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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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreOpen 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 […]
Read moreOpen 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 […]
Read moreSign 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 […]
Read moreOpen 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 […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreAnnouncing 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, […]
Read moreOpen 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 […]
Read moreGlobal 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 […]
Read moreCreative 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 […]
Read moreOpen 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. […]
Read moreGlobal 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 […]
Read moreGlobal Open Knowledge Festival Meetups – a warm-up in 3 steps
It was just last week that we invited the open communities to start collaborating and warming up for the upcoming Open Knowledge Festival. Today we can already share with you the learnings and outcomes of the first OKFestival Meetup (in Berlin) – as we would love to imagine it, this was just the first in […]
Read moreDispatch: Crisismappers Community needs Data Makers
What does open data / open knowledge have to do with Crisismapping? Everything. In times of crisis, we live in open data / open government ecosystem. We seek, build and make it happen in real time – talk converts to action quickly. On Tuesday, November 19th, the School of Data hosted a full day pre-conference […]
Read moreWhat needs to happen to enable citizens to Follow the Money around the world?
The following post is from Alan Hudson, Policy Director (Transparency & Accountability) at ONE and Jonathan Gray, Director of Policy and Ideas at the Open Knowledge Foundation. A few weeks back, we launched a new global “Follow the Money” network of organisations pushing for the transparency needed to enable citizens to hold decision-makers to account […]
Read moreOpen letter asking for greater transparency around Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations
The Open Knowledge Foundation has joined more than 30 civil society organisations and experts in signing an open letter asking leaders for greater transparency around the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. The controversial negotiations have been covered in The Guardian and The Washington Post over the past few days following the leaking of a draft chapter […]
Read moreThe Global Open Data Initiative Needs Your Input
This is a cross-post by Julia Keserü from the Sunlight Foundation, taken from both the Global Open Data Initiative blog and the Sunlight Foundation blog. Open Data has enormous unfulfilled promise to change how governments work and to empower citizenship. As more governments and issue experts discover new potential in the public release of data, […]
Read moreLaunching Spending Stories: How much is it really?
Spending Stories is a new way to put spending figures in their proper perspective. Developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation and Journalism++ with funding from the Knight Foundation, Spending Stories is an app that helps citizens and journalists understand and compare amounts in stories from the news. When we hear that the UK’s school meals […]
Read moreTell us what you think of the Open Knowledge Foundation
We’re turning our Open Knowledge Foundation data analysis inward. We want to know all about You, your thoughts and Open Knowledge goals. You can shape the future of Open Knowledge Foundation by answering a short community wide survey. In keeping with all things Open Knowledge Foundation, we honestly want EVERYONE to answer the survey. This […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Festival Meetups all around the world – now!
We’re getting closer to the Open Knowledge Festival (Berlin, 15-18 July 2014 – save the date!) and it’s time to roll up our sleeves! OKFestival (as friends call it) will gather people from all the open movements, communities and projects of the world. Planning and making stuff all together will be awesome. So why should […]
Read moreData Expedition: Investigate the Extractive Industries of Nigeria
UPDATE: there is now a dedicated page for the Nigeria Extractives Data Expedition here Who operates the often poisonous wells in the Niger Delta? How does the money flow between the contractors running the oil fields and the government? Join us for an online Data Expedition to Investigate the Extractive Industries of Nigeria, December 7, […]
Read moreHelp Turn Voices from BBC Radio into Open Data for Wikipedia
This is a cross-posting from the OpenGLAM blog written by Michael Smethurst, development producer at the BBC – see the original post. An invite On Saturday, 18th January 2014 between 10am and 5pm the BBC is teaming up with the Open Knowledge Foundation’s OpenGLAM initiative, Creative Commons UK and the Wikimedia community to host an […]
Read moreMozilla Festival – we came, we made, we hacked. Together.
Something we’ve been talking about more and more often in the Open Knowledge Foundation and frequently together with friends from other open communities is: how to team up and make the most of each other’s experience to achieve our most ambitious shared goals of openness and inclusivity? We’re still working on the answer (with you!) […]
Read moreAnnouncing the Launch of The Public Domain Review Store
We are very excited to announce the birth of The Public Domain Review Store! To help raise some much needed funds for the project we have made some things to sell, returning a few select gems from a pixel-based existence back into the world of real physical objects from whence they once came. As well […]
Read moreWorking Group Community Stories
The Open Knowledge Foundation is proud to support over 20 active and incubating working groups, domain specific groups promoting, advocating for and building openness in their respective fields. Here is what some of our working groups have been up to over the past few months! Open Science: The Open Science Working Group has welcomed three […]
Read moreNew petition to fix the EU lobby register
The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU), a coalition of over 200 civil society groups concerned about the effects of corporate lobbying on the EU (including the Open Knowledge Foundation), have recently launched a petition to fix the EU’s official register of lobbyists. The current register is voluntary, incomplete and unreliable – giving […]
Read moreNew partnership to map the public domain in France
Last night Aurélie Filippetti, the French Minister for Culture and Communication, announced a new partnership between the French ministry of Culture and Communication and the Open Knowledge Foundation France to take steps towards mapping the public domain in France. The ‘public domain calculator’ demonstrator project will develop a tool to help establish legal status of […]
Read moreOpen Data professional services now available on G-Cloud 4
We are pleased to announce that the Open Knowledge Foundation are now an approved supplier on the G-Cloud 4 Services Framework. This means that it’s now even easier for UK government organisations to commission the Open Knowledge Foundation. We are offering a range of services via G-Cloud including setting up and deploying a CKAN open […]
Read moreOpen Data’s Business Value Isn’t That Important
This is a cross-post from the Sunlight Foundation blog, written by Director of Sunlight Labs, Tom Lee. See the original post here. The recent Open Government Partnership meetings in London have provided a good opportunity to assess the direction of our community. The latest comes from Jonathan Gray, and the title — Open government should […]
Read more1-day Open Data training, London, 6 December
The Services team of the Open Knowledge Foundation will be running a public version of its one-day introductory training course on Open Data, on Friday, 6 December in central London. The course is open to anyone who has an interest in Open Data in a professional capacity, and wants an introduction from one of the […]
Read moreVidi Competition launching today
Calling all developers! Today the LinkedUp Project are launching the second of the LinkedUp Challenge competitions – the Vidi Competition. The LinkedUp Project aims to push forward the exploitation of the vast amounts of public, open data available on the Web, in particular by educational institutions and organizations. For Vidi we’re inviting you to design […]
Read moreEthics and risk in open development
The following guest post is by Linda Raftree. Linda works with Plan International USA, serves as a special advisor on ICTs and M&E for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Evaluation Office and is a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Open Development Working Group. A core theme that the Open Development track covered at September’s Open Knowledge […]
Read moreOpen government should be about accountability and social justice, not just the digital economy
An edited version of this article was featured in The Guardian on 4th November 2013. “In all parts of the world, we see the promise of innovation to make government more open and accountable. And now, we must build on that progress.” Thus spoke President Obama at the UN General Assembly in September 2010. This […]
Read moreOpen Development Debate Series 2013-2014: [Re]framing Open Development and Its Implications for Cross Open-Domain Collaboration
The following guest post is by Kersti Ruth Wissenbach, an independent consultant for Open for Change and the Open Knowledge Foundation Ambassador for the Neatherlands. Kicking off during Open Development Camp 2013, Open for Change and the Open Knowledge Foundation Open Development working group are launching a series of debates aimed at engaging the global […]
Read moreThe Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, November 2013
Sign up here for monthly updates to your inbox. Hi! We hope your month has been swell! Thanks for tuning in to this month’s Open Knowledge Foundation update – read on to find out about some of the ways we’re making progress towards a more open world. This month’s highlights include key developments in financial […]
Read moreJoined Up Data: first steps towards connecting transparency initiatives
Unprecedented amounts of information on the financial resources available to fight poverty are now being released through the efforts of multi-stakeholder transparency initiatives in sectors like aid, construction, contracting, and extractives. Unleashing this data’s potential will mean joining it up, following the money by merging and comparing datasets from different sources. Transparency initiatives have the […]
Read moreUK takes lead on ending company secrecy at Open Government Partnership Summit
We will be updating this post throughout the morning, as further details are announced. For press contact, call +44 (0)1223 422159 or email press@okfn.org. This morning UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced the UK’s support for public registers of beneficial ownership, or who really owns companies, at the Open Government Partnership Summit in London. In […]
Read moreThe Open Knowledge Foundation’s hopes for the Open Government Partnership
Tomorrow campaigners and officials from over 60 countries will gather in London for the second annual summit of the Open Government Partnership, a voluntary multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to strengthening the transparency and accountability commitments of its member states. Over the past few months we’ve been involved in extensive consultations and talks to give input to […]
Read more‘Follow the Money’ with ONE and the Open Knowledge Foundation at the Open Government Partnership
As the Open Government Partnership summit kicks off, we’re pleased to launch a new website for the emerging ‘Follow the Money’ network, FollowTheMoney.net, supported by ONE and the Open Knowledge Foundation. If you’re interested in using information about public money to hold decision-makers to account, then we hope you’ll join us. Fill in your details […]
Read moreThe role of data in European democracy
Cross-posted from the Digital Agenda for Europe Blog. This week campaigners and officials from over 60 countries around the world are meeting in London for the Open Government Partnership Summit to discuss how to make governments more open. A major focus will be how to make official information available and accessible for all. At the […]
Read moreNew Lobbying Transparency Working Group from the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation
The Open Knowledge Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation are teaming up to convene a new global group on lobbying transparency. We want civil society organisations, journalists and citizens around the world to be able to use information about lobbying to understand and report on the influence of big money on politics and to push for […]
Read moreTaking it Global @ OGP
Activating an Open Data Movement means building beyond the topics of ‘why open data?’ and ‘open data index’. We also need to dig into the ‘how?’ we get there globally. Since the Open Data Partnership for Development (ODP4D) was launched at OKCon we have been busy working behind the scenes planning the programme. The Open […]
Read morebudzeti.ba: Following the money in Bosnia and Herzegovina
We’re pleased to announce the launch of budzeti.ba, a new way to understand public spending in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). budzeti.ba is a joint project of Bosnian civil society advocates CPI and the Open Knowledge Foundation. It allows Bosnian citizens to navigate the complexities of the BiH tax system and to explore the distribution of […]
Read moreCome and meet us at the Open Government Partnership Summit in London!
The Open Knowledge Foundation is involved with a number of events at and around the Open Government Partnership Summit this week. If you’re coming to the summit or any of the events around it, here is where you can find us. Tuesday 29th October If you’re going to the Open Data Institute’s Annual Summit, you […]
Read moreGovernment data still not open enough – new survey on eve of London summit
In the week of a major international summit on government transparency in London, the Open Knowledge Foundation has published its 2013 Open Data Index, showing that governments are still not providing enough information in an accessible form to their citizens and businesses. The UK and US top the 2013 Index, which is a result of […]
Read moreDon’t miss Open Development Camp, November 7 & 8 in Amsterdam
Only two weeks to go until the third Open Development Camp will bring together an international crowd to discuss lessons learned and future implications around Open Development. Have a look at the preliminary program and join us on 7 & 8 November in Amsterdam for a reality check on Open Development. ODC13 is more than […]
Read moreOpen Access Week 2013!
Happy Open Access Week! Open Access week is a global event, celebrating open access. Taking place in the last full week of October every year, there are many events taking place online and offline which bring together people who care about Open Access, and provide opportunity to spread the good word. There’s a lot going […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Foundation at Mozilla Festival – meet us!
At the Open Knowledge Foundation we love festivals – and attending is just half of the fun, we really like making things happen. So as soon as our friends over at Mozilla started building up their fabulous Mozilla Festival we decided to roll up our sleeves and join the party! Mozilla Festival will take place […]
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