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 […]
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 — […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The following guest post is from Stephen Hilton, Programme Lead of the Connecting Bristol initiative. Unusually perhaps, for a city council, we recognise and relish the fact that our city is a quirky, unorthodox, hot-bed of creative digital activity and activism. Bristol City Council has been promoting local e-democracy for the last decade. And it […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation is organising an international workshop on open government data, which will take place in London this autumn: You can register at: From the announcement: What is it? Basic details are as follows: What? A two day workshop for people interested in open government data. When? 18-19th November 2010 Where? University of […]
Today the New Zealand Government announced the NZGOAL framework for opening up material published by public bodies: The New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL) was approved by Cabinet on 5 July 2010 as government guidance for State Services agencies to follow when releasing copyright works and non-copyright material for re-use by third […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation Working Group on EU Open Data is organising a session on linked data and open data at the ICT2010 event in Brussels later this year. Where? T 003, Brussels Expo When? 11:00-12:30 CET, 28th September 2010 From the blurb: This networking session will discuss how public access to government data – […]
The following guest post is from David Kane, who is a research officer at NCVO. He blogs on NCVO’s website and can be found on twitter @kanedr. The author wishes to acknowledge Louise Brown from NCVO’s ICT and Collaboration Team for her valuable input. Here at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) we’ve recently […]
Yesterday I went to ScotGovCamp in Edinburgh and had a lovely time. Spent more of it chatting in the hallway than participating in the sessions; but have detailed notes from the Open Data session led by Chris Taggart of Openly Local, and scatterings from elsewhere. Open Data Chris cites his membership of OKF’s Open Government […]
The following interview was published earlier this week by the European Journalism Centre in the Netherlands. In recent years the practice and philosophy of making data freely available for use and re-use has been taken up by many different institutions, from national governments to international organizations such as the World Bank. Journalists too have started […]
The following guest post is from Katleen Janssen, researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Groups on EU Open Data and Open Government Data. In Belgium – and I can imagine this is the case in more countries – we look […]
The following article was originally published on the Guardian Datablog by Lisa Evans, the Lead Researcher on the OKF’s Where Does My Money Go? project. We thought we were getting everything with the COINS release. In fact we were missing the best part of all: the Whole of Government Accounts. Before he became chancellor George […]
The following guest post is from Ivan Begtin, who is a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Working Group on Open Government Data. I would like to announce new open data project on Russian government spending… Background Russian Federal Law – 94-FZ of 21.07.2005 declared that Russian Federal Treasury and Russian regional procurement agencies should […]
This is a post by Lisa Evans, lead researcher on Where Does My Money Go?. When I saw the COINS data that was published at the beginning of June, I suspected there was something missing. I had been reading about the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) — a project to provide a really good detailed overview of […]
The Telegraph ask Open Knowledge Foundation Director Rufus Pollock and Chris Taggart of OpenlyLocal about what UK government datasets they’d like to see opened up next…
Last week I participated in the third (and sadly final!) conference of Communia project, a European thematic network on the digital public domain. The theme of this conference was University and Cyberspace and several of the talks articulated a vision in which universities, academics, and students play a key role in creating, curating and promoting […]
The good folks at Scraperwiki are organising an event for developers and journalists later this month in Birmingham, UK. Great to see them helping to connect the dots between people who build things with datasets and those who can help to put the data into context! You can sign up at: From the announcement: What? […]
The following guest post is from Hjalmar Gislason, an open data activist, member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on EU Open Data, and founder of structured data start-up, DataMarket. The rise of Open Data in the last 3-4 years is no news to anybody reading this blog. More and more public organizations are […]
The following guest post is from Chris Taggart of OpenlyLocal, who advises the Where Does My Money Go? project on local spending data, and is a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Working Group on Open Government Data. This is a cross-post — Chris’ original post here. When the coalition announced that councils would have […]
On Friday the data.gov.uk team announced the first meeting of a new Public Sector Transparency Board: The Board will drive forward the Government’s transparency agenda, making it a core part of all government business and ensuring that all Whitehall departments meet the new tight deadlines set for releasing key public datasets. In addition, it is […]
The following guest post is from Ivan Begtin, who is a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Working Group on Open Government Data. I would like to give a brief overview of a few projects I have been working on related to open government data in Russia. OpenGovData.ru The first is OpenGovData.ru, which is a […]
Today in the UK the Conservatives/Liberal Democrat coalition presented their Emergency Budget. Collaborating with David McCandless, Where Does My Money Go? have created a simple visualization to help you understand and contextualise the budget, and answer some basic questions such as: How much impact will the emergency budget have on the £156bn budget deficit? And […]
The following guest post is from Julian Todd, who works on projects such as Public Whip, UNdemocracy, and ScraperWiki. He is also a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data.. The post was originally published on Julian’s blog, Freesteel. Yesterday Transport for London made a data dump of various locations […]
Something amazing has happened since the government spending recorded in the COINS database was made openly available to everyone. I’m talking about the impressive range of free, and in many cases open source, products to display the COINS data. So far there are COINS search engines from The Guardian and The Open Knowledge Foundation, graphs […]
The following guest post is from David Eaves who is the founder of datadotgc.ca, an open data portal powered by our CKAN software that crowdsources the location of open data sets in Canada (Canada has no equivalent of data.gov or data.gov.uk). David is also a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. […]
The following guest post is by Stefano Costa and Federico Morando. Stefano Costa is a researcher at the University of Siena and Coordinator of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Data in Archaeology. Federico Morando is Managing Director & Research Fellow at the NEXA Center for Internet & Society and a member of the Working […]
At 0930 BST today the UK government released the COINS database, one of the biggest sources of information on UK public spending. Open Knowledge Foundation Director Rufus Pollock says: The release of this data marks another milestone in the opening up of public data – in which the UK leads the way. While this is […]
The following guest post is from Chris Taggart of OpenlyLocal, who advises the Where Does My Money Go? project on local spending data, and is a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Working Group on Open Government Data. With a string of announcements this week and the COINS database (the UK’s biggest source of information […]
It’s exciting times right now for people in the UK interested in how public funds are being used. The new government has proposed to publish unprecedented amounts of spending data in unprecedented detail. In the new Coalition Programme for Government (PDF), the PM has committed to the following, which is very similar to the Conservative […]
The following guest post is from Olav Anders Øvrebø, Assistant Professor at the University of Bergen, and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Working Group on EU Open Data. This text was first published as a European Public Sector Information Platform Topic Report on ePSIplatform.eu. A series of promising new initiatives gives reasons to be […]
JJ Abrams, the creator of Lost gave a great talk at TED 2007 themed around “Mystery Boxes”. A Mystery Box is a box of unspecified goods. When you buy a Mystery Box – from a magic shop, as Abrams describes doing with his grandfather as a child, or from a pet store, sweet shop, or […]
The following guest post is from Kate Sahota, one of the people involved in the Warwickshire County Council’s Open Data (which we we blogged about last month). How it all began It seems the key to triggering a successful open data project is to show the people that matter something shiny, like an iPhone, with […]
With the UK election over, reductions in public spending are currently at the top of the agenda. Whichever way you cut it, taxpayers and public service users look set to face big changes. The ‘Where Does My Money Go?’ dashboard – a free, interactive online tool from the Open Knowledge Foundation – will help to […]
At the Open Knowledge Foundation we have been working hard to support the development of open data catalogues around the world. The main purpose of these is to make official datasets easy to find and to reuse — whether by researchers, journalists, or web developers building new applications or services for citizens. Work is underway […]
We are delighted to announce the launch of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, which took place yesterday at the Leipzig Semantic Web Day. The OKF Germany chapter will be dedicated to promoting all forms of open knowledge in Germany — including open government data, open data in science, and the public domain. Work is already […]
The following post is from Donovan Hide, a developer working on the Straight Choice project. Donovan explains how he made an increasingly popular picture of the election. Over 5000 leaflets have been collected, scanned or photographed and then uploaded by the public to the the straight choice. All these images were very colourful and varied, […]
If you’d asked me back in 2005, I’d have told you that the 2010 election would be the first online election. It turned out not to be. For example, the YouTube and Facebook leaders debate was much less important than the Television debates. However, there are a few places relating to data where the Internet […]
Warwickshire County Council pinged us earlier this week to let us know about the launch of their new open data site! The site hosts a range of data sets – available in CVS or XML. For example there are details about education in the region, including: Number of pupils enrolled in Warwickshire schools by school […]
Not so long ago we were in contact with David Eaves, a Canadian public policy analyst and open government data advocate (who advises the Mayor of Vancouver about open data and open government), about starting an catalogue for Canadian open government data. A couple of weeks ago he and a small team of coders and […]
The following guest post is from Andreas Langegger who is at the Johannes Kepler University Linz and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on EU Open Data. Historically, transparency has never been our strength – let’s shape the future. Transparency and public sector information policy have always been rather infamous topics in Austria. […]
We’re very excited about this year’s annual Open Knowledge Conference, OKCon 2010, which will take place in London tomorrow! http://www.okfn.org/okcon/ Speakers and sessions include: ‘State of the Nation’ Keynotes: Matthias Schindler, Wikimedia (Germany) on ‘Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain’ Glyn Moody, on the ‘Post-Analogue World’ Peter Murray-Rust, on ‘Recent Developments in Open Science’ Chris […]
The following post is from David Read, a developer working on the Open Knowledge Foundation’s CKAN project. David attended the Greater London Authorities’ Possibilities of Real Time Data conference earlier this week. London’s authorities have opened up lots of their data this year, kicking off in January with the launch of the London Data Store […]
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