Open Data 1-day training on 28 March

The Open Knowledge Foundation will be re-running its one-day Introduction to Open Data on Friday 28 March. Local governments and other organisations are looking at how they can release data they hold – unleashing creativity from local entrepreneurs, researchers, journalists, third-sector organisations and citizens, and helping to build economic activity as well as accountability and […]

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Building an archaeological project repository I: Open Science means Open Data

This is a guest post by Anthony Beck, Honorary fellow, and Dave Harrison, Research fellow, at the University of Leeds School of Computing. In 2010 we authored a series of blog posts for the Open Knowledge Foundation subtitled ‘How open approaches can empower archaeologists’. These discussed the DART project, which is on the cusp of […]

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Gauging the needs and challenges of the global open data community

This is a guest blog post by Julia Keserü, International Policy Manager at the Sunlight Foundation, which partners alongside ao. the Open Knowledge Foundation in the Global Open Data Initiative. Originally featured on the blog of the initiative. A few months back, the Global Open Data Initiative (GODI) sought input from the transparency community to […]

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Open Data Day – what’s happening around the Open Knowledge Foundation global network

With Open Data Day just around the corner – tomorrow, Saturday February 22, 2014, where over 100 events around the world will take place – it’s time to zoom out a bit and see what many of the Open Knowledge Foundation Local Groups around the world are planning. So here we go, are you ready? […]

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Enter the Partnership for Open Data’s Impact Stories Competition!

We want to know how opening up data impact those in developing countries. The Partnership for Open Data (POD) is a partnership of institutions to research, support, train and promote open data in the context of low and middle income countries. We invite you to share with us your stories about how open data has […]

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Announcing the narrative streams at this year’s OKFestival and the call for session proposals

Now that the OKFestival website is live and tickets are on sale, we can share more details about the narrative streams that will run through the event. We’re also pleased to open the call for session proposals at this time. A Theory of Change The programme for the 2014 edition of the festival is fuelled […]

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The Open Knowledge Festival 2014 website is now live!

We know you’re as excited as we are about this year’s Open Knowledge Festival, which will be taking place in Berlin from 15th – 17th July. Today, we’re pleased to unveil the new website for the event which includes the festival ticket shop, details of how to contribute to the programme and other key information […]

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Brazil becomes the Open Knowledge Foundation’s first Full Chapter in Latin America

We’re delighted to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation Brazil has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to become a, full, official Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation. You can read the official announcement on our press page, and here their coordinator, Everton Alvarenga, tells us more. In July 2011, during the Open Knowledge Conference in […]

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River level data must be open

My home – as you can see – is flooded, for the second time in a month. The mighty Thames is reclaiming its flood-plains, and making humans – especially the UK government’s Environment Agency – look puny and irrelevant. As I wade to and fro, putting sandbags around the doors, carrying valuables upstairs, and adding […]

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Who are you? Community Survey Results (Part 1)

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

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What are you doing on Open Data Day?

Open Data Day 2014 is February 22 – just two weeks away! What: It’s a gathering of citizens in cities all around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data. Why: To show support for and encourage the adoption open data policies by the world’s local, regional […]

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Announcing the Local Open Data Census

Let’s explore local open data around the world! Local data is often the most relevant to citizens on a daily basis – be it rubbish collection times, local tax rates or zoning information. However, at the moment it’s difficult to know which key local datasets are openly available and where. Now, you can help change […]

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The Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, February 2014

Sign up here for monthly updates to your inbox. Greetings! One month into 2014, there’s plenty going on around the Open Knowledge Foundation, including lots of activity for Copyright Week mid-January as well as preparation for Open Data Day towards the end of February. As ever, the global Open Knowledge Foundation network has been busy, […]

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Britain ‘shines light of transparency’ on secret lobbying. Just kidding.

The following article is cross-posted from OpenDemocracy. David Cameron’s lobbying bill exposes the hollowness of his muscular claims about cracking down on crony capitalism. Britain’s democracy remains under corporate capture. Image: Government wants to register Lobbying Agencies alone (Alliance for Lobbying Transparency) Today the government’s proposed Lobbying Bill will go into parliamentary ping-pong between the […]

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Cease and desist by the German government for publishing a document received under FOI law

The German Federal Ministry of the Interior has sent a cease and desist order to the Freedom of Information (FOI) portal FragDenStaat.de for publishing a document received under the German federal FOI law. The document – a five page study written by government staff – analyses a ruling by the German constitutional court in November […]

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Myanmar – Developing a Knowledge Society from Scratch

This is a guest post by Waltraut Ritter from Knowledge Dialogues and Opendata Hong Kong/Open Knowledge Foundation Hong Kong, who recently visited Myanmar as basis for this interesting account. She can be contacted on waltraut(a)opendatahk(dot)com. New cars, new mobiles – photo by Waltraut Ritter, CC BY-SA The Worldbank Knowledge Economy Index ranks Myanmar as second […]

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The best data opens itself on UK Gov’s Performance Platform

This is a guest post by Francis Irving (@frabcus), CEO of ScraperWiki, who has made several of the world’s first civic websites such as TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow. This is the third in a series of posts about the UK Government’s Performance Platform. Part 1 introduced why the platform is exciting, and part 2 described how […]

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Let’s fix EU copyright!

Today is Day 6 of Copyright Week, organised by EFF, looking at Getting Copyright Right. The European Commission is currently holding a Public Consultation on the review of the EU copyright rules – and they’re looking for your input. Unfortunately, the consultation documents that the European Commission are difficult to fill out: rather than encouraging […]

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Copyright and Open Access 2014

This post is a guest post by Michelle Brook and Tom Olijhoek from the Open Knowledge Foundation Open Access Working Group. This week has been proclaimed Copyright week by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and today, Wednesday Jan 15, is Open Access Day 2014. It is almost exactly 1 year ago that Aaron Swartz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz) […]

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Join the “Get Ready For Open Data Day 2014!” Hangout on January 21!

Open Data Day 2014 is coming! On February 22 – just over a month! And you might wonder: what is it exactly, where does it come from – and how can I organise or join an Open Data Day event? We have answers for you and we are glad to invite you to join us […]

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Copyright Week: Public Domain Calculators

From 13 to 18 January the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is organising Copyright Week, an event focused on promoting six key principles for guiding copyright policy and practice. Each day is dedicated to one of the principles, and today is ‘Building and defending a robust public domain’. This post is preceded by another one on […]

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Creative Commons 4.0 BY and BY-SA licenses approved conformant with the Open Definition

This post by Timothy Vollmer, Manager of Policy and Data at Creative Commons, originally appeared on the creativecommons.org website. In November we released version 4.0 of the Creative Commons license suite, and today the Open Definition Advisory Council approved the CC 4.0 Attribution (BY) and Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) International licenses as conformant with the Open Definition. […]

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Mapping the Open Spending Data Community

We’re pleased to announce the official release of “Mapping the Open Spending Data Community” by Anders Pedersen and Lucy Chambers, an in-depth look at how citizens, journalists, and civil society organisations around the world are using data on government finances to further their civic missions. The investigation began in 2012 with three goals: To identify […]

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Extended: Open Data Scoping Terms of Reference

The Open Data Partnership for Development Scoping Terms of Reference deadline has been extended until January 13, 2014. We have received some great submissions and want to give more people the best opportunity to tackle the project. Truly, we recognize that the holiday season is a busy time. The Open Data Partnership for Development Scoping […]

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“Share, improve and reuse public sector data” – French Government unveils new CKAN-based data.gouv.fr

This is a guest post from Rayna Stamboliyska and Pierre Chrzanowski of the Open Knowledge Foundation France Etalab, the Prime Minister’s task force for Open Government Data, unveiled on December 18 the new version of the data.gouv.fr platform (1). OKF France salutes the work the Etalab team has accomplished, and welcomes the new features and […]

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2013 – A great year for CKAN

2013 has seen CKAN and the CKAN community go from strength to strength. Here are some of the highlights. February The beta of CKAN 2.0 was released with a much improved user interface and many new features. The European Union’s CKAN-powered open data portal, open-data.europa.eu, was also launched in beta. publicdata.eu was upgraded to CKAN […]

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Top 10 Greatest Hits of 2013!

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

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PDF Liberation Hackathon – January 18-19

This guest blog post has been written by Marc Joffe, of Public Sector Credit Solutions. Open government data is valuable only to the extent that it can be used cost-effectively. When governments provide “open data” in the form of voluminous PDFs they offer the appearance of openness without its benefits. In this situation, the open […]

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Open Data Day 2014 is Coming Feb 22 – Time to Join the Fun!

This guest blog post has been written by David Eaves, public policy entrepreneur, open government activist and one of the initiators of Open Data Day. It was originally published on David’s blog. So, with much help from various community members (who reminded me that we need to get this rolling – looking at you Heather […]

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First impressions from the 1-day introduction to Open Data

Last week I gave the Open Knowledge Foundation’s first 1-day Introduction to Open Data training course. Participants from a diverse group of organisations joined me at Friends House in London for a day of presentations, discussions and workshops. The course course covers the basic concepts – what does it mean for data to be ‘open’? […]

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The Open Knowledge Foundation urges the UK Government to stop secret corporate lobbying

The Open Knowledge Foundation has joined the members of the UK OGP civil society network in signing an open letter which calls on the Government to put an end to secret corporate lobbying. In its current form the government’s proposed lobbying bill (which is currently going through parliament) will let the vast majority of corporate […]

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A report from the Ibrahim Governance Weekend

Early last month I was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the Mo Ibrahim Foundation‘s annual governance weekend, including the celebrated Ibrahim Forum. The MIF, headed by the eponymous and irrepressible Mo, does amazing work promoting good governance in Africa. It’s perhaps best known for its incredibly comprehensive Governance Index. Despite the terrible score of his […]

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Scoping Terms of Reference – Open Data Partnership For Development

What is the state of Open Data activities globally? Who is working on what and where? Where are opportunities to be fostered in the developing world? The Open Data Partnership for Development is a partnership between The World Bank, Open Data Institute (ODI) and Open Knowledge Foundation. Initial funding of $1.25 million in the first […]

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The Public Domain “Class of 2014”

The Public Domain Review gives it’s top pick of people whose works will, on 1st January 2014, be entering the public domain in those countries with a ‘life plus 70 years’ copyright term.

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Signing on to civil society request to make public government data “license free” in the U.S.

Public data generated or commissioned by government bodies is becoming an increasingly important part of the public sphere — from new forms of civic participation, journalism, transparency and accountability to new opportunities for innovation and growth. The Open Knowledge Foundation is joining a band of civil society organizations – including Sunlight Foundation, Joshua Tauberer/GovTrack.us, Public […]

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Planning Your Open Data Day 2014

Open Data Day is coming! On February 22, 2014 in a timezone near you! What is it? Open Data Day is a global community initiative to make and spread open data. People from all around the world gather together online or in person to make things with and around open data. Anyone is invited to […]

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Open Steps: 3 months documenting Open Knowledge in India

This is a guest blog post from Open Steps, an initiative by two young Berliners Alex (a software developer from Spain) and Margo (a graduate in European politics from France) who decided to leave their daily lives and travel around the world for one year to meet people and organizations working actively in open knowledge […]

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The Open Knowledge Foundation Community Stories Tumblr: a new way of sharing your stories

The Open Knowledge Foundation international community has grown tremendously over the past decade. Since 2004 people have come together in over 46 countries (and growing!) to do amazing things with open knowledge in a huge variety of ways, across so many domains and topics, and working in collaboration on some incredible initiatives. It’s clear though […]

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The Open Knowledge Foundation opposes copyright term extensions in TPP negotiations

The Open Knowledge Foundation has joined a group of civil society organisations and activists from around the world in an open letter opposing proposals to increase the duration of copyright as part of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. This follows on from another recent letter asking for greater openness around the TPP negotiations, which […]

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Open Knowledge recognised as key to democracy in the digital age

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

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Open Badges for OKF Scotland

The Following is a guest post by the Open Knowledge Foundation Community Member Graeme Arnott originally posted his blog here At the first meeting in Glasgow of Open Knowledge Foundation Scotland it was good to see some familiar faces from the ‘Open Badges in Scottish Education Group‘ (OBSEG). A little twitter conversation afterwards with Sheila […]

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Sign our petition asking the UK government to stop secret corporate lobbying

Today the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency are co-launching a petition endorsed by a group of transparency and civil society organisations, asking the UK government to rewrite the lobbying bill to give citizens a proper register of lobbyists in the UK As we’ve written about before, the lobbying register proposed in […]

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Open Data Empowers Us to Answer Questions that Matter

This article by Rufus Pollock, Founder and Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, is cross-posted from “Telefonica Digital Hub” released on 5 December 2013. Every day we face challenges – from the personal such as the quickest way to get to the work or what we should eat to global ones like climate change and […]

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The DataTank 4.0

This post was written by Pieter Colpaert, a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Belgium Chapter. The DataTank is open source software, just like CKAN, Drupal or Elastic Search, which you can use to transform a dataset into an HTTP API. Today (the 5th of December 2014), we are proud to launch the 4.0 version […]

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Announcing Sunlight’s international lobbying disclosure guidelines

This is a cross-post by Julia Keserű, Lisa Rosenberg and Greg Brown from the Sunlight Foundation, originally published on the Sunlight Foundation blog. With more and more civil society organizations in the open government universe recognizing that “thorny issues” — such as political finance transparency or surveillance — need to be tackled somewhat more vehemently, […]

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Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, December 2013

Sign up here for monthly news to your inbox. Welcome! Hello and welcome to our latest news update on what is happening in and around the Open Knowledge Foundation. As we approach our 10th anniversary, we are reflecting on the open movement over the last decade and planning for the opportunities and challenges ahead. We […]

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Global Community Stories #6(b): Ireland, Germany and Updates

Ireland: Meetups, OpenSpending projects and prominent media exposure… In July our Irish group held Open Data Ireland Meetup #9, which was dedicated to ‘Local Government’ and was attended by around 20 people – see follow-up blogs posts among other here and here. In October this was followed up with Open Data Ireland Meetup #10 that […]

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Creative Commons Version 4.0 Released

This is a guest blog post by Timothy Vollmer, Manager of Policy and Data at Creative Commons. Creative Commons has finally released Version 4.0 of the license suite. It’s been two years since we began the license update process, but now it’s done. The 4.0 licenses are the most global, legally robust licenses produced by […]

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Open Knowledge Foundation and BBC sign Memorandum of Understanding

On Monday of this week, the Open Knowledge Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with the BBC. The BBC also signed separate memorandums with the Europeana Foundation, the Open Data Institute and the Mozilla Foundation. Laura James, CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation, signs the MoU with James Purnell, BBC Director of Strategy and Digital. […]

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Global Community Stories #6 (a): Greece, Bangladesh, Argentina and Canada

It is once again time to take a trip around the world and hear a bit about some of the great things that are happening in our growing network of Open Knowledge Foundation Local Groups. Due to the sheer volume of activities and updates we want to share this month, our Global Community Stories post […]

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