The 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 […]

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‘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 […]

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The 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 […]

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New 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 […]

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Taking 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 […]

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budzeti.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 […]

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Come 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 […]

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Government 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 […]

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Don’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 […]

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Open 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 […]

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Open 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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Second Open Education Booksprint

The Open Education Working Group and LinkedUp Project will be hosting the second Open Education Handbook booksprint in collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland on Friday 22nd November 2013. The booksprint will be held at the at the Wikimedia Deutschland office, Berlin and we’d really like you to participate! During the booksprint participants will be involved in […]

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Campaigners challenge Cameron to keep promise to tackle company secrecy

The UK government must use the Open Government Partnership summit in London next week to end the secrecy surrounding who really owns millions of UK companies, campaigners said today. Discussions are underway right now at the highest levels of government and campaigners are expecting a decision to be made by the end of this week. […]

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Announcing our new declaration on open data – and inviting your feedback

The Global Open Data Initiative partners, including the Open Knowledge Foundation, are excited today to share a draft Declaration on Open Data, and would welcome comments and feedback on its contents. Open Data has enormous unfulfilled promise to change how governments work and to empower citizenship. Even as more governments and issue experts discover new […]

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The revolution will NOT be in Open Data

The following guest post is by Duncan Edwards from the Institute of Development Studies. I’ve had a lingering feeling of unease that things were not quite right in the world of open development and ICT4D (Information and communication technology for development), so at September’s Open Knowledge Conference in Geneva I took advantage of the presence […]

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OKFestival: what is it going to be?

We announced city and dates of our upcoming Open Knowledge Festival 2014 less than a month ago (Berlin, Germany! July 15th-18th!) and we’re pleased to start giving you more information about it. The Open Knowledge Festival in 2014 will be the biggest open data and open knowledge event the world has ever seen. We’ve taken […]

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Civil Society Day and Unconference at the OGP

The Open Government Partnership Summit is the primary forum for the global community of openness reformers from all backgrounds – government, civil society and private sector – to come together and engage with each other. We’ve been helping organise the OGP Civil Society Day – the day before the Summit – which will provide an […]

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Boots’ £1 billion pound tax dodge shows we need open data on who really owns companies

Yesterday a group of campaign organisations revealed that Alliance Boots – the British pharmaceutical giant which operates the high street chemists ‘Boots’, and one of the UK’s biggest private companies – avoided over £1.1 billion in tax payments over the past 6 years. Tax avoidance schemes are estimated to cost the UK up to £120 […]

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The Open Definition in context: putting open into practice

We’ve seen how the Open Definition can apply to data and content of many types published by many different kinds of organisation. Here we set out how the Definition relates to specific principles of openness, and to definitions and guidelines for different kinds of open data. Why we need more than a Definition The Open […]

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Open Legislation Working Group Relaunched at OKCon

Legal questions are at the heart of what openness is about, and there has always been interest at the Open Knowledge Foundation in open legislation – both in theory and in practice. Remarkable projects have been started around the world in open lobbying and open law data. This has proven ample inspiration to put open […]

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The European Journalism Centre Announces Free Online Data Journalism Course

The European Journalism Centre (EJC) is pleased to announce that registration is now open for its free online data journalism course Doing Journalism with Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools. This five-module introductory course gives participants the essential concepts, techniques and skills to effectively work with data and produce compelling stories under tight deadlines. It […]

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Global events update: join the OKCon survey and get ready for OKFestival!

Picture by Libertic. Dear OKCon speakers, workshop organisers, participants, partners and supporters, OKCon was a fantastic event, spanning over a total of four days, spreading out all around Geneva, attended by more than 900 people from 55 countries on site and with many more joining us online (and we’re currently counting you too). And the […]

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Dear Prime Minister, Please increase the ambition of the UK’s open government commitments

The Open Knowledge Foundation is part of a group of civil society organisations behind an open letter to the UK Prime Minister urging him to increase the ambition of the UK’s open government commitments in the run up to the Open Government Partnership Summit in London later this month. This isn’t just about the UK. […]

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New Working Group: Open Product Data

The biggest open product database in world joins Open Knowledge Foundation and you can get involved! We vote with our wallet everyday, but are rarely aware of everything we endorse through our purchases. Product supply chains are complex, our ethical preferences are diverse and in practice we, as consumers, do not have the time or […]

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Exploring openness and the Open Definition

We’ve set out the basics of what open data means, so here we explore the Open Definition in more detail, including the importance of bulk access to open information, commercial use of open data, machine-readability, and what conditions can be imposed by a data provider. Commercial Use A key element of the definition is that […]

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CKAN hackathon: Hello from Ireland!

This post was written by Denis Parfenov, our Ireland Ambassador, and Flora Fleischer, a member of the new Local Group for Ireland. Last Saturday, the ‘Open Data Ireland’ community and the Open Knowledge Foundation Network held a ‘CKAN Hackathon’. This event was kindly sponsored by Fingal County Council, ESRI Ireland and The Irish Organisation for […]

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The Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, October 2013

Sign up here for monthly updates to your inbox. Hello and welcome to this, your October newsletter. We hope you’ve been having an excellent month. Make sure you check out this post, Defining Open Data – and look out for more in a similar vein over the next week or two. As our movement grows […]

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Global Open Data Initiative moving forward

(This is a cross-post from the Global Open Data Initiative blog.) The Global Open Data Initiative is a coalition of civil society organisations working together in the area of open government data and open government. Our basic goal is that citizens will have full and open access to the government data that is needed in […]

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Next Steps on “Follow the Money” – from OKCon to the Open Government Partnership Summit

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. Last month we announced the Open Knowledge Foundation and ONE’s plans to support and strengthen the community of activists and advocacy organisations working to enable citizens to follow […]

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Investigate the Garment Factories: new Data Expedition

In May, the School of Data community got together in a Data Expedition to respond to the Rana Plaza catastrophe. They built a crowdsourced database on garment factories and used it to expose the bad safety standards and non-transparency that contributed to the disaster. Now we are taking the garment factory investigation to the next […]

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Defining Open Data

Open data is data that can be freely used, shared and built-on by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose. This is the summary of the full Open Definition which the Open Knowledge Foundation created in 2005 to provide both a succinct explanation and a detailed definition of open data. As the open data movement grows, and […]

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Open Data developments in Asia

The following guest post is by Waltraut Ritter, a member of Opendata Hong Kong, the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Local Group. It is the first of two posts exploring the current state of open data in Asia. The Open Knowledge Conference in Geneva attracted delegates from 55 countries, indicating that open, public data is indeed becoming […]

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It’s about more than the link

The following guest post is by Leigh Dodds, and is cross-posted from his blog. To be successful the web sacrificed some of the features of hypertext systems. Things like backwards linking and link integrity, etc. One of the great things about the web is that its possible to rebuild some of those features, but in […]

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Wrapping up OKCon

900 people, 55 countries, 2 full conference days plus 2 satellite days. OKCon convened our network and community in Geneva, Switzerland – at the largest Open Knowledge event. We share a common goal of knowledge being open. Across the movement (Open Science, Open Data, Open Government, Open Culture and many more), there were workshops, keynotes […]

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Open Assets in Argentina

The following guest post is by Florencia Coelho, from Argentinian daily La Nacion. In Argentina, where a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has yet to be signed, LA NACION and three transparency NGOs – Poder Ciudadano, ACIJ (Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia) and Fundación Directorio Legislativo joined efforts to produce the first […]

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CKAN Hackathon and Local Group launch, Dublin

The following is cross-posted from the Open Government Partnership blog A CKAN hackathon is taking place on Saturday, 28th September at TCube in Dublin, bringing together IT specialists, political representatives and members of the public with an interest in making data open. <img src=”http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2855/9963755924_63f78021c4_z.jpg” width=”350 alt=”dublin-TempleBar”> Developers, designers, journalists, academics, policy makers, creative thinkers, civil […]

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Open Data Training at the Open Knowledge Foundation

We’re delighted to announce today the launch of a new portfolio of open data training programs. For many years the Open Knowledge Foundation has been working — both formally and informally — with governments, civil society organisations and others to provide this kind of advice and training. Today marks the first time we’ve brought it […]

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Register now for the OGP Summit and Civil Society Day

This October, the Open Government Partnership Annual Summit is coming to London. We’re helping to organise the Civil Society Day, which will take place on the 30th October at University of London Union, followed on the 31st October and the 1st November by the main conference. The draft agendas for both the main Summit and […]

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The Global Open Knowledge Foundation Network

Since 2004, the Open Knowledge Foundation has been connecting people and building communities in open data and open knowledge around the world. People in the global Open Knowledge Foundation network run meetups and workshops, campaign for open data, train, advise, and create open source tools and materials to help everyone work with data. The network […]

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See you at OKFestival 2014

OKFestival is back! As the banners are rolled up and the lights turned off in Geneva, we are already looking forward to the next time we’ll all come together. We are super-excited to announce that OKFestival 2014 will take place on the 15-18 July in Berlin, Germany. OKFestival is the biggest gathering of the open […]

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New partnership to bring open data to developing countries

We are really excited to announce a new partnership between us, the World Bank and the ODI, which was announced at OKCon in Geneva today. This important joint venture aims to bring open data projects and engagement to developing countries. Here’s the press release. Left to right: Laura James and Rufus Pollock, the Open Knowledge […]

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LinkedUp Open Education Veni Competition: The winners!

The winners for the LinkedUp Veni Competition, organised by the LinkedUp Project were announced today at the Open Knowledge Conference in Geneva. The LinkedUp Project, a multi partner consortium funded by Framework Programme 7, want to push forward the exploitation of the vast amounts of public, open data available on the Web, in particular by […]

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Crowdcrafting: Putting Citizens in Control of Citizen Science

Press Release: Geneva, 17 September 2013 Speaking at the Open Knowledge Conference, the world’s leading event on open data, Co-director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, Rufus Pollock, announced today that the open-source platform Crowdcrafting has grown to accommodate over 120 projects, making it the world’s most diverse open-source platform for online citizen science and crowdsourced […]

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What’s the point of open data?

I’ve been puzzling for a while how the open data community can help the many great groups that have been fighting for transparency of key money flows for the past decade and more. I think one answer may be that open data helps us go beyond simply making information available. If done well, it can […]

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OKCon 2013 kicks off

The Open Knowledge Conference 2013 is go! Instagram: @nicolassierro, @okconstickers, @oliviertripet We come to you from the lovely shiny Centre International de Conferences Geneve. The first talks and workshops are already underway, and the lobby is filling with the buzz of greetings, reunions and introductions. Already we’ve seen the launch of a brand new portal […]

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New Panton Fellows Announced!

We’ve just finished the second round of appointments for the Panton Fellowships, and this year we have three Fellows joining us: Rosie Graves (UK), Peter Kraker (Austria), and Sam Moore (UK). Peter will be joining us at OKCon this year, so please come and find him and introduce yourself! Left to right: Sam Moore, Peter […]

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“Follow the Money” with ONE and the Open Knowledge Foundation

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. We want to see a world in which citizens are able to hold decision-makers to account for the use of public money, using information about where it comes […]

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Working Group Stories: Open Design & Hardware, Open Economics

Last week we published updates from the Public Domain, Open Sustainability and Open Education Working Groups. Look out for more stories next month, to keep up-to-date with the buzzing brilliance of the Network. Open Design and Hardware Working Group The Open Design and Hardware working group celebrated its one year anniversary and is busy working […]

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Veni Open Education Competition: Vote now!

There is just one week left to chose a winner in the ‘People’s Choice’ strand of the LinkedUp Veni Competition. The Veni Competition is the first in the LinkedUp Challenge, a series of three consecutive competitions looking for interesting and innovative tools and applications that analyse and/or integrate open web data for educational purposes. Twenty-two […]

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OKCon 2013 Guest Post: Which bar to raise?

The following post is by Paul Maassen, who together with Daniel Dietrich and Anders Pedersen will be coordinating the workshop ‘Raising the bar for ambition and quality in OGP: workshop to develop a ‘Civil Society National OGP Review’, to be held on Tuesday 17 September, 14:45 – 16:00 @ Room 5, Floor 3, as part of […]

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