Launch of the Principles on Open Bibliographic Data

The following post is from Adrian Pohl, coordinator of the OKFN Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data. Yesterday, the Principles of Open Bibliographic Data were launched at the Peter Murray-Rust symposium “Visions of a (Semantic) Molecular Future”: http://openbiblio.net/principles/ The principles’ main recommendations read as follows: When publishing bibliographic data make an explicit and robust license […]

Opening up linguistic data at the American National Corpus

The following guest post is from Nancy Ide, Professor of Computer Science at Vassar College, Technical Director of the American National Corpus project and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Linguistic Data. The American National Corpus (ANC) project is creating a collection of texts produced by native speakers of American English […]

Introducing Yourtopia.net

The following post is from Dirk Heine, a member of the new OKF Working Group on Economics and a member of the YourTopia.net Today we’re announcing a simple new app (also submitted to World Bank Apps competition) that allows anyone to say what kind of world, what ‘YourTopia’, they would like to live in: http://yourtopia.net/ […]

Who wants to build an open social bookmarking service?

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. As you may well have heard, in December there were rumours that the Delicious social bookmarking service may be discontinued. This has caused a flurry of activity in the online world to back up bookmarks and to look for alternative similar […]

BuioMetria Partecipativa

The following is a guest post by Andrea Giacomelli of BuioMetria Partecipativa (Participatory Sky Quality Monitoring), an Italy-based project that is also producing open data. Light pollution is a major issue which concerns not only astronomers and stargazers, but has serious impacts on the environment and human health. The BMP project is an initiative founded […]

OpenCorporates: the Open Database of the Corporate World

This is a guest post by Chris Taggart, a member of OKFN’s open government working group and creator of OpenlyLocal, who today launched a new website OpenCorporates in collaboration with Rob McKinnon (a project they first demoed at the Open Government Data Camp in November). Why OpenCorporates? Like most open data/open source projects, it was […]

Exploring European Energy Data

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Today was the Eurostat Hackday, where coders and designers in several European cities gathered to dig into the Eurostat data, the biggest source of statistical information about Europe and European member states. We met at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in […]

Reminder: Eurostat Hackday, Thursday 16th December 2010

A reminder that this Thursday 16th December is the Eurostat Hackday in a number of European cities, including Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Edinburgh, and London. More information is available at: From the blurb: What is Eurostat? Eurostat is the largest source of statistical information about European member states. It contains detailed comparative information on everything from […]

Notes from EU meeting on “pan-European open data portal”

A report from an EU meeting on the “goals and requirements for a pan-European data portal” is now online (PDF). The meeting took place in Luxembourg last month. Participants included Nigel Shadbolt, one of four members of the UK Government’s Public Sector Transparency Board, and Jose Manuel Alonso, co-lead of the eGovernment Interest Group at […]

What “open data” means – and what it doesn’t

The following post is from Melanie Chernoff, Public Policy Manager for Red Hat. It was originally published on opensource.com. Last week, an article in the Wall Street Journal talked about the Open Data Partnership, which “will allow consumers to edit the interests, demographics and other profile information collected about them. It also will allow people […]

Post-event material from Open Government Data Camp 2010 is now online!

A few weeks ago was the first international Open Government Data Camp in London. The event brought hundreds of people interested in open government data from around the world for two days of talks, discussions, planning and coding. You can now find videos, photos, notes and other material from the event online at:

Turin: Italian Open Data kicks off!

This post was cowritten by Friedrich Lindenberg, CKAN developer, and Stefano Costa, lead of OKF Italia. Driven by the powerful combination of late-night espresso and a room full of italian open data enthusiasts, the Italian instance of CKAN received a major push of new pacchetti dati last thursday in Turin. Most of the data sources […]

Opendataday & the International Hackathon: What happened. What happens next.

The following guest post is from David Eaves who is the founder of datadotgc.ca and a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. The post originally appeared on eaves.ca. I’m floored. As many of you know, 5 weeks I had a conversation with a group of open data geeks (like me, likely […]

Opendataday & the International Hackathon: What happened. What happens next.

Eurostat Hackday, 16th December 2010

We’re currently organising a ‘hackday’ on the Eurostat data, which will take place on Wednesday 16th December 2010: If you’d like to get involved, please get in touch on the euopendata mailing list, or drop us a line on eurostat at okfn dot org. From the website: Eurostat Hackday What is Eurostat? Eurostat is the […]

Launch of NosDonnees.fr, a community driven French open data catalogue

A quick note to announce (and celebrate!) the launch of a new community driven French open data catalogue, NosDonnees.fr last Friday in Paris. The catalogue is a joint initiative between the Open Knowledge Foundation and Regards Citoyens. Efforts are currently underway to populate the catalogue with information about French public datasets, including legal information about […]

Open Data Hackathon this Saturday 4th December!

A brief reminder that this Saturday 4th December is the international open data hackathon! What is it? As says the blurb: It’s a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world’s local, regional and […]

Open Bibliographic Data: How Should the Ecosystem Work?

The following guest post is from John Wilkin who is Executive Director of the HathiTrust, a Librarian at the University of Michigan and a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data. In the conversations about openness of bibliographic data, I often find myself in an odd position, vehemently in support of it […]

Let’s build a Debian for Development Data

The following guest post is from Rolf Kleef who is a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Knowledge in Development. It was originally posted here. I just returned from an intense week in the UK: an IKM Emergent workshop in Oxford, and the Open Government Data Camp in London had me almost drowning […]

Interested in open government data in Europe?

As you may know the OKF is working on an EU funded project called LOD2. Part of the project aims to bring together openly licensed, machine-readable datasets from local, regional and national public bodies throughout Europe. It will also provide free/open source tools and services for those interested in reusing open government data. We are […]

Opening up library records at the Open Library

The following is a guest blog post from George Oates, Director of the Open Library and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data. Open Library is a wiki-editable library catalog, with an open source backend, and a project of the Internet Archive. We like to describe the project as “a […]

New mapping tool from European Fish Subsidy project

The folks over at Fish Subsidy (who are also behind the amazing Farm Subsidy project) have just released a new mapping tool to help people find out how €3.4 billion of European fisheries subsidies is spent: This is a great example of reusing European public data to make it easier to understand for citizens, journalists […]

Let’s do an International Open Data Hackathon

The following guest post is from David Eaves who is the founder of datadotgc.ca and a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. The post originally appeared on eaves.ca. Let’s do it. Last summer, I met Pedro Markun and Daniela Silva at the Mozilla Summit. During the conversation – feeling the drumbeat […]

Open data in public private partnerships: how citizens can become true watchdogs

The following guest post is from Jonathan Van Parijs at the Where’s My Villo? project. The context: bike-sharing schemes, public private partnerships and open data After Paris, Barcelona and a growing number of cities around the world, Brussels inaugurated its bike-sharing scheme in May 2009, called Villo!. By far the most convenient way to travel […]

Design Meets Data, Berlin, 29th November 2010

We’re helping to organise an event (hopefully a series of events!) about data visualisation in Berlin later this November. We started doing workshops on open source visualisation technologies in London a few years ago and hope to pick up with more activity in this area very soon! If you’re interested in keeping in getting involved, […]

Where are the cuts in your country?

As you may have seen, last week the OKF launched a new mini project called WhereAreTheCuts.org. Created by by Jordan Hatch and Richard Pope, the site enables UK citizens to find and report spending cuts near them. It had a pretty enthusiastic reception, and was picked up by the Telegraph and several local news sources. […]

Getting started with Governmental Linked Open Data

The following guest post is from Bart van Leeuwen, a firefighter in the city of Amsterdam who has been experimenting with governmental linked data on Open Street Map to help improve fire truck navigation. Working as a firefighter in the city of Amsterdam, will Linked Open Government Data help me fight fires? Probably not, but […]

If you care about public sector information in Europe – speak up now!

The European Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive is intended to make it easier for everyone to find and reuse information produced by public bodies. The European Commission’s recognition of the value of PSI dates back to at least the late 1990s, well before the more recent wave of interest in open government data. The EC […]

Richard Poynder interviews Jordan Hatcher

Open Acccess journalist extraordinaire Richard Poynder recently interviewed the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Jordan Hatcher about data licensing, the public domain, and lots more. An excerpt is reproduced below. The full version is available on Richard’s website. Over the past twenty years or so we have seen a rising tide of alternative copyright licences emerge — […]

Open Public Procurements Portal of Slovakia

The following guest post is from Stefan Urbanek, an independent consultant, analyst, and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data. You can meet him in person at Open Government Data Camp in London this November! Introduction “The Ministry of Defense of the Slovak Republic is a government department which is […]

Open Licenses vs Public Licenses

The following post is from Jordan Hatcher, a Director at the Open Knowledge Foundation and founder of the Open Data Commons project. It was originally posted on his blog. Let’s face it, we often have a definition problem. It’s critical to distinguish “open licenses” from “public licenses” when discussing IP licensing, especially online — mostly […]

New microshort film on the Public Domain Calculators!

Last week I sat down with Primavera De Filippi, our new coordinator for the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on the Public Domain and we edited some footage we had shot at a meeting a while ago into a microshort film about the Public Domain Calculators. Public Domain Calculators from Open Knowledge Foundation on Vimeo. […]

The Zen of Open Data

Just spotted this on the New Zealand open government data ‘ninjas’ list. Why have principles when you can have poems? ;-) The Zen of Open Data, by Chris McDowall Open is better than closed. Transparent is better than opaque. Simple is better than complex. Accessible is better than inaccessible. Sharing is better than hoarding. Linked […]

Notes from Workshop on Open Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain

Last Thursday we had a Workshop on Open Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain in Berlin (as we blogged about here and here). It was a great opportunity for movers and shakers from the world of open bibliographic data to meet in person, and to discuss various projects, policies, standards and initiatives relating to making […]

New open bibliographic data from Konstanz and Cambridge!

So far it has a great week for open bibliographic data fans! Yesterday Konstanz University Library relicensed their data under CC0, as reported by Adrian Pohl, Coordinator of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data: Mathias Schindler today tweeted that the University Library Konstanz eventually published its data under CC-0. This is the first […]

Workshop on Open Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain, 7th October 2010

A brief reminder that our workshop on Open Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain (which we blogged about a few months ago) is taking place on Thursday 7th October. Details are as follows: Where? Rooms 108/108a, FU Berlin, Garystr. 21, 14195 Berlin When? Thursday 7th October 2010 Registration? http://publicdomain.eventbrite.com/ Hashtag? #pdobd Notes? http://okfnpad.org/pdobd Here’s the […]

Norwegian data catalogue to be based on CKAN!

We’re very pleased to see that the Norwegian government will be using our CKAN software, an open-source registry of open data, to build their national data catalogue! From their announcement: During the next few months, data.norge.no will be set up as a national data catalog using CKAN, Drupal, and the integration module used by data.gov.uk. […]

Visualising the German budget with Offener Haushalt

We’re delighted to announce that our friends at the Open Data Network and OKF Deutschland last week released some work that they have been doing to collate and visualise information related to public spending in Germany: Infosthetics broke the news: Offener Haushalt [offenerhaushalt.de] (German for ‘open budget’) is another demonstration of the large potential behind […]

Open Data Manual Book Sprint

This weekend, following hot on the heels of the Government 2.0 Camp, members of the Foundation’s Working Group on EU Open Data will be meeting up in person for a 2-day book sprint to create an Open Data Manual. Full details on the wiki page: http://wiki.okfn.org/Open_Data_Manual More background from Ton Zijlstra’s notice on EPSI Platform: […]

Open Data Talk at PICNIC 10 in Amsterdam

This week I’m going to be in Amsterdam at PICNIC ’10 speaking about open data — what it is, why it’s good and how we can go about growing the open data ecosystem. If you’re in Amsterdam — at PICNIC or otherwise — and interested in open data we’d love to hear from you. Update: […]

Pushing the envelope

The following guest post is from Francis Bacon, member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Knowledge in Development and blogger at Pop Goes the Weasel. A few weeks ago I received a large brown envelope in the post. It contained a letter, written in reply to a complaint I had made. And […]

Introducing LAPSI and EVPSI

The following guest post is from Claudio Artusio, who works for the LAPSI and EVPSI projects. Information generated and collected by public sector bodies represents a veritable gold mine: optimal access to and reuse of this public sector information (PSI) has a positive impact on market services improvements, but also on the democratic involvement of […]

Announcing the LOD2 project

I’m very pleased to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation is a consortium partner in the recently funded FP7 project LOD2. From the overview: Over the past three years, the semantic web activity has gained momentum with the widespread publishing of structured data as RDF. The Linked Data paradigm has therefore evolved from a practical […]

New report on access to information and open government data

We’re pleased to announce that a new report on access to information and open government data is open for consultation! From the announcement: Access Info Europe and the Open Knowledge Foundation, in collaboration with the Open Society Institute Information Program, are holding a public consultation on open government data and the right of access to […]

Jordan Hatcher talk on Open Data Licensing at iSemantics

Last week, the Foundation’s legal expert Jordan Hatcher, was at iSemantic conference in Graz to give a session on open data licensing (especially for linked data). Here are the slides: Linked Data Licensing: Introduction – I-Semantics 2010 View more presentations from jordanhatcher.

Next version of the Linked Open Data cloud based on CKAN!

Many of you will be familiar with the now ubiquitous Linked Open Data cloud diagram, maintained by Richard Cyganiak. The diagram illustrates efforts to link together many different data sources, from the CIA World Factbook to DBpedia, a structured database of information extracted from Wikipedia. It looks like this: We’re very pleased that the diagram’s […]

The Power of Open Data

The following guest post is from David Bollier, independent policy strategist, journalist, and author of Viral Spiral. It was originally posted at the On the Commons blog. Science has always recognized the power of sharing in developing new knowledge. But in the search for treatments and cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, the sprawling […]

Slides and notes from Data Driven Journalism event

Last week I attended the Data-driven journalism in Amsterdam (which we blogged about here) run by the European Journalism (who interviewed me here). My slides from the event are now up here: Open Data and Data Driven Journalism View more presentations from jwyg. Below are some lovely lofi graphical notes from Anna Lena Schiller: It […]

Data.gov.uk releases CKAN Drupal Module

We’re delighted to see that the data.gov.uk folks have released the code for their CKAN Drupal module. As many will know, the OKF’s CKAN powers data.gov.uk as well as over a dozen other data catalogues around the world. From the blog post: As part of the government’s ongoing work around transparency, today we are releasing […]

Data Journalism Meetup, Berlin, 1st September 2010

We’re delighted to announce a meetup on Data Journalism in Berlin in September organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation and Georgi Kobilarov at Uberblic Labs. Details are as follows: When? 1st September 2010 Where? Fjord Office, Friedrichstrasse 210, Berlin Register? You can register here! Speakers will include: Martin Belam, The Guardian Jonathan Gray, The Open […]

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