Data and the City: New report on how public data is fostering civic engagement in urban regions

How can city data infrastructures support public participation in local governance and policy-making? Research by Jonathan Gray and Danny Lämmerhirt examines the new relationships and public spaces emerging between public institutions, civil society groups, and citizens. The development of urban regions will significantly affect the lives of millions of people around the world. Urbanization poses challenges including […]

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“Strinkwishism”: How to build organizational capacities around Open Data through embedded fellowships

Recognizing that capacity building is central to economic growth, reductions in poverty and equal opportunities, Open Knowledge International with the support of the Open Data for Development (OD4D) Network is expanding its work with civil society organisations (CSOs) through the Embedded Fellowship Programme. In the last three months, I worked as an embedded fellow, consulting […]

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Open Data by default: Lorca City Council is using OpenSpending to increase transparency and promote urban mobility.

Castillo de Lorca. Torre Alfonsina (Public Domain) Lorca, a city located in the South of Spain with currently 92,000 inhabitants, launched its open data initiative on January 9th 2014. Initially it offered 23 datasets containing transport, mobility, statistical and economic information. From the very beginning, OpenSpending was the tool selected by Lorca City Council because of its […]

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A look back at the work of Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland in 2016

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 Foundation Deutschland team. We are the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland (OKF DE), the German chapter of OKI. We advocate for open knowledge, open data, transparency, and civic participation and consider […]

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Open State Foundation Netherlands wins OGP 2016 award for work to advance fiscal transparency through OpenSpending

Open State Foundation is a non-profit based in the Netherlands, working on digital transparency by opening up public information as open data and making it accessible for re-use. Last December, the organization received one of the seven Open Government Partnership 2016 Awards for its work on OpenSpending at the OGP Global Summit in Paris, France. The awards […]

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OK Brazil's public spending website

Brazil’s Public Spending project is looking for leaders in various regions of Brazil to increase participation in the budgeting process.

On the 11th of January, OK Brazil launched its new Public Spending website. The website is part of a wider campaign to search, recruit and support new leaders that wish to work with transparency, mainly public spending, in Brazilian municipalities and is using OKI’s OpenSpending technical architecture. The support will be provided to mentors specializing in […]

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Announcing the 2017 International Open Data Day Mini Grants Scheme

opendataday.org The year is 2017! Some of you (like my fellow Ghanaian citizens) may have just voted in an election that you hope will bring with it the promise of socio-economic growth. You believe that having a better understanding of how government works will foster better engagement and efficiency. Others are exploring new ideas in […]

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Project PiMaa is building low-cost, open-source data stations to support environmental monitoring in Kampala

PiMaa is an Internet of Things project in Kampala, Uganda that seeks to build low-cost environment monitoring stations and open-up any data collected. PiMaa is an initiative under Outbox, supported by Open Knowledge International through the Africa Open Data Collaboration Fund. Kampala is in a lot of growing pains. The current administration is doing their utmost […]

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Danish Energinet.dk will use CKAN to launch Energy DataStore – a free and open portal for sharing energy data

For immediate release Open data service provider Viderum is working with Energinet.dk, the gas and electricity transmission system operator in Denmark, to provide near real-time access to Danish energy data. Using CKAN, an open-source platform for sharing data originally developed by Open Knowledge International, Energinet.dk’s Energy DataStore will provide easy and open access to large […]

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Network update from OK Japan: Corporate transparency and taxpayers’ money ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

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. The OK Japan chapter has been active in the open data space in activities such as the promotion of open data use and policy discussions. Since we formed the team […]

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10 Critical Insights for Democratising the Data Revolution

This week marks the launch of the first-ever UN World Data Forum, aimed at bringing together data experts and sustainable development leaders. Danny Lämmerhirt shares findings from a new research series on citizen-generated data, how it can be used to monitor and drive change for sustainable development, and why this matters for civil society. Image […]

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Structuring a Global Online Survey – A Question Engine for Open Data Surveys!

The Global Open Data Index (GODI) is one of our core projects at Open Knowledge International. The index measures and benchmarks the openness of government data around the world. Brook Elgie shares a behind-the-scenes look at the technical design of how we gather the data for the Index through our extensive Open Data Survey and […]

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CSV,Conf is back in 2017! Submit talk proposals on the art of data collaboration.

CSV,Conf,v3 is happening! This time the community-run conference will be in Portland, Oregon, USA on 2nd and 3rd of May 2017. It will feature stories about data sharing and data analysis from science, journalism, government, and open source. We want to bring together data makers/doers/hackers from backgrounds like science, journalism, open government and the wider software […]

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Season Greetings from OK Ireland and 2016 in review

This blog post is part of our on-going Community series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the team of Open Knowledge Ireland and edited by Flora Fleischer and Siobhan Denham. Our warm season greetings to all friends of Open Knowledge As we approach the final days of this year, we would […]

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Updates from our Network: Austria chapter takes strategy forward and explores new collaborations.

This blog post is part of our on-going Community series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the team of Open Knowledge Austria. September was largely a transition period between the old and new board to facilitate the takeover of responsibilities. We also involved our team and the community in […]

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New Report: Making Citizen-Generated Data Work

Read the full report here. We are pleased to announce a new research series investigating how citizens and civil society create data to drive sustainable development. The series follows on from earlier papers on Democratising The Data Revolution and how citizen-generated data can change what public institutions measure. The first report “Making Citizen-Generated Data Work” asks […]

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PersonalData.IO helps you get access to your personal data

PersonalData.IO is a free and open platform for citizens to track their personal data and understand how it is used by companies. It is part of the MyData movement, promoting a human-centric approach to personal data management. A lot of readers of this blog will be familiar with Freedom of Information laws, a legal mechanism […]

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Divide, rant and conquer: Addressing the difficulty of 2016 and the future of open government at #OGP16

Mor Rubinstein reports on one of the Civil Society Morning workshop sessions during the Open Government Partnership Summit. The structure of the session involved ‘ranting’ in turns with fellow attendees. As 2016 draws to a close and a new year begins, the session serves as a useful reminder of the cathartic and productive processes of […]

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of #OGP16 Summit

This blog originally appeared on Medium and is reposted with permission. This post is a reflection of a long and intense week in Paris for the Open Government Partnership summit. I feel after this week like I have seen so much, but missed out on a lot of things (including a couple of meals!). All […]

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Nobody wants to become an activist!

Hacking the Entry Point to Digital Participation During the recent Ultrahack 2016 tournament in Helsinki (one of the biggest hackathons in Europe for the development ideas and software), we formed a team called Two Minutes for My City that participated on the #hackthenation track. Our initial idea to improve the visualization of municipal decision processes evolved into a prototype of a mobile […]

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How is our economy ordered by information? Reflections from the Open Knowledge International monthly reading group

Danny Lämmerhirt and Mor Rubinstein share team reflections from the inaugural meeting of the Open Knowledge International Reading Group. This month’s topic examined the role that knowledge and data play for political and economic coordination. The team looked at Friedrich Hayek and Hernando de Soto and drew parallels from their work to how government information is managed […]

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How to ‘unlock’ the value of fiscal data for civil society: experiences from the OpenSpending community

OpenSpending is one of Open Knowledge International’s current projects. It is a free and open platform for citizens looking to track and analyse public fiscal information globally. Over the years, we have learned about numerous examples of fiscal data uses from the OpenSpending community. Also, we learned that obtaining fiscal data can be the most […]

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Making sense of government spending: Open Knowledge Finland use OpenSpending to collaborate with Finnish Government

Tampere, Finland (public domain) This piece is written by Jaakko Korhonen and Joonas Pesonen of Open Knowledge Finland At the end of October a team using OpenSpending tools held a pitch for high-ranking Finnish Government officials in “Hack the Budget 2016,” a competition organised by Open Knowledge Finland (OKFFI) and the Finnish Ministry of Finance. […]

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OpenTrialsFDA presents prototype as finalist for the Open Science Prize

For immediate release Open Knowledge International is thrilled to announce that the OpenTrialsFDA team is presenting its prototype today at the BD2K Open Data Science Symposium in Washington, DC as finalist for the Open Science Prize. The Open Science Prize is a global science competition to make both the outputs from science and the research […]

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Git for Data Analysis – why version control is essential for collaboration and for gaining public trust.

Openness and collaboration go hand in hand. Scientists at PNNL are working with the Frictionless Data team at Open Knowledge International to ensure collaboration on data analysis is seamless and their data integrity is maintained. I’m a computational biologist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where I work on environmental and biomedical research. In […]

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Openbudgets.eu launches collection of fiscal transparency tools for journalists and civil society organisations.

Berlin, November 21, 2016 – Today, the beta version of OpenBudgets is officially released to the public. The Horizon 2020-funded project seeks to advance transparency and accountability in the fiscal domain by providing journalists, CSOs, NGOs, citizens and public administrations with state-of-the-art tools needed to effectively process and analyze financial data. For the beta version, […]

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Join Open Data from Around the World session at the Paris OGP summit

Open Government Data from around the world session is back at the OGP summit, this time with a twist! Come and join as active participants and share open data updates from your country on Thursday, December 8th on 12 pm! What is Open Government Data from around the world session? In this one hour session, […]

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What’s next for the open data community in Latin America: How to take Abrelatam 2016 discussion forward

Work that strives to make a lasting social impact is a lot like a marathon. You need to learn how to go through long distances in spite of the exhaustion and how to manage your energy; you need to know when to go faster or slower, etc. But in order to get to the finish […]

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Freedom of Information in Argentina – new law aimed at supporting citizens and civil society in the political process

On September 29, 2016, Law No. 27,275 was published in the Official Bulletin of Argentina to regulate the right of access to public information. Thus, Argentina is no longer in the list of countries without this right protected.This law is supported across the political spectrum and is the result of significant work across civil society. […]

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Help measure your government’s openness: The Global Open Data Index 2016 is here!

We are happy to announce that The Global Open Data Index (GODI) 2016 is officially live! After months of hard work, taking the community feedback and building it into the new methodology, and redesigning the whole survey from the questions to interface and how you interact with it. This is the fourth year that we […]

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Municipal Money: Making municipal budgets more accessible

Code for South Africa just launched https://municipalmoney.gov.za/, a New Municipal Money project for South Africa, in partnership with the National Treasury. This is a step forward in collaboration with government. Code for South Africa’s goal is to empower citizens to hold their municipal officials to account. The focus of the portal is on municipal financial […]

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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 […]

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How we, as Open Data community, can improve International Open Data Conference (IODC) together?

I had initially assumed that I would be unable to attend the International Open Data Conference (IODC) 2016 due to lack of funding. Fortunately, Open Knowledge International (OKI) chose me to join the IODC unconference (and thank you IDRC/OD4D for sponsoring my trip) to represent and share the perspective of Sinar Project, one of our […]

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The Right to Education Index: Using open data for research and advocacy to address human rights

In support of our mission to empower civil society organisations to use open data to improve people’s lives, Open Knowledge International is partnering with a number of projects committed to using open data to address human rights issues. RTEI approached us to develop a platform to facilitate an open public dialogue on the right to […]

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Some misconceptions about data journalism

This blog originally appeared on Medium and is reposted with permission. In the past few years, a new discipline in journalism is slowly getting more and more followers — a discipline commonly known as ‘data journalism’. These so-called ‘data journalists’ are usually envisioned as the younger, tech savvy journalists, ones that are not afraid to analyse […]

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Open source in everyday life: How we celebrated the Software Freedom Day in Bengaluru

The free and open source software (FOSS) enthusiasts just celebrated the Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 17 all across the world. This year, a small group of six of us gathered to celebrate SFD in the Indian city of Bengaluru. The group consisted of open source contributors from communities such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, […]

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Building 2030-watch.de: measuring progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs)

For the last 15 months the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany has been working on 2030Watch, a prototype to monitor progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs) from an independent, civil society-led perspective. There’s a detailed blog post on why such independent monitoring is necessary at our blog. To give a quick example, the UN Commission agreed to […]

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What is the Open Fiscal Data Package?

This post looks at the Open Fiscal Data Package – an open standard for publishing fiscal data developed by Open Knowledge International, GIFT and the World Bank. In September of 2016, Mexico became the first country to officially endorse the OFDP, by publishing Federal Budget data  in open formats using OpenSpending tools. OpenSpending is one of […]

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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 […]

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Hurdles and joys of introducing Data Journalism in post-Soviet universities

At the Data Journalism Bootcamp organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), a large part of the participants came from the Commonwealth of Independent States: Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Interestingly, the students were deans and professors of journalism departments who had to dive into a new field. The idea of the bootcamp […]

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Gearing up for the launch of the Global Open Data Index survey

The Global Open Data Index (GODI) is one of our core projects at Open Knowledge International. The index measures and benchmarks the openness of government data around the world, and presents this information in a way that is easy to understand and easy to use. It’s been a couple months since we updated the community […]

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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 […]

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OpenTrials launches beta version today at the World Health Summit

For immediate release Open Knowledge International is delighted to announce the launch of the public preview beta version of OpenTrials at a panel session on ‘Fostering Open Science in Global Health’ at the World Health Summit today, 10 October 2016, the world’s foremost forum for strategic questions of Global Health.  OpenTrials is an open, online database […]

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Who Will Shape the Future of the Data Society?

This piece was originally posted on the blog of the International Open Data Conference 2016, which takes place in Madrid, 6-7th October 2016. The contemporary world is held together by a vast and overlapping fabric of information systems. These information systems do not only tell us things about the world around us. They also play […]

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Open Knowledge Finland Summer 2016 Update

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. Summer is a great time in Finland. It’s so sunny that everyone seems to be on holiday! However, there was no time for extended holidays at Open […]

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Turning data into action: what we learned from conducting social audits on public housing communities in Malaysia

The Sinar Project in Malaysia is exploring ways of making critical information public and accessible to Malaysian citizens. The project is supported by the Open Data for Development (OD4D) programme and has been run in collaboration with OpenSpending at Open Knowledge International. In our previous blog post, we provided an overview of the Sinar Project’s work opening budget data […]

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Africa Open Data Collaboration Fund: Building civil society capacity for Africa’s emerging data revolution.

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 collaboration with the OD4D program, Open Knowledge International coordinates the Africa Open Data Collaboration Fund which is designed to provide seed support […]

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Spotlight on tax evasion: Connecting with citizens and activists working on tax justice campaigns across Africa

Open Knowledge International is coordinating the Open Data for Tax Justice project in partnership with the Tax Justice Network to create a global network of people and organisations using open data to inform local and global efforts around tax justice. Tax evasion, corruption and illicit financial flows rob countries around the world of billions in […]

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New Open Knowledge Network chapters launched in Japan and Sweden

This month sees the launch of two new Chapters at the Open Knowledge Network, a chapter for Japan and a chapter for Sweden. Chapters are the Open Knowledge Network’s most developed form, which have legal independence from the organisation and are affiliated by a Memorandum of Understanding. For a full list of our current chapters, […]

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How to advance open data research: Renewing our focus on the demand of open data, user needs and data for society.

Ahead of this year’s International Open Data Conference #iodc16, Danny Lämmerhirt and Stefaan Verhulst provide information on the Measuring and Increasing Impact Action Session, which will be held on Friday October 7, 2016 at IODC in Room E. Further information on the session can be found here. Lord Kelvin’s famous quote “If you can not measure […]

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