the announcement from the data.gov blog with their description of the new catalog. The Open Knowledge Foundation’s Services team, which deploys CKAN, have been working hard on a new unified catalog […]
We welcome the Shakespeare review as a time to reflect, coming as it does at a time of great growth in open data in government and the public sector. The UK has lead the way with government taking a pioneering stance on open data policy in recent years, and this report sets out key recommendations […]
CKAN is a powerful, open source, open data management platform, used by governments and organizations around the world to make large collections of data accessible, including the UK and US government open data portals. Today we are very happy and excited to announce the final release of CKAN 2.0. This is the most significant piece […]
There was big news for open data yesterday with a new Executive Order announced by President Obama. The order lays out the general principles that open, machine readable, data are the “new default”. (We note the Open Definition already includes machine readability in the definition of open data). There will a new Open Data Policy […]
We are excited to announce the official launch of Crowdcrafting.org, an open source software platform – powered by our Pybossa technology – for developing and sharing projects that rely on the help of thousands of online volunteers. At a workshop on Citizen Cyberscience held this week at University of Geneva, a novel open source software […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2013 Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) will take place in Geneva, Switzerland on 17th -18th September. The theme of this year’s edition will be Open Data – Broad, Deep, Connected. When: 17th – 18th September 2013 Where: Geneva, Switzerland at the CICG – Centre International de […]
On March 15, 2012, Bassel Khartabil was detained in a wave of arrests in the Mazzeh district of Damascus. Since then, his family has received no official explanation for his detention or information regarding his whereabouts. However, his family has recently learned from previous detainees at the security branch of Kafer Sousa, Damascus, that Bassel […]
You may have seen hints of it before, but the US government data portal, data.gov, has just announced officially that its next iteration – “data.gov 2.0” – will incorporate CKAN, the open-source data management system whose development is led and co-ordinated by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The OKF itself is one of the organisations helping […]
News just in that Boundless, the open source digital textbook provider, is releasing all of its 18 open source textbooks under a Creative Commons Attribution and Share-Alike license. We covered the progress of this brilliant initiative mid-way through last year. Boundless leverages open content on the web, whether that’s information on Wikipedia or digital copies […]
This month, the House of Lords science committee is hearing evidence on the likely effects of the new Research Councils UK (RCUK) Open Access policy that will come into force in April this year for all RCUK-funded researchers. The UK, and many other countries around the world are making this bold move to allow everyone […]
Aaron Swartz, coder, writer, archivist and activist, took his own life in New York on Friday. Aaron worked tirelessly to open up and maximise the societal impact of information in three areas which are central to our work at the Foundation: public domain cultural works, public sector information, and open access to publicly funded research. […]
The following guest post was co-authored by Samuel Goëta, Primavera De Filippi, Peter T Schiøler, Kat Borlongan, and Pierre Chrzanowski. Following the first ever Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki earlier this year, we, a group of Open Knowledge enthusiasts in France, have decided to start a national chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN). France […]
It is not an immediately obvious partnership, and yet open data and crisis response go together incredibly well. As storms have lashed the East coast of the US in recent days, causing tragic loss of life and enormous financial damage, many of the tools which have helped citizens to track its path and stay safe […]
We’re delighted two new members to the Open Knowledge Foundation Board: Jane Silber and Gavin Starks. Jane is currently CEO of Canonical the company behind Ubuntu, while Gavin is Founder and Chairman of AMEE, the provider of Environmental Intelligence using Open Data. At the same time we can also announce that long-time Board member Jordan […]
We are delighted to announce that Linked Open Vocabularies is now being hosted on Open Knowledge Foundation servers and is now officially an Open Knowledge Foundation project. ##LOV Project in 5 points LOV is about vocabularies (aka. metadata element sets or ontologies) in OWL / RDFS used to describe linked data. LOV provides a single-stop […]
Today, the UK govenrment made a major announcement regarding Open Data and released a revamped Data.Gov.UK — its flagship open data site. Open Data White Paper The Cabinet Office is ushering in a new wave of open data releases with the publication of a new Open Data White Paper. The White Paper gestures at a […]
The Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU yesterday gave up on trying to reach an agreement between the European Commission, the Parliament and the Member States on reform of the rules that govern public access to EU documents. With the European Parliament standing firmly in favour of greater transparency for citizens, and the […]
For those looking for yet another reason to join us for OKFestival in Helsinki this September, the OKFestival Core Organising Team is proud to announce the inspiring public outcomes of our unconventional First Call for Proposals – and to request your participation for our Second Call to share your ideas in Finland. As we’ve noted […]
Today, the day before the Open Government Partnership meeting starts in Brasilia, OpenCorporates is publishing a major new report into access to company data in OGP countries, and the picture is not good. Out of a total of a possible 100 points, the average score was just 21, with several major countries (including Spain, Greece […]
Following on from our Open GLAM workshop in London, in a few weeks we’re hosting a half day workshop in Berlin looking at how to overcome barriers to opening up data in the cultural heritage sector entitled Rechtliche Fragen beim Öffnen von (Meta-) Daten Gedächtnisinstitutionen (Legal Questions Regarding (Meta)data in Cultural Heritage Institutions). We […]
The Panton Fellowships are a new initiative to support scientists who promote open access to data. Funded by Open Society Foundations, the Open Knowledge Foundation are proud to welcome Ross Mounce and Sophie Kershaw as the first ever Panton Fellows. ##What are the Panton Fellowships? Many scientists believe in the benefits of open data. […]
Two projects of the Open Knowledge Foundation have been nominated for the Living Labs Global Award 2012: OpenSpending.mobi – Participatory budgeting through augmented reality and CityData – Making Cities Smarter – A central entry point to all your city’s data. Out of nearly 700 submitted showcases, about 15% have been selected to submit an extended […]
We are delighted to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation in partnership with the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge has received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the development of an Open Economics Working Group. The aim of the working group is to encourage more […]
The following post is by Rufus Pollock, Director and Co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation, and Philip Schmidt, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Peer 2 Peer University. Today, we’re announcing plans for a School of Data. The School will be a joint venture between the Open Knowledge Foundation and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). We […]
The following post is by Sam Leon, Community Co-ordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re delighted to announce that JISC will be funding the initial development of the TEXTUS platform as part of its Digital Infrastructure Programme. TEXTUS will be a lightweight, easy-to-use platform that will enable users to read, share and collaborate around public […]
The European Commission is to make its data publicly and openly available through a new data portal, along the lines of those already used by national governments such as http://data.gov.uk/. Like http://data.gov.uk/ the new site will be based on the open-source CKAN Data Portal Software developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Foundation will also be […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation are delighted to announce the launch of the Panton Fellowships! Funded by Open Society Foundations, Panton Fellowships will be awarded to scientists who actively promote open data in science. Visit the Panton Fellowships home page for more information including details of how to apply Further Details We firmly believe that “open […]
The following post is by Claudio Artusio who works for LAPSI, the European Network on Legal Aspects of Public Sector Information. There is still 3 weeks left to apply to the 3rd LAPSI Award on the most user-friendly design of a PSI portal in the EU (http://www.lapsi-project.eu/news/award3). PSI (acronym for Public Sector Information) can be […]
The following post is by Theodora Middleton, the OKFN Blog Editor. News in from the European Commission, which has announced that they will be adopting a new Open Data Strategy from the 29th November. The aims of the strategy are to increase government transparency, and hopefully generate overall economic gains of around €40 billion a […]
The following post is by Francois Grey and Rufus Pollock. Francois is a recent Shuttleworth Fellow, visiting professor at Tsinghua University working and coordinator of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre. Rufus is a co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. There are two exciting open data and open knowledge events in Cape Town South Africa taking place […]
The following post is by David Read, on behalf of the CKAN team. We’re proud to announce a major new release of CKAN! Version 1.5 brings major improvements including: Major user experience upgrades around dataset publication and access plus a new theme Integrated structured and blob data storage, with associated with data previewing and visualization […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation today proudly announces the launch of the Apps 4 Germany Contest. The Contest is organised by three civil society organisations (The Open Data Network, the Gov2.0 Network and the German Chapter of the OKFN) in cooperation with BITKOM (Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media) under the auspices of […]
By James Harriman-Smith and Primavera De Filippi On the 11th July, the Open Literature (now Open Humanities) mailing list got an email about a competition being run by the University of Bologna called ‘Inventare il Futuro’ or ‘Inventing the Future’. On the 28th October, Hvaing submitted an application on behalf of the OKF, we got […]
This is a post by Rufus Pollock, co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. As reported elsewhere I’ve been fortunate enough to have my Shuttleworth Fellowship renewed for the coming year so that I can continue and extend my work at the Open Knowledge Foundation on developing the open data ecosystem. The following text and video […]
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Open Government Data Camp 2011 takes place tomorrow in Warsaw. We’re really excited. Our press release is below. We’d be grateful for any help in sending this to relevant colleagues and organisations! PRESS RELEASE: The world’s biggest open data event […]
The following guest post is an introduction to the Open Knowledge Community from the new head of data.gov.uk, Antonio Acuna. I have recently joined the Transparency team at the Cabinet Office as Head of Data.gov.uk. Having previously worked delivering IT projects in Defra, such as the Noise Mapping England Project, and having worked as director […]
The following post is a press release from AsktheEU and Access Info. On 28 September 2011, the 9th International Right to Know Day, pro-transparency human rights group Access Info Europe unveiled the AsktheEU.org web portal by which the public can ask for information from EU bodies. AsktheEU.org is a designed to radically simplify the process […]
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 […]
This is a cross-posting from Open Shakespeare to announce the culmination of a project run over the summer to encourage greater participation in the website and greater awareness of its goals of promoting open critical commentary. From Monday 12th September to Monday 10th October, Open Shakespeare will host a series of articles on the topic […]
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 […]
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 […]
The following is a guest post from Chris Taggart, co-founder of OpenCorporates.com and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data One of the key types of data that affects all our lives in a multitude of ways is that on companies and corporate entities. As companies have changed from being single entities to multifaceted, […]
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 […]
The following guest post is from Andrew Stott, who sits on the UK Government’s Public Sector Transparency Board. In his former role as Director of Digital Engagement at the Cabinet Office, Andrew helped to set up the UK’s open data initiative. Today’s announcement about the next year of the UK Government’s Transparency and Open Data programme […]
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 […]
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 […]
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re very pleased to announce an alpha version of datacatalogs.org, a website to help keep track of open data catalogues from around the world. The project is being launched to coincide with our annual conference, OKCon 2011. You can see the […]
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 […]
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