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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
The good news is that an increasing number of people seem to agree that: Facebook, Google etc are monopolies That is a problem Agreeing we have a problem is always a crucial first step. But to go further we need to: Correctly diagnose the disease — in particular, avoid confusing the symptoms with the root […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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. […]
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 […]
We worked with eLife to set up measures to assess the data quality, so that the value of this shared data is better understood by the research community.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 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 […]
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 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 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 […]
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 […]
This blog post is part of our Global Open Data Index (GODI) blog series. Firstly, it discusses what open licensing is and why it is crucial for opening up data. Afterward, it outlines the most urgent issues around open licensing as identified in the latest edition of the Global Open Data Index and concludes with […]
Open Knowledge International is a member of Open Data for Development (OD4D), a global network of leaders in the open data community, working together to develop open data solutions around the world. In this blog, David Opoku of Open Knowledge International talks about how the OD4D programme’s Africa Open Data Collaboration Fund and Embedded Fellowships are helping build […]
For most municipalities, participatory budgeting is a relatively new approach to include their citizens directly in the decision making for new investments and developments in their community. Fundación Civio is a civic tech organisation based in Madrid, Spain that develops tools for citizens that both reveal the civic value of data and promote transparency. The […]
Since 2015 Open Knowledge International has been part of the consortium of ROUTETOPA (Raising Open, User-friendly, Transparency-Enabling Technologies for Public Administrations, routetopa.eu), an EU-funded project that is working round the clock to provide platforms for open data enthusiasts to interact on the subject of open data with data publishers and with other open data users. The […]
This blog post is part of our Global Open Data Index blog series. It is a call to recalibrate our attention to the many different elements contributing to the ‘good quality’ of open data, the trade-offs between them and how they support data usability (see here some vital work by the World Wide Web Consortium). […]
The third manifestation of everyone’s favorite community conference about data—csv,conf,v3—happened earlier this May in Portland, Oregon. The conference brought together data makers/doers/hackers from various backgrounds to share knowledge and stories about data in a relaxed, convivial, alpaca-friendly (see below) environment. Several Open Knowledge International staff working across our Frictionless Data, OpenSpending, and Open Data for […]
Tax avoidance and profit shifting by corporations across the world is an issue which has been gaining visibility over the past decade with many governments, campaigners, researchers and journalists calling for urgent political action. These calls have only gotten louder following recent reporting on scandals such as Luxleaks and the Panama Papers by the International […]
Open Data Kosovo is a civic-tech organization that uses technology to contribute towards social good. The organization has created an exciting network of partners both local and international while working on projects related to visualizing procurement data, mapping satellite imagery for human rights violations, data collection and entry of 112 emergency calls, countering violent extremism […]
Fiscal data is a complex topic. It comes in all different kind of formats and languages, its’ availability cannot be taken for granted and complexity around fiscal data needs special skills and knowledge to unlock and fully understand it. The Global Open Data Index (GODI) assesses three fiscal areas of national government: budgets, spending, and procurement. Repeatedly […]
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