In order to facilitate reproducible data workflows in research contexts, we recently launched the Frictionless Data Tool Fund. This one-time $5,000 grant attracted over 90 applications from researchers, developers, and data managers from all over the world. We are very excited to announce the four grantees for this round of funding, and have included a […]
Statement from the Open Knowledge Foundation Board on the future of the CKAN Association
The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) Board met on Monday evening to discuss the future of the CKAN Association. The Board supported the CKAN Stewardship proposal jointly put forward by Link Digital and Datopian. As two of the longest serving members of the CKAN Community, it was felt their proposal would now move CKAN forward, strengthening […]
Two years on, little action from the EU on public country-by-country reporting
Two years ago, members of the European Parliament voted to force large multinational corporations registered in Europe to reveal how much tax they pay, how many people they employ and what profits they make in every country where they work. The transparency measure – known as public country-by-country reporting (or public CBCR) – was first […]
Open call: become a Frictionless Data Reproducible Research Fellow
The Frictionless Data Reproducible Research Fellows Programme, supported by the Sloan Foundation, aims to train graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and early career researchers how to become champions for open, reproducible research using Frictionless Data tools and approaches in their field. Fellows will learn about Frictionless Data, including how to use Frictionless tools in their domains […]
Publishing Budget and Spending Open Data
This blog was written by Lorena Rivero del Paso (GIFT) and Oscar Montiel (Open Knowledge Foundation) and was originally posted on the GIFT blog. Increasingly, we see examples where lack of transparency and accountability from governments affects trust. Being able to follow public money flows is an important step to recover trust and aim towards […]
New report: Data journalism in Tanzania
Open Knowledge International and the School of Data are excited to announce the publication of a new research report into the state of data journalism in Tanzania. Data-driven journalism is an important and disruptive change in contemporary journalism practice. It is not a panacea solution to the fake news era, but it is a piece […]
Data Curator – share usable open data
Data Curator is a simple desktop editor to help describe, validate, and share usable open data. Open data producers are increasingly focusing on improving open data so it can be easily used to create insight and drive positive change. Open data is more likely to be used if data consumers can: understand the structure and […]
Announcing the Fiscal Data Helpdesk
Having data for budgets and spending can allow us to track public money flows in our communities. It can give us insights into how governments plan and focus on programmes, public works, and services. So the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT), along with Open Knowledge International (OKI), have been working on new tools to […]
How open is government data in Africa?
Findings from the Africa Open Data Index and Africa Data Revolution Report Today, we are pleased to announce the results of Open Knowledge International’s Africa Open Data Index. This regional version of our Global Open Data Index collected baseline data on open data publication in 30 African countries to provide input for the second Africa […]
Announcing the Frictionless Data Tool Fund
Apply for a mini-grant to build an open source tool for reproducible research using Frictionless Data tooling, specs, and code base Today, Open Knowledge International is launching the Frictionless Data Tool Fund, a mini-grant scheme offering grants of $5,000 to support individuals or organisations in developing an open source tool for reproducible science or research […]
Warming up to csv,conf.v4
On May 8 and 9 2019, the fourth version of csv,conf is set to take place at Eliot Center in Portland, Oregon, United States. csv,conf is a community conference bringing together diverse groups to discuss data topics, and features stories about data sharing and data analysis from science, journalism, government, and open source. Over two days, […]
Introducing our new Product Manager for Frictionless Data
Earlier this year OKI announced new funding from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to explore “Frictionless Data for Reproducible Research”. Over the next three years we will be working closely with researchers to support the way they are using data with the Frictionless Data software and tools. The project is delighted to announce that Lilly […]
Ubernomics: Platform Monopolies & How to Fix Them
First version: Dec 2016, updated Feb 2018. This blog is a summary of the full article at http://rufuspollock.com/ubernomics Around the world countries have struggled to work out how to deal with Uber, AirBnB and their like. Are these new apps something to be welcomed or something to be stopped? But how we treat Uber-like companies […]
How to publish budget and spending data openly
At the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) and Open Knowledge International (OKI) we believe that governments’ budget and spending data should be made available to all, so that anyone can see how their tax money is spent,what priorities their governments make, and governments can be held accountable. Increasingly governments make their budget data already […]
Frictionless Data and FAIR Research Principles
In August 2018, Serah Rono will be running a Frictionless Data workshop in CopenHagen, congregated by the Danish National Research Data Management Forum as part of the FAIR Across project. In October 2018, she will also run a Frictionless Data workshop at FORCE11 in Montreal, Canada. Ahead of the two workshops, and other events before […]
Sloan Foundation Funds Frictionless Data for Reproducible Research
We are excited to announce that Open Knowledge International has received a grant of $750,000 from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for our project “Frictionless Data for Reproducible Research”. The new funding from Sloan enables us to continue work over the next 3 years via enhanced dissemination and training activities, as well as further iteration […]
Introducing the 2018 Class of School of Data Fellows!
This blog has been reposted from the School of Data blog. School of Data is delighted to announce its sixth class of fellows. From June until January 2019, the programme will allow fellows to deepen their data literacy skills and work alongside local partner organisations to enhance the data literacy network local to them. We were […]
CKANconUS and Code for America Summit: some thoughts about the important questions
It’s been a few weeks after CKANConUS and the seventh Code for America Summit took place in Oakland. As always, it was a great place to meet old friends and new faces of technologists, policy experts, government innovators in the U.S. In this blogpost I share some of the experience of attending these two conferences […]
Introducing Version 1 of the Fiscal Data Package specification
The Fiscal Data Package is a lightweight and user-oriented format for publishing and consuming fiscal data. Fiscal Data Packages are made of simple and universal components, are extremely flexible, can be produced from ordinary spreadsheet software and used in any environment. This specification started about five years ago with a first version (then known as […]
Open Data for the Campania Cultural Heritage – an update from the Route-To-PA Hetor pilot
This blog has been reposted from the Hetor blog. Since 2015 Open Knowledge International has been part of the consortium of Route-To-PA, a European innovation project aimed at improving citizen engagement by enabling meaningful interaction between open data users, open data publishers and open data. In the Route-To-PA case study series, we shine a light on public administrations, […]
Apply Now! School of Data’s 2018 Fellowship Programme
This blog has been reposted from the School of Data blog School of Data is inviting journalists, data scientists, civil society advocates and anyone interested in advancing data literacy to apply for its 2018 Fellowship Programme, which will run from May 2018 to January 2019. 8 positions are open, 1 in each of the following countries: Bolivia, Guatemala, […]
Open Budgets Index: A survey by OK Greece on open budgets of public sector bodies in Greece
Within the scope of openbudgets.eu, a project funded by the European Union’s H2020 research and innovation programme, Open Knowledge Greece (OK Greece) conducted a survey on the availability of open public budgeting data in Greece. Then, our team created an interactive map that allows users to check the scores of their municipality or regional administrative […]
Improving your data publishing workflow with the Frictionless Data Field Guide
The Frictionless Data Field Guide provides step-by-step instructions for improving data publishing workflows. The field guide introduces new ways of working informed by the Frictionless Data suite of software that data publishers can use independently, or adapt into existing personal and organisational workflows. Data quality and automation of data processing are essential in creating useful […]
ROUTETOPA Case Study: Hetor Pilot
Since 2015 Open Knowledge International has been part of the consortium of RouteToPA, a European innovation project aimed at improving citizen engagement by enabling meaningful interaction between open data users, open data publishers and open data. In the ROUTETOPA case study series, we shine a light on public administrations, organizations and communities that have adopted and are […]
Validation for Open Data Portals: a Frictionless Data Case Study
The Frictionless Data project is about making it effortless to transport high quality data among different tools and platforms for further analysis. We are doing this by developing a set of software, specifications, and best practices for publishing data. The heart of Frictionless Data is the Data Package specification, a containerization format for any kind […]
Frictionless Data Case Study: OpenML
The Frictionless Data project is about making it effortless to transport high quality data among different tools and platforms for further analysis. We are doing this by developing a set of software, specifications, and best practices for publishing data. The heart of Frictionless Data is the Data Package specification, a containerization format for any kind […]
Paradise Lost: a data-driven report into who should be on the EU’s tax haven blacklist
Open Knowledge International coordinates the Open Data for Tax Justice project with the Tax Justice Network, working to create a global network of people and organisations using open data to improve advocacy, journalism and public policy around tax justice. Today, in partnership with the Tax Justice Network, we are publishing Paradise lost, a data-driven investigation […]
Pin it in the Parks: Crowdsourcing park facilities information in Dublin
Since 2015 Open Knowledge International has been part of the consortium of RouteToPA, a European innovation project aimed at improving citizen engagement by enabling meaningful interaction between open data users, open data publishers and open data. This month, the project is running the Pin it in the Parks competition together with Smart Dublin to encourage, […]
How do open data measurements help water advocates to advance their mission?
This blogpost was jointly written by Danny Lämmerhirt and Nisha Thompson (DataMeet). Since its creation, the open data community has been at the heart of the Global Open Data Index (GODI). By teaming up with expert civil society organisations we define key datasets that should be opened by government to align with civil society’s priorities. […]
Why public country-by-country reporting should be introduced in the UK and across Europe
The release of the Paradise Papers has drawn attention to international calls for greater tax transparency to tackle the issues raised by the leak of millions of documents detailing the offshore behaviour of some of the world’s richest people and corporations. Along with a renewed push for the creation of public beneficial ownership registers to […]
The future of the Global Open Data Index: assessing the possibilities
In the last couple of months we have received questions regarding the status of the new Global Open Data Index (GODI) from a few members of our Network. This blogpost is to update everyone on the status of GODI and what comes next. But first, some context: GODI is one of the biggest assessments of […]
OKI wins funds from ODI to create Open Data publication toolkit
Open Knowledge International (OKI) has been awarded funds by the Open Data Institute (ODI) as part of a project to enhance and increase adoption of tools and services for open data publishers in the private and public sectors, reducing barriers to publication. OKI’s focus in this programme will be to create better open data publication […]
eLife: Facilitating data validation & reuse with goodtables
Open Knowledge International is working on the Frictionless Data project to remove the friction in working with data. We are doing this by developing a set of tools, standards, and best practices for publishing data. Through a series of pilots, we are working directly with organizations to solve real problems managing data. eLife is a […]
Remix public domain artworks: join the GIF IT UP 2017 competition
This blogpost has been adapted from the press release by Europeana. Open Knowledge International has for many years advocated for the importance of open cultural data, which enables citizens from across the world to enjoy this material, understand their cultural heritage and re-use this material to produce new works of art. Some examples of this work […]
Bridging the gap between journalism and data analysis
This blogpost was written by Chikezie Omeje, Kunle Adelowo and Vershima Tingir as part of the Open Data for Development (OD4D) embedded fellowship programme. This recently initiated programme is designed to build the organisational capacity of civil society organisations to use data effectively by raising the level of data literacy of the staff of the partner […]
This is what Europe can do to stimulate Text and Data Mining
This press release has been reposted from the FutureTDM website Text and data mining – using algorithms to analyse content in ways that would be impossible for humans – is shaping up to be a vital research tool of the 21st century. But Europe lags behind other parts of the world in adopting these new […]
Openbudgets.eu: the new platform for financial transparency in Europe
Today, OpenBudgets officially launches its fiscal transparency platform. Using OpenBudgets.eu journalists, civil servants, and data scientists can process, analyse, and explore the nature and relevance of fiscal data. The platform offers a toolbox to everyone who wants to upload, visualise and analyse fiscal data. From easy to use visualisations and high level analytics to fun games and accessible explanations of public budgeting and corruption […]
Research call: Mapping the impacts of the Global Open Data Index
Note: The deadline for proposal submission has been extended until Sunday, 17 September, 21:00 UTC. The Global Open Data Index (GODI) is a worldwide assessment of open data publication in more than 90 countries. It provides evidence how well governments perform in open data publication. This call invites interested researchers and organisations to systematically study the effects […]
Frictionless Data v1.0
Data Containerisation hits v1.0! Announcing a major milestone in the Frictionless Data initiative. Today, we’re announcing a major milestone in the Frictionless Data initiative with the official v1.0 release of the Frictionless Data specifications, including Table Schema and Data Package, along with a robust set of pre-built tooling in Python, R, Javascript, Java, PHP […]
OpenSpending platform update
Introduction OpenSpending is a free, open and global platform to search, visualise, and analyse fiscal data in the public sphere. This week, we soft launched an updated technical platform, with a newly designed landing page. Until now dubbed “OpenSpending Next”, this is a completely new iteration on the previous version of OpenSpending, which has been […]
Using the Global Open Data Index to strengthen open data policies: Best practices from Mexico
This is a blog post coauthored with Enrique Zapata, of the Mexican National Digital Strategy. As part of the last Global Open Data Index (GODI), Open Knowledge International (OKI) decided to have a dialogue phase, where we invited individuals, CSOs, and national governments to exchange different points of view, knowledge about the data and understand […]
Data-cards – a design pattern
Cross-posted on smth.uk It can be useful to recognise patterns in the challenges we face, and in our responses to those challenges. In doing this, we can build a library of solutions, a useful resource when similar challenges arise in the future. When working on innovative projects, as is often the case at Open Knowledge […]
Open Data for Tax Justice design sprint: building a pilot database of public country-by-country reporting
Tax justice advocates, global campaigners and open data specialists came together this week from across the world to work with Open Knowledge International on the first stages of creating a pilot country-by-country reporting database. Such a database may enable anyone to understand the activities of multinational corporations and uncover potential tax avoidance schemes. This design […]
FutureTDM symposium: sharing project findings, policy guidelines and practitioner recommendations
The FutureTDM project, in which Open Knowledge International participates, actively engages with stakeholders in the EU such as researchers, developers, publishers and SMEs to help improve the uptake of text and data mining (TDM) in Europe (read more). Last month, we held our FutureTDM Symposium at the International Data Science Conference 2017 in Salzburg, Austria. With the project drawing […]
Frictionless Data: Introducing our Tool Fund Grantees
Frictionless Data is an Open Knowledge International project which started over 10 years ago as a community-driven effort of Open Knowledge Labs. Over the last 3 years, with funding from partners like the Sloan Foundation and Google, the Frictionless Data team has worked tirelessly to remove ‘friction’ from working with data. A well-defined set of specifications have been published […]
ROUTETOPA User Stories
ROUTETOPA is a European innovation project aimed at improving citizen engagement by enabling meaningful interaction between open data users, open data publishers and open data. Open Knowledge International is one of 12 partners working on the project and our main mandate is to build genuine and active communities around the ROUTETOPA tools. In this blogpost, we share more […]
New open energy data portal set to spark innovation in energy efficiency solutions
Viderum spun off as a company from Open Knowledge International in 2016 with the aim to provide services and products to further expand the reach of open data around the world. Last week they made a great step in this direction by powering the launch of the Energy Data Service portal, which will make Denmark’s energy […]
Always Already Computational Reflections
Always Already Computational is a project bringing together a variety of different perspectives to develop “a strategic approach to developing, describing, providing access to, and encouraging reuse of collections that support computationally-driven research and teaching” in subject areas relating to library and museum collections. This post is adapted from my Position Statement for the initial […]
The final Global Open Data Index is now live
The updated Global Open Data Index has been published today, along with our report on the state of Open Data this year. The report includes a broad overview of the problems we found around data publication and how we can improve government open data. You can download the full report here. Also, after the Public Dialogue […]
What data do we need? The story of the Cadasta GODI fellowship
This blogpost was written by Lindsay Ferris and Mor Rubinstein There is a lot of data out there, but which data users needs to solve their issues? How can we, as an external body, know which data is vital so we can measure it? Moreover, what to do when data is published in so […]
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