Announcement of strategic funding for the Open Data Editor

We are pleased to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation has been selected as a grantee of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, marking a significant milestone for the development of the Open Data Editor (ODE) application, a tool that will unlock the power of data for key groups, including scientists, journalists and data activists.

The South at the world’s centre: OKFN dive into Uruguay’s data marathon

At the beginning of November, I visited Uruguay in the capacity of Open Knowledge Foundation’s Partnerships Lead to take part in #MaratónDeDatos, a pool of various events focused on the work with data, open data and open knowledge, and a meeting point for the global community engaged with the topic. I first arrived in Montevideo […]

Csv,conf is going to Mexico!

The most beloved community conference for datamakers from all around the world is back in May 2024! After a very successful seventh edition in Buenos Aires in April 2023, we have decided to linger a little longer in Latin America. We are very excited to announce that csv,conf,v8 will take place in Mexico!  The commallama […]

Frictionless specs update

Originally published on: https://frictionlessdata.io/blog/2023/11/15/frictionless-specs-update/ We are very pleased to announce that thanks to the generous support of NLnet we have kickstarted the Frictionless specifications update. After a first discussion with the community in the last call, we are setting up a working group to help us with the v2 release. Taking into account the group’s concerns about the […]

Ready… Set… Register!

Registration for csv,conf,v7 in Buenos Aires, Argentina is now Open. The anticipation is over! No more guessing and waiting! The community conference for data makers everywhere, returns in person! Csv,conf,v7 will be in the beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina April 19-20. It will not be a conference without YOU present! This is one of the events […]

csv,conf,v7 is going to Buenos Aires!

Save the data/date! csv,conf,v7 will be held in Buenos Aires (Argentina) from April 17 to 21, 2023. csv,conf is a community event for datamakers from all around the world. At csv,conf, we get together to discuss open data, and how data can be used to solve problems across open source, journalism, science, government, and beyond! […]

Data that empowers: LAC perspectives on data governance

A few weeks ago we had a conversation in the Statistical Conference of the Americas about Data Governance. This brief post is a follow up of some of the concepts and ideas that we shared in the panel. Transparency as a Holistic Approach As citizens and members of the Civil Society, a huge challenge we […]

Frictionless Planet – Save the Date

We believe that an ecosystem of organisations combining tools, techniques and strategies to transform datasets relevant to the climate crisis into applied knowledge and actionable campaigns can get us closer to the Paris agreement goals. Today, scientists, academics and activists are working against the clock to save us from the greatest catastrophe of our times. […]

Announcing the winner of the Net Zero Challenge 2021

Three months ago, the team at Open Knowledge Foundation launched a new project – the Net Zero Challenge – a global competition to identify, promote and support innovative, practical and scalable uses of open data that advance climate action. We received over 80 applications from 40 different countries. Many of them were excellent. From the applications, we chose a shortlist of five teams […]

Watch the Net Zero Challenge pitch contest

This week, five shortlisted teams took part in the final stage of the Net Zero Challenge – a global competition to identify, promote and support innovative, practical and scalable uses of open data that advance climate action. The five teams presented their three-minute project pitches to the Net Zero Challenge Panel of Experts, and a live audience. Each pitch was followed by […]

MyData Online 2020

MyData Online 2020 (Dec 10-12) will gather 1000 personal data professionals and people interested in the data economy. They bring together business, legal, tech and societal perspectives to create sustainable, fair and prosperous digital society. The online conference will provide quality programme, networking opportunities and social connections. The conference is organised by the MyData Global – an […]

The UK’s National Data Strategy: first impressions and observations

After years of promises, the UK Government has finally announced the launch of a ‘framework’ National Data Strategy. The aim of the strategy is to “drive the UK in building a world-leading data economy while ensuring public trust in data use” and the government has set out five missions for this work: Unlocking the value […]

The UK must not be left behind on the road to a more open society

The United Kingdom still doesn’t have a National Data Strategy. The idea has been stuck in development hell for years, and the delay has already had an impact. Had a strategy been in place before the coronavirus pandemic, there would have been rules and guidelines in place to help the sharing of data and information […]

csv,conf returns for version 5 in May

Save the date for csv,conf,v5! The fifth version of csv,conf will be held at the University of California, Washington Center in Washington DC, USA, on May 13 and 14, 2020.    If you are passionate about data and its application to society, this is the conference for you. Submissions for session proposals for 25-minute talk […]

Fighting for a more open world: our CEO’s keynote speech at Open Belgium 2019

On Monday 4th March 2019, Catherine Stihler, the new chief executive of Open Knowledge International, will deliver a keynote speech – Fighting for a more open world – at the Open Belgium 2019 conference in Brussels. Read the speech below and visit the Open Belgium website or follow the hashtag to learn more about the event. […]

Open data and the fight against corruption in Latvia, Sweden and Finland

This blog has been crossposted from the Open Knowledge Sweden blog. Transparency International Latvia, in collaboration with Open Knowledge Sweden and Open Knowledge Finland, has published a new study on open data and anti-corruption policies in Latvia, Sweden and Finland, showing that governments in the three countries could do more to leverage the potential of […]

Paris Peace Forum Hackathon: A new chance to talk about open data

A few weeks ago we had the chance to attend the first edition of the Paris Peace Forum. The goal of this new initiative is to exchange and discuss concrete global governance solutions. More than 10,000 people attended, 65 Heads of State and Government were present, and 10 international organizations leaders convened for those three days […]

Open Washing: digging deeper into the tough questions

This blog was written by James McKinney, Oscar Montiel and Ana Brandusescu For the second time in history, the International Open Data Conference (IODC) opened a space for us to talk about #openwashing. The insights from IODC16 have been brilliantly summarised by Ana Brandusescu, also a host of this year’s session. On this occasion, we […]

The next target user group for the open data movement is governments

Here’s an open data story that might sound a bit counterintuitive. Last month a multinational company was negotiating with an African government to buy an asset. The company, which already owned some of the asset but wanted to increase its stake, said the extra part was worth $6 million. The government’s advisers said it was […]

A short story about Open Washing

Great news! The International Open Data Conference (IODC) accepted my proposal about Open Washing. The moment I heard this I wanted to write something to invite everyone to our session. It will be a follow-up to the exchange we had during IODC in 2015. First a couple disclaimers: This text is not exactly about data. […]

SaveOurAir: An experiment in data-activation

Contemporary cities seem to be in a race to be increasingly ‘smart’ and data-driven. At smart city Expos around the world, visitors are presented with new visual modes of modes of knowing and governing. Dashboards providing birds-eye views of the real-time movement of objects in the city, are perhaps the most iconic of these visualizations. […]

Open Council Data of more than 100 Dutch municipalities reused in app WhereGovernment

This blog has been reposted from the Open State Foundation blog. More than a hundred Dutch municipalities release Open Council Data, including all documents of the municipal council – decisions, agendas, motions, amendments and policy documents – easily and collectively accessible. The data is now available for reuse in applications. Recently, the first app that […]

Data aggregators: a solution to open data issues

This is a guest opinion piece written by Guiseppe Maio, and Jedrzej Czarnota PhD. Their biographies can be found below this post. Open Knowledge International’s report on the state of open data identifies the main problems affecting open government data initiatives. These are: the very low discoverability of open data sources, which were rightfully defined […]

An approach to building open databases

This post has been co-authored by Adam Kariv, Vitor Baptista, and Paul Walsh. Open Knowledge International (OKI) recently coordinated a two-day work sprint as a way to touch base with partners in the Open Data for Tax Justice project. Our initial writeup of the sprint can be found here. Phase I of the project ended […]

Impact Series: Improving Data Collection Capacity in Non-Technical Organisations

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 […]

Open Data Index in Brazil launched! by FGV and Open Knowledge Brazil

Open Knowledge Brazil and Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) – a higher education institution in Brazil worked together to develop the Brazilian edition of the Open Data Index, which is being used by governments as a tool to enhance public management, and bring it even closer to Brazil’s reality.  About the Open Data Index The Brazilian […]

Steady but Slow – Open Data’s Progress in the Caribbean

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 […]

Three ways ROUTETOPA promotes Transparency

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. […]

PersonalData.IO helps you get access to your personal data

PersonalData.IO is a free and open platform for citizens to track their personal data and understand how it is used by companies. It is part of the MyData movement, promoting a human-centric approach to personal data management. A lot of readers of this blog will be familiar with Freedom of Information laws, a legal mechanism […]

Nobody wants to become an activist!

Hacking the Entry Point to Digital Participation During the recent Ultrahack 2016 tournament in Helsinki (one of the biggest hackathons in Europe for the development ideas and software), we formed a team called Two Minutes for My City that participated on the #hackthenation track. Our initial idea to improve the visualization of municipal decision processes evolved into a prototype of a mobile […]

Some misconceptions about data journalism

This blog originally appeared on Medium and is reposted with permission. In the past few years, a new discipline in journalism is slowly getting more and more followers — a discipline commonly known as ‘data journalism’. These so-called ‘data journalists’ are usually envisioned as the younger, tech savvy journalists, ones that are not afraid to analyse […]

Building 2030-watch.de: measuring progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs)

For the last 15 months the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany has been working on 2030Watch, a prototype to monitor progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs) from an independent, civil society-led perspective. There’s a detailed blog post on why such independent monitoring is necessary at our blog. To give a quick example, the UN Commission agreed to […]

What is the Open Fiscal Data Package?

This post looks at the Open Fiscal Data Package – an open standard for publishing fiscal data developed by Open Knowledge International, GIFT and the World Bank. In September of 2016, Mexico became the first country to officially endorse the OFDP, by publishing Federal Budget data  in open formats using OpenSpending tools. OpenSpending is one of […]

International Data Week: From Big Data to Open Data

Report from International Data Week: Research needs to be reproducible, data needs to be reusable and Data Packages are here to help. International Data Week has come and gone. The theme this year was ‘From Big Data to Open Data: Mobilising the Data Revolution’. Weeks later, I am still digesting all the conversations and presentations […]

Who Will Shape the Future of the Data Society?

This piece was originally posted on the blog of the International Open Data Conference 2016, which takes place in Madrid, 6-7th October 2016. The contemporary world is held together by a vast and overlapping fabric of information systems. These information systems do not only tell us things about the world around us. They also play […]

Open Data as a Human Right: the Case of Case-Law

Open data is sometimes considered first as a way to foster economic growth through the development of innovative services built on public data. However, beyond this economic perspective, important though it may be, access to public sector information should be seen first and foremost as an unprecedented opportunity to bridge the gap between the government […]

Addressing Challenges in Opening Land Data – Resources Are Now Live

Earlier this year, Open Knowledge International announced a joint-initiative with Cadasta Foundation to explore open data in property rights with the ultimate goal of defining the land ownership dataset for the Global Open Data Index. Now, we are excited to share some initial, ground-breaking resources that showcase the complexity of working at the intersection of […]

New Report: “Changing What Counts: How Can Citizen-Generated and Civil Society Data Be Used as an Advocacy Tool to Change Official Data Collection?”

Following on from our discussion paper on “Democratising the Data Revolution”, today we’re pleased to announce the release of a new report titled “Changing What Counts: How Can Citizen-Generated and Civil Society Data Be Used as an Advocacy Tool to Change Official Data Collection?”. Undertaken as a collaboration between Open Knowledge and the CIVICUS DataShift, […]

New Initiative: Open Data for Tax Justice #OD4TJ

Every year countries lose billions of dollars to tax avoidance, tax evasion and more generally to illicit financial flows. According to a recent IMF estimate around $700 billion of tax revenues is lost each year due to profit-shifting. In developing countries the loss is estimated to be around $200 billion, which as a share of […]