Two years on, little action from the EU on public country-by-country reporting

Two years ago, members of the European Parliament voted to force large multinational corporations registered in Europe to reveal how much tax they pay, how many people they employ and what profits they make in every country where they work. The transparency measure – known as public country-by-country reporting (or public CBCR) – was first […]

Two new supporters join the Open Data Day mini-grant fund!

Open Data Day 2019 is closer each day! We’re excited to see the events map slowly coming together in different parts of the world. For those of you who are not familiar with the event, Open Data Day is the yearly event where we reach out to new people and build new solutions to issues […]

Fostering open, inclusive, and respectful participation

At Open Knowledge International we have been involved with various projects with other civil society organisations aiming for the release of public interest data, so that anyone can use it for any purpose. More importantly, we focus on putting this data to use, to help it fulfil its potential of working towards fairer and more […]

Data-cards – a design pattern

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 […]

New research: Understanding the drivers of license proliferation

Open licensing is still a major challenge for open data publication. In a recent blog post on the state of open licensing in 2017 Open Knowledge International identified that governments often decide to create custom licenses instead of using standard open licenses such as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. This so-called license proliferation is problematic for […]

Why MyData 2017?

This is a guest post explaining the focus of the MyData conference in Tallinn and Helsinki later this month. By a famous writing tip, you should always start texts with ‘why?’. Here we are taking that tip, and we actually find many ways to answer the big Why. So, Why MyData 2017? Did you get […]

The state of open licensing in 2017

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 Data Serbia: Hello World!

Open Data is at its beginnings in Serbia. A National open data portal was recently established and currently hosts 29 datasets from few public institutions. There is an insufficient understanding of the open data concept and its transformative potential among public institutions and the community of users also lack the skills for its effective use, […]

Data Tables at csv,conf,v3

You may have heard that csv,conf,v3 is happening again this year, May 2nd and 3rd, in Portland, Oregon! We have a really great line-up of speakers from across the world on a set of topics ranging from the democratization of data analysis and election mapping to the very timely subject of emoji data science (?). […]

Global conference to explore parliaments, OGP, and trust in representative institutions. Registration deadline today!

This spring, 30 Open Government Partnership (OGP) member countries will develop National Action Plans. With international momentum growing and new rules on parliamentary participation in place, this cycle presents an opportunity to advance the legislative openness agenda by developing meaningful commitments and deepening the participation of parliaments in OGP. By sharing information, connecting legislative openness […]

Open Data got to Paraguay to stay – Open Data Day 2017

This blog is part of the event report series on International Open Data Day 2017. On Saturday 4 March, groups from around the world organised over 300 events to celebrate, promote and spread the use of open data. 44 events received additional support through the Open Knowledge International mini-grants scheme, funded by SPARC, the Open […]

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. […]

Open Food Data and Open Transport Data: Two milestones in Switzerland’s Open Data History

This blog post is part of our on-going Network series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the Open Knowledge Switzerland team. Open Knowledge Switzerland pursues the objective to make data freely available for everyone to use and republish in order to increase transparency, innovation and efficiency.  We are […]

ROUTETOPA – An Introduction

Transparency, at best, makes for unity and positive development in democracies around the world. There are elaborate commentaries on what transparency entails, but for me, transparency translates to open. Think open doors. In any given building in a public space, an open door often turns to an invitation to come in and look around, while […]

MyData 2016 – What we learned about personal data and where to go from here?

This piece is the final installment of a three-part series of posts from MyData 2016 – an international conference that focused on human-centric personal information management. The conference was co-hosted by the Open Knowledge Finland chapter of the Open Knowledge Network. Part 1 looked at what personal data has to do with open data and […]

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 […]

Why we chose Slack to update our team page.

After reading Mor’s post on the recent website update, I thought I’d elaborate a little on the team page, and how we ended up using Slack to update it. The following is from a post on my personal blog. I recently undertook the task of redesigning a couple of key pages for the Open Knowledge […]

Registration to the Open Exchange for Social Change – IODC unconference is now open!

We are excited to announce that registration is open for ‘The Open Exchange for Social Change’. This event has been referred to in the past as ‘The Unconference’ during the flurry of pre-event IOCD Madrid announcements made over the past few weeks.   The response has already been amazing on social media, and we have received […]

What happened during Open Data Day 2016 in Aix en Provence?

This blog post was written by Samuel Goeta and the team in Open Knowledge France This year, Open Data Day in France left Paris after hosting us in several tech hubs in the capital: Telecom ParisTech in 2013, Simplon in 2014 and La Paillasse en 2015. However, Paris still celebrated Open Data Day online. Etalab, the […]

#OpenDataDay 2016 – Lima, Peru

For the third consecutive year, Open Data Peru organised the #OpenDataDay 2016, an international event about #OpenData. Currently, the open data is becoming a trend adopted by governments to provide information about public spending, budgets, etc. in open formats, free to use and available to any citizen. In this way it seeks to create a […]

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 […]

Sloan Foundation Funds Frictionless Data Tooling and Engagement at Open Knowledge

We are excited to announce that Open Knowledge International has received $700,000 in funding from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation over two years to work on a broad range of activities to enable better research and more effective civic tech through our Frictionless Data initiative. The funding will target standards work, tooling, and infrastructure around […]

Think big, start small, move fast

How the York Museums Trust started opening up its collection – OpenGLAM Case study More and more libraries, museums and other cultural institutions publish their collections online, often allowing users to reuse the material for research or creative purpose by licensing it openly. For institutions that start planning such a step, it may seem daunting […]

Introducing Viderum

Ten years ago, Rufus started CKAN as an “apt-get for data” in order to enable governments and corporations to provide their data as truly open data. Today, CKAN is used by countless open data publishers around the globe and has become the de facto standard. With CKAN as the technical foundation, Open Knowledge has offered […]

Google Funds Frictionless Data Initiative at Open Knowledge

We are delighted to announce that Open Knowledge has received funding from Google to work on tool integration for Data Packages as part of our broader work on Frictionless Data to support the open data community.   What are Data Packages? The funding will support a growing set of tooling around Data Packages.  Data Packages […]

Open Data Day Mini Grants: back for 2016!

This year, on Saturday, the 5th of March, the fourth annual Open Data Day will take place. For us in Open Knowledge, Open Data Day is one of our favourite initiatives. This is a grassroot event that has no particular organisation behind it, and it is able to bring together people from all over the world […]

Open Knowledge Network and Community updates – First steps of 2016

2015 was a great year for Open Knowledge, full of opportunities and challenges. We started many exciting new projects such as Open Trials, Budgets EU and the Route to PA, we had personnel changes (and a new CEO, Pavel Richter), and also we’ve refined our name to Open Knowledge International. In addition, we developed a […]

Africa Open Data Collaboration Fund Winners Announced

Open Knowledge International and the Open Data for Development program are pleased to announce the seven projects that have been shortlisted to receive support from the Africa Open Data Collaboration Fund (AODC Fund)*. The AODC Fund is a partnership with the organisers of the First Africa Open Data Conference and it was designed to provide […]

The State of Open Data in Southeast Asia

*** This blog post was written by Hazwany Jamaluddin from Sinar Project in Malaysia *** There are few countries in Southeast Asia region – Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Lao PDR, Singapore, East Timor and Malaysia – that are falling behind in the global open data movement, while others – Indonesia and Philippines – are advancing as […]

Global Open Data Index – Kosovo Insight

his post was written by Arianit Dobroshi Kosovo is ranked 35th in the 2015 Open Knowledge Global Open Data Index , down from 31st place in last year’s measurement and marked as 43% open. In South East Europe, Albania ranked 37th and Macedonia, 69th. Others, such as Serbia and Bosnia, have not been scored since they […]

Global Open Data Index 2015 – Rwanda insight

This post was written by Stephen Abbott Pugh from Code for Africa Rwanda’s jump in the Global Open Data index rankings from 74th to 44th comes at a time when the open data conversation is gathering pace in the country. As Rwanda’s cabinet prepares to debate the draft national open data policy in early 2016, […]

Global Open Data Index 2015 – Uruguay Insight

This post was written by Daniel Carranza from DataUY Uruguay has made headlines in the news lately. Mostly due to our unconventional former president José “Pepe” Mujica, and initiatives such as legalized abortion, regulated marijuana market and egalitarian marriage. It’s not the first time that our small country brings up innovative ideas ,as with divorce […]

Global Open Data Index 2015 – United Kingdom Insight

This post was written by Owen Boswarva For a third year running the United Kingdom has come out at or near the top of the Global Open Data Index. Unlike many of the countries that did well in previous years, the UK’s overall standing has not been greatly affected by the addition of five new […]

The Global Open Data Index 2015 is live – what is your country status?

We are excited to announce that we have published the third annual Global Open Data Index. This year’s Index showed impressive gains from non-OECD countries with Taiwan topping the Index and Colombia and Uruguay breaking into the top ten at four and seven respectively. Overall, the Index evaluated 122 places and 1586 datasets and determined […]

Government contracts: Still a long way from open

This blog post was written by Georg Neumann from Open Contracting Global Open Data Index: State of disclosure and data of government contracts For the first time ever, the Global Open Data Index is assessing open data on tenders and awards in this year’s index. This is crucial information. Government deals with companies amount to […]

Announcement – Open Definition 2.1

Today Open Knowledge and the Open Definition Advisory Council are pleased to announce the release of version 2.1 of the Open Definition. The definition “sets out principles that define openness in relation to data and content” and continues to play a key role in supporting the growing open ecosystem. The Open Definition was first published […]

Datawijs, bridge between young people and open data

This post is by Lara Deraes and was crossposted from the Open Knowledge Belgium blog. Open data is gaining more importance these days. Yet, a lot of young people don’t know what open data is, or how they can benefit from it. That’s where Datawijs comes in. It’s an interactive video series, that introduces teenagers […]

Your input needed: final review of 2015 Global Open Data Index

We’re now in the final stretch for the 2015 Global Open Data Index, and will be publishing the results in the very near future! As a community driven measurement tool, this year we have incorporated feedback we’ve received over the past several years to make the Index more useful as an instrument for civil society […]

Seeking a Chief Operating Officer

The mission of Open Knowledge International is to open up all essential public interest information and see it utilized to create insight that drives change. To this end we work to create a global movement for open knowledge, supporting a network of leaders and local groups around the world; we facilitate coordination and knowledge sharing […]

6 lessons from sharing humanitarian data

Cross-posted from scraperwiki.com This post is a write-up of the talk I gave at Strata London in May 2015 called “Sharing humanitarian data at the United Nations”. You can find the slides on that page. The Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) is an unusual data hub. It’s made by the UN, and is successfully used by […]