Updates from Open Knowledge Czech

This blog post is part of our summer series featuring updates from local groups across the Open Knowledge Network. This post was submitted by the Czech Republic Open Knowledge team.  In the Czech Republic, the Open Knowledge local chapter is led by the Otakar Motejl Fund, an NGO focused on government transparency and civic participation. Spring was […]

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Brazil’s Information Access Law and the problem of ‘un-anonymous’ request for public information

It is critical to build mechanisms that allow and promote the exercise of right to information access in a way that is safe to Information Access Law users. In this blog, Ariel Kogan (managing director of Open Knowledge Brasil) and Fabiano Angélico (transparency and integrity adviser and author of the book “Lei de Acesso à Informação: Reforço ao […]

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FutureTDM symposium: sharing project findings, policy guidelines and practitioner recommendations

The FutureTDM project, in which Open Knowledge International participates, actively engages with stakeholders in the EU such as researchers, developers, publishers and SMEs to help improve the uptake of text and data mining (TDM) in Europe (read more). Last month, we held our FutureTDM Symposium at the International Data Science Conference 2017 in Salzburg, Austria. With the project drawing […]

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Are Indian laws really ‘open’?

Opening up India’s laws – the journey of Nyaaya.in, a non-profit legal tech organization in India India seems to fare reasonably well on ‘open data’ and ‘open government’ indicators.  However its abysmal record with respect to enforcement of rights and its civil and criminal justice systems points towards an inability to use this information meaningfully […]

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Sharing matters to the successful 21st century researcher

Recently, there have been a great deal of debates revolving around research progress and impact across certain areas of science. As a moderate percentage of experimental findings haven’t been successfully replicated, scientists worry that the fruits of their research aren’t valid and reliable enough to change and benefit society at large, beyond academia. This and […]

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Half of the world languages are dying really fast – how you can save yours

Languages are a gateway to knowledge. How can digital tools be used to help native language speakers access and contribute knowledge? In this blog, Subhashish Panigrahi shows how endangered languages can be documented and preserved using open standards and tools. The world’s knowledge that have been accumulated and coded over ages in different languages are […]

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Frictionless Data: Introducing our Tool Fund Grantees

Frictionless Data is an Open Knowledge International project which started over 10 years ago as a community-driven effort of Open Knowledge Labs. Over the last 3 years, with funding from partners like the Sloan Foundation and Google, the Frictionless Data team has worked tirelessly to remove ‘friction’ from working with data. A well-defined set of specifications have been published […]

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Updates from Open Knowledge Portugal

This blog post is part of our summer series featuring updates from local groups across the Open Knowledge Network and was submitted by Open Knowledge Portugal team. Here is a run-down of our recent activities: Open Data Day 2017 In March, we joined the international community and organised a local Open Data Day. Unlike the […]

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ROUTETOPA User Stories

ROUTETOPA is a European innovation project aimed at improving citizen engagement by enabling meaningful interaction between open data users, open data publishers and open data. Open Knowledge International is one of 12 partners working on the project and our main mandate is to build genuine and active communities around the ROUTETOPA tools. In this blogpost, we share more […]

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New Open Knowledge Network chapter in Nepal

We are happy to announce that this month a new Chapter at the Open Knowledge Network is being launched officially: welcome Open Knowledge Nepal in this new stage! Since February 2013, Open Knowledge Nepal has been involved in research, advocacy, training, organizing meetups and hackathons, and developing tools related to Open Data, Open Government Data, […]

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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). […]

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New open energy data portal set to spark innovation in energy efficiency solutions

Viderum spun off as a company from Open Knowledge International in 2016 with the aim to provide services and products to further expand the reach of open data around the world. Last week they made a great step in this direction by powering the launch of the Energy Data Service portal, which will make Denmark’s energy […]

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Always Already Computational Reflections

Always Already Computational is a project bringing together a variety of different perspectives to develop “a strategic approach to developing, describing, providing access to, and encouraging reuse of collections that support computationally-driven research and teaching” in subject areas relating to library and museum collections.  This post is adapted from my Position Statement for the initial […]

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The final Global Open Data Index is now live

The updated Global Open Data Index has been published today, along with our report on the state of Open Data this year. The report includes a broad overview of the problems we found around data publication and how we can improve government open data. You can download the full report here. Also, after the Public Dialogue […]

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Hong Kong joins the Global Mosquito Alert fight using Open Data

Open Science is a key part of the open data ecosystem. Citizen Science is one of the beneficial side-effects of these open and collaborative ways of doing research. Crowdsourcing amateur scientists to carry out science, harnessing untapped resources to tackle problems in new and innovative ways. Open Data Hong Kong (ODHK) members have been involved […]

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A Data Driven Look at Refugee Crime in Hong Kong

This blog post is part of our summer series featuring updates from local groups across the Open Knowledge Network and was submitted by Open Data Hong Kong (ODHK). It was first published on Open Data Hong Kong (ODHK)’s website and has been written by Robert Porsch, a PhD student studying statistical genetics at the University of […]

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What data do we need? The story of the Cadasta GODI fellowship

This blogpost was written by Lindsay Ferris and Mor Rubinstein   There is a lot of data out there, but which data users needs to solve their issues? How can we, as an external body, know which data is vital so we can measure it?  Moreover, what to do when data is published in so […]

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OK Greece sings an MoU with the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT)

On Friday, June 2, Open Knowledge Greece (OK Greece) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT), regarding the sharing and the analysis of transport data in the city of Thessaloniki, with the aim to predict traffic and improve mobility in the street. HIT’s Director Dr Evangelos Bekiaris and Dr […]

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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 […]

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Impact Series: Improving Data Collection Capacity in Non-Technical Organisations

Open Knowledge International is a member of Open Data for Development (OD4D), a global network of leaders in the open data community, working together to develop open data solutions around the world. In this blog, David Opoku of Open Knowledge International talks about how the OD4D programme’s Africa Open Data Collaboration Fund and  Embedded Fellowships are helping build […]

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How participatory budgeting can transform community engagement – An interview with Amir Campos

For most municipalities, participatory budgeting is a relatively new approach to include their citizens directly in the decision making for new investments and developments in their community. Fundación Civio is a civic tech organisation based in Madrid, Spain that develops tools for citizens that both reveal the civic value of data and promote transparency. The […]

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Open Knowledge Belgium is preparing for open Summer of Code 2017

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 Belgium team. This post was first published on Open Knowledge Belgium’s website.  In the last few months, the open community in Belgium has had the chance to gather multiple times. Open […]

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Open Knowledge Festival comes to Thessaloniki in 2018

Update 30 November 2017: Despite earlier announcements, Open Knowledge International have decided not to run OKFestival 2018. There have been some recent major changes in the organisation that have adversely affected our ability to produce a Festival which would match the expectations of our networks and partners. We are, obviously, disappointed by this decision but […]

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Social Platform for Open Data – enabling interactions at Accountability Hack 2017

Since 2015 Open Knowledge International has been part of the consortium of ROUTETOPA (Raising Open, User-friendly, Transparency-Enabling Technologies for Public Administrations, routetopa.eu), an EU-funded project that is working round the clock to provide platforms for open data enthusiasts to interact on the subject of open data with data publishers and with other open data users. The […]

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Open data quality – the next shift in open data?

This blog post is part of our Global Open Data Index blog series. It is a call to recalibrate our attention to the many different elements contributing to the ‘good quality’ of open data, the trade-offs between them and how they support data usability (see here some vital work by the World Wide Web Consortium). […]

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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, […]

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csv,conf,v3

The third manifestation of everyone’s favorite community conference about data—csv,conf,v3—happened earlier this May in Portland, Oregon. The conference brought together data makers/doers/hackers from various backgrounds to share knowledge and stories about data in a relaxed, convivial, alpaca-friendly (see below) environment. Several Open Knowledge International staff working across our Frictionless Data, OpenSpending, and Open Data for […]

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Why MEPs should vote in favour of releasing public country-by-country reporting as open data

Tax avoidance and profit shifting by corporations across the world is an issue which has been gaining visibility over the past decade with many governments, campaigners, researchers and journalists calling for urgent political action. These calls have only gotten louder following recent reporting on scandals such as Luxleaks and the Panama Papers by the International […]

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Open Data Index in Brazil launched! by FGV and Open Knowledge Brazil

Open Knowledge Brazil and Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) – a higher education institution in Brazil worked together to develop the Brazilian edition of the Open Data Index, which is being used by governments as a tool to enhance public management, and bring it even closer to Brazil’s reality.  About the Open Data Index The Brazilian […]

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Datensummit: Advancing open data in Germany

Last month Open Knowledge Germany hosted the first Datensummit, a two-day festival for those who shape development within the fields of open data, transparency, data literacy and civic tech. With OK Germany existing for over five years already, it was a good moment to both look back on developments in open data, civic tech, transparency […]

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Measuring the Openness of Government Data in the Balkans

Open Data Kosovo is a civic-tech organization that uses technology to contribute towards social good. The organization has created an exciting network of partners both local and international while working on projects related to visualizing procurement data, mapping satellite imagery for human rights violations, data collection and entry of 112 emergency calls, countering violent extremism […]

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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). […]

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What is the difference between budget, spending and procurement data?

Fiscal data is a complex topic. It comes in all different kind of formats and languages, its’ availability cannot be taken for granted and complexity around fiscal data needs special skills and knowledge to unlock and fully understand it. The Global Open Data Index (GODI) assesses three fiscal areas of national government: budgets, spending, and procurement. Repeatedly […]

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Open Data Day events, MyData Japan 2017 and other OK Japan updates

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 Japan team. International Open Data Day We had a lot of localities joining the International Open Data Day (IODD) – the international website for the IODD shows 42 localities in Japan, […]

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Hospital Waiting List – Open Knowledge Ireland Workshop #1

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 Ireland team. This post was first published on 12th April 2017 by Flora Fleischer on OK Ireland’s website: https://openknowledge.ie/hwl1/ On the sunny Saturday of March 25th, Open Knowledge Ireland held a workshop powered by citizens […]

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Our learning from the Open Data Day mini grants scheme

2017 was the third year of OKI Open Data Day Mini-grants scheme. Although we are working on it for a while, we never had the time or capacity to write our learnings from the last two schemes. This year, we decided to take more time to learn about the project and improve it. So we […]

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How can journalists best handle public fiscal data to produce data-driven stories? An interview with Nicolas Kayser-Bril

Nicolas Kayser-Bril is the former CEO and co-founder of Journalism++ (J++), a group of investigative journalists that specialises in data-driven reporting. As part of OKI’s own involvement in Openbudgets.eu, we had the good fortune of working with  J++ on the question how public budget and spending data can be used to tackle corruption. In this […]

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OK Sweden collaborates with the Internet Foundation (.SE)…and other updates

This blog post is part of our on-going Network series featuring updates from chapters across theOpen Knowledge Network and was written by the Open Knowledge Sweden Team.  We have a new collaboration with the Internet Foundation (.SE) in Sweden, which is an independent organisation which promotes a positive development of the internet for the benefit of […]

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Civic Lab Brussels launched!

Open Knowledge Belgium in collaboration with Wikimedia Belgium has launched Civic Lab Brussels – a biweekly action-oriented gathering of open enthusiasts with different backgrounds and skills who work together on civic projects. This post was first published on Open Knowledge Belgium’s website. How did we come up with this idea? It all started during a fruitful discussion […]

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Open Data Day Buenos Aires – building open agenda for Argentina

Open data is not familiar with weekends! However, on Saturday, March 4th, 2017, public officials, civil society organisations, civic hackers and many interested citizens came together in Vicente López to share projects and ideas around open data. In this event, the community also began to discuss the present and future of open data in Argentina. […]

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Open Knowledge Austria host Data Pioneers Create Camp

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 Austria team.  On February 2nd we held the first Data Pioneers Create Camp in Vienna. The goal of the Data Pioneers Program, which is run together with Wikimedia Austria as part […]

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A lookback on Open Data Day 2017

With Open Data Day 2017 now two months behind us, it is time to look back and reflect on all that has been happening around the world during this year’s celebration of open data. First of all, it was great to see that a record amount of 346 events were registered this year! Many events have […]

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A summary of the last 8 months at Open Knowledge Brazil

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 Brazil (OKBR) team.   This post was written by Ariel Kogan, CEO of Open Knowledge Brazil and first appeared on OKBR website: https://br.okfn.org/2017/04/03/um-resumo-aconteceu-ultimos-oito-meses/ Open Knowledge Brazil (OKBR) seeks to build a more […]

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Open Data Day in Burkina Faso: What is the environmental impact of the extractive industry?

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 […]

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8 stereotypes about migrants that we broke with data at #ddjcamp

They often say data journalism is a more objective kind of journalism. Is it really? We wanted to try it out and use data to combat prejudices that exist about migration. For this, we organised #ddjcamp: a data journalism training + hackathon where 60 journalists, developers and designers gathered from 11 countries. Everybody pitched a […]

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The Global Open Data Index as a national indicator – So why do we have Northern Ireland?

In May 2nd, 2017 we launched the Global Open Data Index (GODI). This blog post is part of a series that explore the main findings of GODI and the next challenges in open data measurement.   In the past, we were asked why the Global Open Data Index assesses ‘places’ and not countries. Why do we […]

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The birth of Open Data at Lagos State University

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 […]

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OK Greece releases Key Performance Indicators Application… and other 2017 updates

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 Greece team Open Knowledge Greece (OK Greece) consists of a dynamic team of community members who are not only interested in open data, linked data technologies and coding; but are […]

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MyData 2017, Hack your heritage and other updates from Open Knowledge Finland.

This blog post is part of our summer series featuring chapter updates from across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the team of Open Knowledge Finland. It’s been a busy start to the 5th year of Open Knowledge Finland as it coincides with the celebration of Finland’s 100 years of independence and 250+ […]

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Our country sample (and what it tells about our contributors)

The Global Open Data Index has changed a lot this year, from our methodology to our software. This has been a community effort. This year we also collaborated with an amazing group of community leaders who helped gather the submissions in different regions as well as an extraordinary group of reviewers who helped make sure […]

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