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 […]

Combining Data Skills, Knowledge, and Networks to Save our Planet

Originally published on: https://frictionlessdata.io/blog/2022/03/09/save-our-planet/ During these past tumultuous years, it has been striking to witness the role that information has played in furthering suffering: misinformation, lack of data transparency, and closed technology have worsened the pandemic, increased political strife, and hurt climate policy. Building on these observations, the team at Open Knowledge Foundation are refocusing […]

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 […]

100+ Conversations to inspire our new direction

It has been almost two decades since OKFN was founded. Back then, the open movement was navigating uncharted waters, with hope and optimism. We created new standards, engaged powerful actors and achieved change in government, science and access to knowledge and education, unleashing the power of openness, collaboration and community in the early digital days. […]

Unveiling the new okfn.org website, blog and logo

Today the Open Knowledge Foundation is launching its revamped website, updated blog and new logo. Our vision is for a future that is fair, free and open. This will be our guiding principle in everything we do. Our mission is to create a more open world – a world where all non-personal information is open, […]

OKI Agile: Kanban – the dashboard of doing

This is the fourth in a series of blogs on how we are using the Agile methodology at Open Knowledge International. Originating from software development, the Agile manifesto describes a set of principles that prioritise agility in work processes: for example through continuous development, self-organised teams with frequent interactions and quick responses to change (http://agilemanifesto.org). […]

OKI Agile: Scrum and sprints in open data

This is the third in a series of blogs on how we are using the Agile methodology at Open Knowledge International. Originating from software development, the Agile manifesto describes a set of principles that prioritise agility in work processes: for example through continuous development, self-organised teams with frequent interactions and quick responses to change (http://agilemanifesto.org). […]

OKI Agile: Picking/Designing a Methodology

This is the second in a series of blogs on how we are using the Agile methodology at Open Knowledge International. Originating from software development, the Agile manifesto describes a set of principles that prioritise agility in work processes: for example through continuous development, self-organised teams with frequent interactions and quick responses to change (http://agilemanifesto.org). […]

OKI Agile: How to create and manage user stories

This is the first in a series of blogs on how we are using the Agile methodology at Open Knowledge International. Originating from software development, the Agile manifesto describes a set of principles that prioritise agility in work processes: for example through continuous development, self-organised teams with frequent interactions and quick responses to change (http://agilemanifesto.org). […]

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 […]

OKI website upgrade – what we have done and the road ahead

An organisation website is its main public image or at least this is what we believe in at Open Knowledge International. For a while now, our website has needed design attention and update of content. We have therefore decided to revamp our website and give it some new look and features. Our primary thinking behind our […]

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 […]

A Data Revolution that Works for All of Us

Many of today’s global challenges are not new. Economic inequality, the unfettered power of corporations and markets, the need to cooperate to address global problems and the unsatisfactory levels of accountability in democratic governance – these were as much problems a century ago as they remain today. What has changed, however – and most markedly […]

Upcoming Community Sessions: CKAN, Community Feedback

Happy week! We are hosting two Community Sessions this week. You have expressed an interest in learning more about CKAN. As well, We are continuing our regular Community Feedback sessions. Take a CKAN Tour: This week we will give an overview and tour of CKAN – the leading open source open data platform used by […]

Happy Spring Cleaning, Community Style

Crazy about happy? Call it spring fever, but I am slightly addicted to the beautiful creativity of people around the world and their Happy videos (map). We are just one small corner of the Internet and want to connect you to Open Knowledge. To do this, we, your community managers, need to bring in the […]

Rufus Pollock named Tech Hero for Good

Nesta, the UK innovation charity, has announced it’s Ten Tech Heroes for Good – and Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation, Rufus Pollock, is on the list! We’re really proud that the achievements of Rufus and the Open Knowledge Foundation have been recognised in this way: focusing on the power of openness to achieve positive […]

Who are you? Community Survey Results (Part 1)

You are incredibility diverse and passionate. Last fall over 320 of you participated in our first OKF community-wide survey. You gave us an incredible view into you, your needs and how we at OKF can better support you. This is the first of three posts to show you: who you are, some analysis on your […]

Top 10 Greatest Hits of 2013!

The year is drawing to a close. Before we tumble headlong into the new year, let’s take a moment to reflect on the incredible success of 2013. Here’s our Top 10 Greatest Hits of the last year, in reverse order… Launch of data.gov In May, one of the most significant CKAN instances ever was launched, […]

Open Knowledge recognised as key to democracy in the digital age

Tonight the Open Knowledge Foundation will be honoured as a leading civic innovator at the National Democratic Institute’s thirtieth birthday celebrations (see the press release here). Other honourees will include Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia, Beth Noveck, founder of the Governance Lab in the U.S., and Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. The […]

The Global Open Data Initiative Needs Your Input

This is a cross-post by Julia Keserü from the Sunlight Foundation, taken from both the Global Open Data Initiative blog and the Sunlight Foundation blog. Open Data has enormous unfulfilled promise to change how governments work and to empower citizenship. As more governments and issue experts discover new potential in the public release of data, […]

Open Data professional services now available on G-Cloud 4

We are pleased to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation are now an approved supplier on the G-Cloud 4 Services Framework. This means that it’s now even easier for UK government organisations to commission the Open Knowledge Foundation. We are offering a range of services via G-Cloud including setting up and deploying a CKAN open […]

Open Data Training at the Open Knowledge Foundation

We’re delighted to announce today the launch of a new portfolio of open data training programs. For many years the Open Knowledge Foundation has been working — both formally and informally — with governments, civil society organisations and others to provide this kind of advice and training. Today marks the first time we’ve brought it […]

Network Summit

Twice-yearly the whole community of the Open Knowledge Foundation gathers together to share with, learn from and support one another. The Summer Summit 2013 took place in Cambridge (UK) last week (10th-14th July), with staff updates on the Thursday and network representatives joining on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was so inspiring to hear […]

Open Knowledge: much more than open data

We’ve often used “open knowledge” simply as a broad term to cover any kind of open data or content from statistics to sonnets, and more. However, there is another deeper, and far more important, reason why we are the “Open Knowledge” Foundation and not, for example, the “Open Data” Foundation. It’s because knowledge is something […]

Opening up the wisdom of crowds for science

We are excited to announce the official launch of Crowdcrafting.org, an open source software platform – powered by our Pybossa technology – for developing and sharing projects that rely on the help of thousands of online volunteers. At a workshop on Citizen Cyberscience held this week at University of Geneva, a novel open source software […]

Announcing the Open Knowledge Conference 2013: Open Data – Broad, Deep, Connected

The Open Knowledge Foundation is pleased to announce that the 2013 Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) will take place in Geneva, Switzerland on 17th -18th September. The theme of this year’s edition will be Open Data – Broad, Deep, Connected. When: 17th – 18th September 2013 Where: Geneva, Switzerland at the CICG – Centre International de […]

Releasing the Automated Game Play Datasets

  This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. We are very happy to announce that the Open Economics Working Group is releasing the datasets of the research project “Small Artificial Human Agents for Virtual Economies“, implemented by Professor David Levine and Professor Yixin Chen at the Washington University of St. Louis and […]

The Open Data Census – Tracking the State of Open Data Around the World

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 […]

Open Research Data Handbook Sprint

On February 15-16 we are updating the Open Research Data Handbook to include more detail on sharing research data from scientific work, and to remix the book for different disciplines and settings. We’re doing this through an open book sprint. The sprint will happen at the Open Data Institute, 65 Clifton Street, London EC2A 4JE. […]

First Open Economics International Workshop Recap

The first Open Economics International Workshop gathered 40 academic economists, data publishers and funders of economics research, researchers and practitioners to a two-day event at Emmanuel College in Cambridge, UK. The aim of the workshop was to build an understanding around the value of open data and open tools for the Economics profession and the […]

Help Us to Cultivate the Digital Commons!

At the Open Knowledge Foundation we work to cultivate a global commons of digital material that everyone is free to use and enjoy. This digital commons includes everything from open data about carbon emissions or spending from governments around the world; to open access research in the sciences, the humanities, and many other disciplines; to […]

The Year in Review: Top Stories from 2012

So it came and it went, and we seem to all have survived the End of the World. It’s been a big year, so as we bid it farewell and head full throttle into the very futuristic-sounding 2013, here’s a little review of the 5 most popular stories from the blog in the last twelve […]

First Open Economics International Workshop

You can follow all the goings-on today and tomorrow through the live stream. On 17-18 December, economics and law professors, data publishers, practitioners and representatives from international institutions will gather at Emmanuel College, Cambridge for the First Open Economics International Workshop. From showcasing the examples of successes in collaborative economic research and open data to […]

The Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, December 2012

Well here in the northern hemisphere the days are drawing in and winter is upon us. Autumn’s been ace though, and as busy as ever! OKFest went better than we could have imagined, and we got so excited that we started planning next year’s event in Geneva before we’d even left Helsinki! We’ve also been […]

We are hiring!

We’ve just announced 7 job vacancies at the Foundation. If you’re passionate about open knowledge and want to help us build the tools and communities that will make a difference, then apply! We’re hiring for a number of different roles, some technical and some more community focused. More information on each of them can be […]

Data Bootcamps: Hands on data literacy workshops for the world

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 […]

Video: Julia Kloiber on Open Data

Here’s Julia Kloiber from OKFN-DE’s Stadt-Land-Code project, talking at the OKFest about the need for more citizen apps in Germany, the need for greater openness, and how to persuade companies to open up.

The Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, July – August 2012

This newsletter comes to you on the eve of the world’s biggest ever open knowledge event, OKFest 2012. It has been an incredible journey getting to this point, as a movement and as an organisation. We really hope you’ll be making the physical journey with us to Helsinki next week, to create, innovate and celebrate […]

The Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, July-August 2012

  This newsletter comes to you on the eve of the world’s biggest ever open knowledge event, OKFest 2012. It has been an incredible journey getting to this point, as a movement and as an organisation. We really hope you’ll be making the physical journey with us to Helsinki next week, to create, innovate and […]

Ending Secrecy – Why Global Transparency Rules Matter

Earlier this week, the SEC voted on the final rules of Section 1504 of the Dodd Frank Act. Global Witness teamed up with the Open Knowledge Foundation to explain what these rules are about, and why they matter. View the infographic ‘Ending Secrecy – Why Global Transparency Rules Matter’ On August 22nd 2012, the U.S. […]