UK Crime Data: Feeling is Believing

Latest crime data shows that the UK is getting significantly more ‘peaceful’. Last month, the Institute for Economics and Peace published the UK Peace Index, revealing UK crime figures have fallen the most of all EU countries in the past decade. Homicide rates, to take one indicator, have halved over the last decade. But the […]

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Become a Friend of The Public Domain Review

Open Knowledge project The Public Domain Review launches a major new fundraising drive, encouraging people to become Friends of the site by giving an annual donation. For those not yet in the know, The Public Domain Review is a project dedicated to protecting and celebrating, in all its richness and variety, the cultural public domain. […]

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2014 Global Open Data Index

What should we include in the Global Open Data Index? From reference data to civil society audit.

Three years ago we decided to begin to systematically track the state of open data around the world. We wanted to know which countries were the strongest and which national governments were lagging behind in releasing the key datasets as open data so that we could better understand the gaps and work with our global […]

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Putting Open at the Heart of the Digital Age

Video Slides Talk Text Introduction I’m Rufus Pollock. In 2004 I founded a non-profit called Open Knowledge The mission we set ourselves was to open up all public interest information – and see it used to create insight that drives change. What sort of public interest information? In short, all of it. From big issues […]

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Apply to attend OpenCon2015

Applications to attend OpenCon 2015 are now open. OpenCon 2015 is the student and early career academic professional conference on Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data and will be held on November 14-16, 2015 in Brussels, Belgium. It is organized by the Right to Research Coalition, SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), […]

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Why Open Contracting Matters to the OGP Agenda in Africa

This is a guest post by Seember Nyager. Seember is an Open Knowledge/Code4Africa Open Government Fellow advocating for the adoption of open contracting data standards in Nigeria. To be honest, the state of public services across Africa shames us. Often, you find that public services do not meet the generally accepted standards of efficiency, regular […]

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Call for applications for Data Journalism Philippines 2015

Open Knowledge in partnership with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism is pleased to announce the launch of Data Journalism Ph 2015. Supported by the World Bank, the program will train journalists and citizen media in producing high-quality, data-driven stories. In recent years, government and multilateral agencies in the Philippines have published large amounts of […]

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Open Knowledge International does IODC2015!

It’s that time of the year again. That time when the international open data community descends on an unsuspecting city for a jam packed week of camps, meet-ups, hacks and conference events. Next week, open data enthusiasts will be taking over Ottawa and Open Knowledge will be there in full force! As we don’t want […]

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Announcing the new open data handbook

We are thrilled to announce that the Open Data Handbook, the premier guide for open data newcomers and veterans alike, has received a much needed update! The Open Data Handbook, originally published in 2012, has become the go to resource for the open data community. It was written by expert members of the open data […]

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Announcing Open Government Fellows

Last December, Open Knowledge and Code for Africa joined forces to launch a new open government fellowship, a programme that seeks to empower open government pioneers by giving them the opportunity to test their ideas on how to best harness the power of digital technologies to improve the way governments and citizens interact. Within weeks, […]

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Open Knowledge appoints Pavel Richter as new CEO

I am delighted to announce we have found the newest member of the Open Knowledge team: Pavel Richter joins us as our new CEO! Pavel’s appointment marks a new chapter in the development of Open Knowledge, which, over the last ten years, has grown into one of the leading global organisations working on open data […]

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Meet the 2015 School of Data fellows!

This is a cross-post from the School of Data blog, written by their Community Manager Cédric Lombion. See the original. We’re delighted to announce that after much difficult deliberation, our Class of 2015 School of Data Fellows have now been decided! We ended up with nearly 600 applicants from 82 different countries – so it […]

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Open Trials: Open Knowledge Announce Plans for Open, Online Database of Clinical Trials

Open Knowledge today announced plans to develop Open Trials, an open, online database of information about the world’s clinical research trials funded by The Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The project, which is designed to increase transparency and improve access to research, will be directed by Dr. Ben Goldacre, an internationally known leader on clinical […]

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Fantasy Frontbench – giving the public a way to compare politicians

This is a guest blog post by Matt Smith, who is a learning technologist at UCL. He is interested in how technology can be used to empower communities. Introduction Fantasy Frontbench is a not-for-profit and openly licensed project aimed at providing the public with an engaging and accessible platform for directly comparing politicians. A twist […]

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Honouring the memory of leading Open Knowledge community member Subhajit Ganguly

It is with great sadness that we have learned that Mr. Subhajit Ganguly, an Open Knowledge Ambassador in India and a leading community member in the entire region, has suddenly and tragically passed away. Following a short period of illness Subhajit Ganguly, who was only 30 years old, passed away on the morning of April […]

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OpenCon 2015 is launched

This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Access Working Group blog. Details of OpenCon 2015 have just been announced! OpenCon2015: Empowering the Next Generation to Advance Open Access, Open Education and Open Data will take place in on November 14-16 in Brussels, Belgium and bring together students and early career academic professionals from across […]

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Document Freedom Day in Kathmandu, Nepal

On 2015’s Document Freedom Day, Open Knowledge Nepal organized a seminar on Open Standards at CLASS Nepal at Maitighar, Kathmandu. We intended to pitch openness to a new audience in Nepal and help them learn documentation skills. As we could not hope to teach documentation and spreadsheets in less than a day, we utilized the […]

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Community building through the DM2E project

During the past three years, Open Knowledge has been leading the community building work in the Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana (DM2E) project, a European research project in the area of Digital Humanities led by Humboldt University. Open Knowledge activities included the organisation of a series of events such as Open Data in Cultural Heritage workshops, running two rounds of the Open Humanities […]

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Open Data Day 2015 Recap #4: Hacks, Meet Ups and Data Exploration in Africa!

Open Data Day 2015, which took place on February 21, was celebrated in hundreds of communities around the world. In this blog series, we have been highlighting the discussions and outcomes of a small selection of the hacks, data dives and meetups that were organised that day. In this fourth post in the series, we […]

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Presenting public finance just got easier

This blog post is cross-posted from the CKAN blog. CKAN 2.3 is out! The world-famous data handling software suite which powers data.gov, data.gov.uk and numerous other open data portals across the world has been significantly upgraded. How can this version open up new opportunities for existing and coming deployments? Read on. One of the new […]

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Open Data Day report #3: Data Fiesta in Latin America and the Caribbean

(This post was co-written by Open Knowledge and Fabrizio Scrollini from ILDA) In our follow-up series about Open Data Day 2015, which took place on February 21 across the world, we will now highlight some of the great events that took place across the Latin America and the Caribbean. See our previous post about Asia-Pacific […]

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We’re Hiring at Open Knowledge: Project Managers, Developers and Data Wranglers

Open Knowledge are delighted to advertise several new open positions: Project Manager – Open Data Python Developer Frontend Developer Data Wrangler A brief summary on each post can be found below. Full details and application forms can be found on http://okfn.org/about/jobs/.  Project Manager – Open Data We are looking for a professional and dynamic hands-on […]

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Open Data Day report #2: All of Europe pushing open data

In our follow-up series about Open Data Day 2015, which tooks place on February 21 across the world, we will now highlight some of the great events that took place across the European continent. To see the first blog post, which covered Asia-Pacific, go here. Portugal This year’s event was the 4th consecutive Open Data […]

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Open Knowledge Russia: Experimenting with data expeditions

As part of Open Education Week #openeducationwk activities we are publishing a post on how Open Knowledge Russia have been experimenting with data expeditions. This a follow up post to one that appeared on the Open Education Working Group Website which gave an overview of Open Education projects in Russia. The authors of this post […]

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Open Data Day report #1: Highly inspiring activities across the Asia-Pacific

Following the global Open Data Day 2015 event, which tooks place on February 21 with hundreds of events across the globe, we will do a blog series to highlight some of all the great activities that took place. In this first post (of four in total) we start by looking at some of the great […]

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How Open Data Can Change Pakistan

This is a cross-post from the brand new Open Knowledge Pakistan Local Group blog. To learn more about (and get in touch with) the new community in Pakistan, go here. Pakistan is a small country with a high population density. Within 796,096 square kilometres of its territory, Pakistan has a population of over 180 million […]

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Walkthrough: My experience building Australia’s Regional Open Data Census

On International Open Data Day (21 Feb 2015) Australia’s Regional Open Data Census launched. This is the story of the trials and tribulations in launching the census. Getting Started Like many open data initiatives come to realise, after filling up a portal with lots of open data, there is a need for quality as well […]

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India Open Data Summit 2015

This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Knowledge India blog and the Open Steps blog. It is written by Open Knowledge Ambassador Subhajit Ganguly, who is a physicist and an active member of various open data, open science and Open Access movements. Open Knowledge India, with support from the National Council of Education Bengal […]

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Financial transparency field network with the Issuecrawler tool based on hyperlink analysis starting from members of Financial Transparency Coalition, 12th January 2015. Open Knowledge and Digital Methods Initiative.

New research project to map the impact of open budget data

I’m pleased to announce a new research project to examine the impact of open budget data, undertaken as a collaboration between Open Knowledge and the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam, supported by the Global Initiative for Financial Transparency (GIFT). The project will include an empirical mapping of who is active around open […]

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New Open Knowledge Local Groups in Macedonia, Pakistan, Portugal and Ukraine

It’s once again time for us to proudly announce the establishment of a new batch of Open Knowledge Local Groups, founded by community leaders in Macedonia, Pakistan, Portugal and Ukraine, which we hereby welcome warmly into the ever-growing family of Local Groups. This brings the total number of Local Groups and Chapters up to a […]

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Open Data Camp UK: Bursting out of the Open Data Bubble

“But nobody cares about Open Data” This thought was voiced in many guises during last weekend’s Open Data Camp. Obviously not entirely true, as demonstrated by the 100+ people who had travelled to deepest Hampshire for the first UK camp of its kind, or the many more people involving themselves in Open Data Day activities […]

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Building a Free & Open World-wide Address Dataset

Finding your way through the world is a basic need, so it makes sense that satellite navigation systems like GPS and Galileo are among open data’s most-cited success stories. But as wonderful as those systems are, they’re often more useful to robots than people. Humans usually navigate by addresses, not coordinates. That means that address […]

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#openbelgium15, the Open Data Discussion after Open Data Day

This is a guest blog post by Pieter-Jan Pauwels from Open Knowledge Belgium. This past weekend has been buzzing with activities around the world during #OpenDataDay. In Belgium however they saved their strength for this week in order to host the #openbelgium15 conference, featuring industry examples, community workshops and much more. Over 180 people are […]

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Announcing the Open Data Day Coalition micro-grantees

Two weeks back a coalition of Open Data Day supporters announced a micro-grant scheme in an open call for groups with good ideas for Open Data Day activities. The response was overwhelming and over 75 groups from all corners of the world found the time to send in an application for one of the 300 […]

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Call for Applications: School of Data 2015 Fellowship programme now open!

We’re very happy to open today our 2015 Call for School of Data Fellowships! Apply here Following our successful 2014 School of Data Fellowships, we’re opening today our Call for Applications for the 2015 Fellowship programme. As with last year’s programme, we’re looking to find new data trainers to spread data skills around the world. […]

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Global Community Stories: January 2015

As some might remember, last year we ran a very popular blog post series called Global Community Stories, which highlighted activities in the ever-broadening Local Groups global community. Towards the latter half of the year lots of other projects demanded time and the series came to an unintended halt. With the turn of the year, […]

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Pakistan Data Portal

December 2014 saw the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and Alif Ailaan launch the Pakistan Data Portal at the 30th Annual Sustainable Development Conference. The portal, built using CKAN by Open Knowledge, provides an access point for viewing and sharing data relating to all aspects of education in Pakistan. A particular focus of this project was […]

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Open Knowledge Switzerland’s 2014 in review, big plans ahead

This is a cross-post from the Open Knowledge Switzerland blog, see the original here. It has been a big year for us in Switzerland. An openness culture spreading among civil administration, NGOs, SMEs, backed by the efforts of makers, supporters and activists throughout the country, has seen the projects initiated over the past three years […]

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Open Knowledge Belgium: Bringing Together Open Communities, Policy Makers & Industry

Open Knowledge Belgium to host The Second Edition of Open Belgium in Namur on Feb 23rd, 2015! Register Today! On 23 February, Open Knowledge Belgium is hosting the second edition of Open Belgium, an event expected to attract over 200 people, coming together to learn and discuss the growing open knowledge movement in Belgium. This […]

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Launching Open Data Day Coalition Micro-Grant Scheme: Apply Today!

OPEN DATA DAY 2015 is coming and a coalition of partners have come together to provide a limited number of micro-grants designed to support communities organise ODD activities all over the world ! Open Data Day (ODD) is one of the most exciting events of the year. As a volunteer led event, with no organisation […]

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BudgetApps: The First All-Russia Contest on Open Finance Data

This is a guest post by Ivan Begtin, Ambassador for Open Knowledge in Russia and co-founder of the Russian Local Group. Dear friends, the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015 have been marked by an event, which is terrific for all those who are interested in working with open data, participating in challenges […]

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Open Data Handbook 2015 comeback – and you want to be a part of it!

There is famous saying that says that outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. We at Open Knowledge tend to agree. This is why we decided to take one of Open Knowledge key resources, the Open Data Handbook, and give it a bit of a face lift in this upcoming year. […]

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Thank You to Our Outgoing CEO

This is a joint blog post by Open Knowledge CEO Laura James and Open Knowledge Founder and President Rufus Pollock. In September we announced that Laura James, our CEO, is moving on from Open Knowledge and we are hiring a new Executive Director. From Rufus: I want to express my deep appreciation for everything that […]

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A round-up of Open Knowledge Community events around the world!

One of the best opportunities that being part of a community offers is the chance to collaborate and make things happen together – and when we want this to happen in sync, what’s better than convening an (in person or online) event? Just before the end of the year, let’s collect a few highlights from […]

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The Global Open Data Index 2014 is now live!

The Global Open Data Index 2014 team is thrilled to announce that the Global Open Data Index 2014 is now live! We would not have arrived here without the incredible support from our network and the wider open knowledge community in making sure that so many countries/places are represented in the Index and that the […]

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Introducing Open Education Data

Open education data is a relatively new area of interest with only dispersed pockets of exploration having taken place worldwide. The phrase ‘open education data’ remains loosely defined but might be used to refer to: all openly available data that could be used for educational purpose open data that is released by education institutions Understood […]

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Competition now open – enter your app and win 5,000 euro

This is a cross-post by Ivonne Jansen-Dings, originally published on the Apps4Europe blog, see the original here. With 10 Business Lounges happening throughout Europe this year, Apps for Europe is trying to find the best open data applications and startups that Europe has to offer. We invite all developers, startups and companies that use open […]

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Congratulations to the Panton Fellows 2013-2014

Samuel Moore, Rosie Graves and Peter Kraker are the 2013-2014 Open Knowledge Panton Fellows – tasked with experimenting, exploring and promoting open practises through their research over the last twelve months. They just posted their final reports so we’d like to heartily congratulate them on an excellent job and summarise their highlights for the Open […]

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Pioneering Fellowships Will Help Rewire Africa’s Governments

Open Knowledge and Code for Africa launch pilot Open Government Fellowship Programme. Apply to become a fellow today. This blog announcement is available in French here and Portuguese here. Do you want to help us build African governments and societies that are more accountable and responsive to citizens? We are looking for the best ideas […]

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The Public Domain Review brings out its first book

Open Knowledge project The Public Domain Review is very proud to announce the launch of it’s very first book: a selection of weird and wonderful essays from the project’s first three years.

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