Frictionless Data v1.0

  Data Containerisation hits v1.0! Announcing a major milestone in the Frictionless Data initiative. Today, we’re announcing a major milestone in the Frictionless Data initiative with the official v1.0 release of the Frictionless Data specifications, including Table Schema and Data Package, along with a robust set of pre-built tooling in Python, R, Javascript, Java, PHP […]

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Podcast: Pavel Richter on the value of open data

This month Pavel Richter, CEO of Open Knowledge International, was interviewed by Stephen Ladek of Aidpreneur for the 161st episode of his Terms of Reference podcast. Aidpreneur is an online community focused on social enterprise, humanitarian aid and international development that runs this podcast to cover important topics in the social impact sector. Under the […]

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The Open Education Working Group: What do we do and what is coming up next

The Open Education Working Group (https://education.okfn.org) is a very active community of educators, researchers, PhD students, policy makers and advocates that promote, support and collaborate with projects related with the advancement of Open Education in different fields at international level. This group aims at supporting the development of Open Educational projects at international level but […]

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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 […]

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Open Data Conference in Switzerland

This year’s Opendata.ch/2017, the Open Data Conference in Switzerland, was all about Open Smart Cities, Open Tourism & Transport Data, Open Science & Open Food Data. We learnt how Open Data can be a catalyst of digital transformation and a crucial factor for advancing data quality. We got insights into the role of open data in […]

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Open Data Handbook now available in the Nepali Language

On 7 August 2017 Open Knowledge Nepal launched the first version of Nepali Open Data Handbook – An introductory guidebook used by governments and civil society organizations around the world as an introduction and blueprint for open data projects. The book was launched by Mr. Krishna Hari Baskota, Chief Information Commissioner of National Information Commission, Dr. […]

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OpenSpending platform update

Introduction OpenSpending is a free, open and global platform to search, visualise, and analyse fiscal data in the public sphere. This week, we soft launched an updated technical platform, with a newly designed landing page. Until now dubbed “OpenSpending Next”, this is a completely new iteration on the previous version of OpenSpending, which has been […]

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Using the Global Open Data Index to strengthen open data policies: Best practices from Mexico

This is a blog post coauthored with Enrique Zapata, of the Mexican National Digital Strategy. As part of the last Global Open Data Index (GODI), Open Knowledge International (OKI) decided to have a dialogue phase, where we invited individuals, CSOs, and national governments to exchange different points of view, knowledge about the data and understand […]

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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 […]

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An approach to building open databases

This post has been co-authored by Adam Kariv, Vitor Baptista, and Paul Walsh. Open Knowledge International (OKI) recently coordinated a two-day work sprint as a way to touch base with partners in the Open Data for Tax Justice project. Our initial writeup of the sprint can be found here. Phase I of the project ended […]

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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 […]

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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). […]

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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 […]

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Open Data for Tax Justice design sprint: building a pilot database of public country-by-country reporting

Tax justice advocates, global campaigners and open data specialists came together this week from across the world to work with Open Knowledge International on the first stages of creating a pilot country-by-country reporting database. Such a database may enable anyone to understand the activities of multinational corporations and uncover potential tax avoidance schemes.  This design […]

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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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