Last week, the Open Knowledge Foundation had the pleasure of attending the Open Government Partnership conference in Mombasa, Kenya. Participants from all over Africa as well as the rest of the world convened to discuss transparency, citizen engagement and open knowledge – including open data – in this inspiring event to set the course for […]
We welcome the Shakespeare review as a time to reflect, coming as it does at a time of great growth in open data in government and the public sector. The UK has lead the way with government taking a pioneering stance on open data policy in recent years, and this report sets out key recommendations […]
CKAN is a powerful, open source, open data management platform, used by governments and organizations around the world to make large collections of data accessible, including the UK and US government open data portals. Today we are very happy and excited to announce the final release of CKAN 2.0. This is the most significant piece […]
The following guest post from Martin Tisné was first published on his personal blog. Some thoughts which I hope may be helpful in advance of the ‘follow the data‘ hack day this week-end: The open data sector has quite successfully focused on socially-relevant information: fixing potholes a la http://www.fixmystreet.com/, adopting fire hydrants a la http://adoptahydrant.org/. […]
Cape Town City Hall, Felix Gottwald It seems somewhat absurd to me that publicly funded institutions in South Africa should be allowed to copyright data produced using public funds. Of course, it is reasonable to expect that physical assets such as buildings, vehicles or machinery should appear on their balance sheets and be reserved for […]
Sometimes, the band continues to play because the audience is enjoying the music so much. This is pretty much what happened to Lobbyplag. Our plan was to drive home a single point that outraged us: Some Members of the European Parliament were taking law proposals verbatim from lobbyists and trying to slip them into the […]
Many open data initiatives forget to include the basic facts about the government itself In the past few years we’ve seen a huge shift in the way governments publish information. More and more governments are proactively releasing information as raw open data rather than simply putting out reports or responding to requests for information. This […]
I’m happy to announce version 3 release of Froide, the Open Source, Python-based platform for running Freedom of Information portals. Froide has been in development for nearly two years. It has powered the FOI portal in Germany for over a year and a half and has recently been used to launch an Austrian FoI site. […]
2013 is a very important year for Denmark as it has conquered two milestones in its Open Data agenda and this spring, the entire story will come together at the first conference addressing open data since the big release. Here’s the event info in brief: What?: Open Data track at Open Source Days Where?: Copenhagen […]
On the recent Open Data Day we ran the Open Data Census Challenge. The challenge enlisted the help of participants around the world in digging up information on open data in their city and region and contributing it to the newly launched city section of the Open Data Census. The results have been impressive with […]
This post is a translation of Il nostro contributo per salvare gli #OpenData originally published by Ernesto Belisario on Agorà Digitale. Most links point to documents and websites in Italian. In the past few weeks I have been very involved with transparency (and therefore, open data) together with the friends of Agorà Digitale. Right when […]
The following guest post is by Stef. ###European Union legislation: In whose interest? Brussels is a globally important policy-making center. The European single market is advanced and huge, with industry interests competing with national politics and NGO values. Policy negotiations at this level attract powerful interests. The current Data Protection Regulation, for example, brings in […]
This blog is cross-posted from the AidInfo blog. This Saturday is Open Data Day, a global initiative that encourages citizens around the world to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s governments. It’s an exciting time for Uganda because on Saturday we have jointly organised a hackathon with […]
Great News! Neelie Kroes, the Vice President of the European Commission, has sent her personal best wishes to the OKF team in Greece who launched their brand new open data portal last week! She said: “Open data is a very powerful lever for both a better economy and society. Open data is fuel for innovation, […]
Recent years have seen a huge expansion in open data activity around the world. This is very welcome, but at the same time it is now increasingly difficult to assess if, and where, progress is being made. To address this, we started the Open Data Census in order to track the state of open data […]
The following post is by Maria Schröder and Christian Heise from the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. It is cross-posted (and slightly shortened) from the Open Government Partnership blog. Germany’s official policy on transparency and accountability is lacking commitment and leadership. Disappointed by the political elites, the community is continuously trying to make the case for […]
Opening up public sector data is becoming a top priority for governments throughout Europe and North America. We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Greek open data hub, developed and hosted by OKFN Greece. The data hub integrates the Open Knowledge Foundation’s open source data cataloging software CKAN, which is also the […]
The Guardian Data Blog and Google are teaming up to find the best open government datavis out there. There is a top prize of $2,000 on offer for the best visualisation of open government data. The Open Knowledge Foundation will be helping to judge the competition and we want to see imaginative, clear and beautiful […]
You may have seen hints of it before, but the US government data portal, data.gov, has just announced officially that its next iteration – “data.gov 2.0” – will incorporate CKAN, the open-source data management system whose development is led and co-ordinated by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The OKF itself is one of the organisations helping […]
The Edinburgh Open Data community started the year in fine style with a meet-up hosted by the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge. The turn-out was excellent, with a wide range of participants. As usual, we had a number of lightening talks. The meet-up started with a welcome from Darryl Mead, Deputy National […]
We’re very pleased to announce that Andrew Stott, the UK’s former Director for Transparency and Digital Engagement who pioneered data.gov.uk, has joined the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Advisory Board. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him already from our events or from our open-government mailing list, here’s a brief bio: Andrew Stott was the […]
How transparent and accountable are different countries’ national budgets? Every two years, the International Budget Partnership (IBP) runs the Open Budget Survey to try to answer this question, by measuring the budgets of over 100 countries against a wide range of openness standards. The results for 2012 are released today, with an interactive data explorer […]
The ePSI platform team have announced “three days of open data fun” in Warsaw next month. The big day is the 2013 ePSI platform conference on 22nd February, but you’re also all invited to a workshop on the 21st, and a hackday on the 23rd! ###At a glance What?: ePSI conference, workshop and hackday When?: […]
Professor Hans Rosling, co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation and Advisory Board Member at the Open Knowledge Foundation, received a standing ovation for his keynote at OKFestival in Helsinki in September in which he urged open data advocates to demand CO2 data from governments around the world. Following on from this, the Open Knowledge […]
Aaron Swartz, coder, writer, archivist and activist, took his own life in New York on Friday. Aaron worked tirelessly to open up and maximise the societal impact of information in three areas which are central to our work at the Foundation: public domain cultural works, public sector information, and open access to publicly funded research. […]
Show me your data! Put it online! Make it re-useable and accessible! That’s the rallying cry of many in the Open Data movement. Few, at this point, seem to be demanding: make sure your data is credible, robust and of high quality! Why is this important? It is true that there is value in making […]
Following some remarks from Richard Swetenham from the European Commission, we made a few changes relative to the trialogue process and the coming steps: the trialogue will start its meetings on 17th December and it is therefore already very useful to call on our governments to support Open Formats! When we work on building all […]
This blog post is cross-posted from the Data-driven Journalism Blog. <img alt=”” src=”http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8199/8220416586_26ef2f90c6.jpg” style=”float: left;width: 250px;height: 375px;margin-left: 5px;margin-right: 5px” />Making sense of massive datasets that document the processes of lobbying and public procurement at European Union level is not an easy task. Yet a group of 25 journalists, developers, graphic designers and activists worked together […]
Here’s an interesting project using slightly unorthodox means to get data out into the open: crowdfunding the purchase of US healthcare data for subsequent open release. The company behind the project is NotOnly Dev, a Health IT software incubator who describe themselves as a “not-only-for-profit” company. Earlier this year they released a Doctor Social Graph, […]
Sharing governmental information in open, accessible and structured formats could substantially increase transparency and accountability in public policy design and implementation. Furthermore, it enables broad social engagement in the process. Hence, opening data and acknowledging the demands of the population that arise from this is key to promoting social equality and effective public administration. Based […]
As governments around the world start implementing open data initiatives, establishing a critical public able to analyse and contextualise the data released is paramount. To facilitate this the African Media Initiative and the World Bank Institute started to collaborate on a program to bring Data Bootcamps to places with Open Government Data initiatives. Data itself […]
It is not an immediately obvious partnership, and yet open data and crisis response go together incredibly well. As storms have lashed the East coast of the US in recent days, causing tragic loss of life and enormous financial damage, many of the tools which have helped citizens to track its path and stay safe […]
The most common argument in favor of open data is that it enhances transparency, and while the link may not always be causal, it is certainly true that both tend to go hand-in-hand. But there is another, more expansive perspective on open government data: that it is part of an effort to build public infrastructure. […]
In the first November weekend – 2-4 November – the UK Open Data Institute in London will host Hack4Health, organised by Coadec, Healthbox Accelerator, the Cabinet Office, NHS Hackday and the Open Knowledge Foundation. The event brings together entrepreneurs, developers and technical startups working on health and fitness data to create innovative solutions and products. […]
Exciting news on open legislative data from the US. Eric Mills (from the Sunlight Foundation), Josh Tauberer (of GovTrack.us) and Derek Willis have been beavering away on a public domain scraper and dataset from THOMAS.gov, the official source for legislative information for the US Congress. They’ve just hit a key milestone – the incorporation of […]
The following guest post is by Stef. The European Parliament is one of the most notoriously impenetrable institutions that governs our lives. Shining a light into the murky corridors of Brussels and Strasbourg becomes increasingly vital as the reach of the Parliament grows. Opening up the EU to greater citizen scrutiny will help to improve […]
If you have more than a passing interest in EU policies related to the internet, digital content and digital technologies then you’ve probably heard of Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. Today Neelie gave a virtual address for participants at OKFestival, one of the largest open knowledge […]
Public sector data lives a short life. Its life spans the life of applications that are hidden deep inside of public bodies. Tied to application-specific data formats, the data dies with the application that hosts it. During its lifetime the data stays within the public sector, serving a few predetermined purposes, while the ability to […]
Amidst the kerfuffle and cacophony of the Fringe Festival packing up for another year, the Edinburgh contingent came together again to meet, greet, present and argue all aspects of Open Data and Knowledge. OKFN Meet-ups are friendly and informal evenings for people to get together to share and debate all areas of openness. Depending on […]
A while ago, Augusto Hermann wrote on this blog about a unique civic engagement project: the participatory process of building a government data portal in Brazil. The site, dados.gov.br, is still going strong, and Augusto has now written over on the CKAN blog about the process of building and deploying it using CKAN, the Open […]
This guest post is by Scott Hubli and Andrew G. Mandelbaum from the National Democratic Institute (NDI). NDI is partering with the Sunlight Foundation and the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency to enhance networking among parliamentary monitoring organizations on issues of parliamentary openness and democratic reform, with the support of the Omidyar Network, the […]
This weekend Mexico City will host OpenDataMx, a Hackathon of public open data lasting 36 hours, during which participants will develop creative technical solutions to solve various civil society problems. Programmers, designers, members of civil society organizations (CSOs) and government officials are invited to participate in OpenDataMx and collaborate in web and mobile solutions […]
Where Do Development Questions Meet Development Data? Where: The Guardian (Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1P 2AP) When: Saturday and Sunday, August 25-26 2012 This weekend in London, coders, designers, development experts, data wranglers and interested citizens and invited for the Development Data Challenge in London. Join us at the Guardian for a weekend […]
If knowledge is power then data are the individual watts; one by itself is aesthetically pleasing, but functionally useless. It’s only when we add all the watts together that we produce enough power to move forward. Constitutionally we own this power, but the trickle of information provided to the public is practically useless – and […]
The Web Foundation and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) are looking to fund case study research on the emerging impacts of open data in developing countries. Open data policies are spreading across the world: but how does open data play out on the ground in different settings? What is needed for the potential transparency […]
There is a popular expression in Spanish that says, ‘en boca cerrada no entran moscas.’ Its equivalent in English is ‘loose lips sink ships,’ basically meaning that you are better off just keeping quiet. This culture of secrecy, some would say discretion, is particularly true in Spain’s public administration, being traditionally pervasive at all levels. […]
On June 5th at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow a round table conference took place, devoted to the opening of state-collected datasets. It was convened by the Higher School of Economics (HSE) together with the Russian Office of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Open data is the new trend in the state […]
At Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw last year, much discussion took place about academic research around Open Data. In response to these conversations, a specific ‘Open Data Academic Research’ session will be taking place at OKFest this year. The session will bring together a community of researchers from a variety of disciplines who are […]
Today, the UK govenrment made a major announcement regarding Open Data and released a revamped Data.Gov.UK — its flagship open data site. Open Data White Paper The Cabinet Office is ushering in a new wave of open data releases with the publication of a new Open Data White Paper. The White Paper gestures at a […]
What? When?? Where??? How?!?! were the questions that got me started some 10 years ago now, on my free software journey that’s taken me to the heart of the European Parliament. As a young Swedish musician, politically innocent and ignorant as the next, I got worked up together with a bunch of newborn stallmanites unleashing […]
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