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 […]
In May 2nd, 2017 we launched the Global Open Data Index (GODI). This blog post is part of a series that explore the main findings of GODI and the next challenges in open data measurement. In the past, we were asked why the Global Open Data Index assesses ‘places’ and not countries. Why do we […]
The Global Open Data Index has changed a lot this year, from our methodology to our software. This has been a community effort. This year we also collaborated with an amazing group of community leaders who helped gather the submissions in different regions as well as an extraordinary group of reviewers who helped make sure […]
The Global Open Data Index (GODI) is a tool to educate civil society and governments about open government data publication. We do so through presenting different information, including places scores, ranking, and scores for each data category per place, and comments by our submitters and reviewers. Even though we try to make this assessment coherent […]
We are pleased to present the 4th edition of the Global Open Data Index (GODI), a global assessment of open government data publication. GODI compares national government in 94 places across the 15 key datasets that have been assessed by our community as the most useful for solving social challenges. For this edition, we received […]
This blog post was co-authored with Denique Ferguson and Alesha Aris of the SlashRoots Foundation Over the last two years, the SlashRoots Foundation has supported the Caribbean’s participation in the Open Knowledge International’s Global Open Data Index, an annual survey which measures the state of “open” government across the world. We recently completed the 2016 survey […]
One month after releasing subsidystories.eu a joint project of Open Knowledge Germany and Open Knowledge International, we have some great news to share. Due to the extensive outreach of our platform and the data quality report we published, new datasets have been directly sent to us by several administrations. We have recently added new data […]
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, Nana Baah Gyan talks about his work carrying out an embedded data fellowship with Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) in Ghana as part of the OD4D programme. Generally, […]
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 software, specifications, and best practices for publishing data. The heart of Frictionless Data is the Data Package specification, a containerization format for any kind of data based on existing […]
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. The heart of Frictionless Data is the Data Package standard, a containerization format for any kind of data based on existing […]
The Global Open Data Index is a civil society collaborative effort to track the state of open government data around the world. The survey is designed to assess the openness of specific government datasets according to the Open Definition. Through this initiative, we want to provide a civil society audit of how governments actually publish […]
Data sharing has come a long way over the years. With open source tools, improvements and new features are always quickly on the rise. Serah Rono looks at how ROUTETOPA, a Horizon2020 project advocate for transparency. From as far back as the age of enlightenment, the human race has worked hard to keep authorities accountable. […]
Open Knowledge Germany and Open Knowledge International launched SubsidyStories.eu: a database containing all recipients of EU Structural Funds, accounting for 292,9 Billion Euros of EU Subsidies. The European Union allocates 44 % of its total 7-year budget through the European Structural Funds. Who received these funds – accounting for 347 Billion Euro from 2007 – […]
Blog written by Freyja van den Boom (FutureTDM researcher) and Lieke Ploeger. Since September 2015 Open Knowledge International has been working on finding new ways to improve the uptake of text and data mining in the EU, as part of the FutureTDM project. Text and data mining (TDM) is the process of extracting relevant information […]
This week Frictionless Data will be at Always Already Computational: Library Collections as Data. Sierra Williams looks at the containers for museum and library collections data and why storytelling is important for understanding these collections in the digital age. One of the great things about working at Open Knowledge International is being surrounded by fascinating […]
Today, Open Knowledge International is launching the Frictionless Data Tool Fund, a minigrant scheme offering grants of $5,000 to help extend the implementation of software libraries — code that is used to develop software programs and applications— for the Frictionless Data specifications by developing them in a range of programming languages. The focus of the […]
Open Knowledge International is a member of OD4D, a global network of leaders in the open data community, working together to develop open data solutions around the world. Here, Simeon Oriko talks about his work carrying out an embedded data fellowship with Oxfam in Kenya as part of the Open Data for Development (OD4D) programme. For years, […]
Data sharing has come a long way over the years. With open source tools, improvements and new features are always quickly on the horizon. Serah Rono looks at the improvements that have been made to open source data management system CKAN through the course of the ROUTE-TO-PA project. In the present day, 5MB worth of […]
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