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Getty Releases 4,600 Images into the Public Domain
A depiction of a banquet by 17th Centruy Italian artist, Morazzone, one of the many scans now in the public domain Cross-posted from the OpenGLAM Blog. Yesterday the J. Paul Getty Trust launched its Open Content Program which saw the release of 4,600 high-resolution scans of works from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles into […]
Read moreNatural resource revenues should be published as open data
Who pays what for a given country’s natural resources? With billions of dollars changing hands for access to oil, gas and mineral reserves every year, there is huge potential for corruption, conflict, injustice and environmental destruction around the extraction of natural resources. We think that information about natural resource revenues should be published as open […]
Read moreIntroducing the Open Economics Principles
The Open Economics Working Group would like to introduce the Open Economics Principles, a Statement on Openness of Economic Data and Code. A year and a half ago the Open Economics project began with a mission of becoming central point of reference and support for those interested in open economic data. In the process of […]
Read moreOKCon 2013 Accommodation Subsidy Programme launching today!
Cross-posted from the OKCon Blog. Event. OKCon 2013 – 16th-18th September 2013, Geneva, Switzerland. How to apply. Find the instructions and the submission form on the OKCon 2013 Accommodation Subsidies webpage. Deadline. The deadline to submit your application is Monday 12th August, 23:59:59 GMT. Questions? Feel welcome to contact financialaid@okcon.org We are glad to invite our attendees who haven’t been awarded a […]
Read morePredicting city bankruptcies with open data: The case of Detroit
This is a guest post by Marc Joffe of Public Sector Credit Solutions. Many have noticed that the United States last week was struck by its biggest municipal bankruptcy ever, when the City of Detroit declared bankruptcy. Less well known is the fact that Moody’s, the major credit rating agency, downgraded the City of Chicago […]
Read moreOKCon 2013 Guest Post: Open Data Portal on Land Rights
Cross-posted from the OKCon Blog. Introducing a series of guest posts by OKCon 2013 speakers that we will publish over the coming weeks. This first post is by Laura Meggiolaro, Land Portal Coordinator, International Land Coalition, who will be speaking on the main stage during the Open Development and Sustainability session on Wednesday 18th September […]
Read moreWhat’s the deal with the UK government’s new spending tool?
We were pleasantly surprised to learn that this morning the UK government launched a new tool to explore UK public spending. The ‘Government Interrogating Spending Tool’ (fear not – you the user are supposed to be the giver, not the receiver, of interrogation) or ‘GIST’ is, according to the Cabinet Office, “one of the first […]
Read moreOpen tax data, or just VAT ‘open wash’
This post is by Chris Taggart, the co-founder and CEO of OpenCorporates, the largest open database of companies in the world, and a member of the Open Government working group. [Disclosure: I am on the UK Tax Transparency Board, which has not yet discussed these proposals, but will be doing so at the next meeting […]
Read moreCity Spending Party around the world
Last weekend more than a hundred budget nerds and engaged citizens gathered at 20 spending data parties to open up city spending and budgets. From Lagos to Kathmandu groups dived into budget data across the OpenSpending community as part of this first global City Spending Data Party from July 19 to July 21. The spending parties helped […]
Read moreNetwork Summit
Twice-yearly the whole community of the Open Knowledge Foundation gathers together to share with, learn from and support one another. The Summer Summit 2013 took place in Cambridge (UK) last week (10th-14th July), with staff updates on the Thursday and network representatives joining on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was so inspiring to hear […]
Read more9 models to scale open data – past, present and future
The possibilities of open data have been enthralling us for 10 years. I came to it through wanting to make Government really usable, to build sites like TheyWorkForYou. But that excitement isn’t what matters in the end. What matters is scale – which organisational structures will make this movement explode? Whether by creating self-growing volunteer […]
Read moreThe transformative potential of gardening with data
The following guest post is by Farida Vis from the Everyday Growing Cultures research project. The project looks at the potentially transformative effect of bringing together the food growing and open data communities. Those supporting the government’s open data agenda highlight the business case for open data, an economic argument about its moneysaving potential, along […]
Read moreWhat Does $3.2M Buy in Open Government?
The following guest post is by Travis Korte from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. The Knight Foundation received hundreds of submissions to its “Knight News Challenge on Open Gov.,” a competition designed to create new tools to improve how citizens interact with government. The applicants noted a number of problems with government data: confusing […]
Read moreEC Consultation on open research data
The European Commission held a public consultation on open access to research data on July 2 in Brussels inviting statements from researchers, industry, funders, IT and data centre professionals, publishers and libraries. The inputs of these stakeholders will play some role in revising the Commission’s policy and are particularly important for the ongoing negotiations on […]
Read moreUsing public data to flag tax avoidance schemes?
This post was jointly written by Jonathan Gray (@jwyg), Director of Policy and Ideas at the Open Knowledge Foundation and Tony Hirst (@psychemedia), Data Storyteller at the Open Knowledge Foundation’s School of Data project. It is cross-posted from the School of Data blog. Today OpenCorporates added a new visualisation tool that enables you to explore […]
Read moreIntroducing Open Knowledge Foundation Labs
Today we’re pleased to officially launch Open Knowledge Foundation Labs, a community home for civic hackers, data wranglers and anyone else intrigued and excited by the possibilities of combining technology and open information for good – making government more accountable, culture more accessible and science more efficient. Labs is about “making” – whether that’s apps, […]
Read moreSave the Date – OGP Pre-Conference, London Wednesday 30th October
This Autumn the Open Government Partnership Annual Conference is coming to London and will place on the 31st October and 1st November. As a lead into the main event, OGP is planning a 1-day civil society Pre-Conference event on Wednesday 30th October and we here at the Open Knowledge Foundation will be collaborating with them […]
Read morePublish from ScraperWiki to CKAN
The following post is by Aidan McGuire, co-founder of ScraperWiki. It is cross-posted on the ScraperWiki blog. ScraperWiki are looking for open data activists to try out our new “Open your data” tool. Since its first launch ScraperWiki has worked closely with the Open Data community. Today we’re building on this commitment by pre-announcing the […]
Read moreOKCon 2013 travel bursary programme launching today!
Cross-posted from the OKCon Blog. Event. OKCon 2013 – 16th-18th September 2013, Geneva, Switzerland. How to apply. Find the instructions and the submission form on the OKCon 2013 Travel Bursaries webpage. Deadline. The deadline to submit your application is Sunday 14th July, 23:59:59 GMT. Questions? Feel welcome to contact financialaid@okcon.org. OKCon 2013 is happy to announce that […]
Read moreGlobal Community Stories #4: Morocco, Bangladesh, Spain and South Korea
It’s once again time for a round-up of some of the major activities happening in our rapidly expanding Local Group Network across the world. This time we’ll among other be highlighting some of our newest groups and bring stories from Africa, Asia and Europe. Enjoy! In Morocco, which is home to one of our […]
Read moreAnnouncing a new series, “Curator’s Choice”
This week sees the launch of the “Curator’s Choice” series – a joint endeavour of The Public Domain Review and OpenGLAM – which aims to actively engage with and celebrate those cultural heritage institutions that have taken the exciting steps to open up their content. This new series shall consist of a monthly guest post […]
Read moreJapan’s Administration Urges Ministries to Promote Open Data
A few days ago the 4th e-Government Open Data Expert Committee was held in Tokyo. At the committee the specific measures to implement Japan’s new IT strategy, which was launched mid-June, were discussed – highlighting open data as a central means to achieve among other economic vitalization. During the discussions, Mr. Ichita Yamamoto, the Minister […]
Read moreGit (and Github) for Data
The ability to do “version control” for data is a big deal. There are various options but one of the most attractive is to reuse existing tools for doing this with code, like git and mercurial. This post describes a simple “data pattern” for storing and versioning data using those tools which we’ve been using […]
Read moreUK Open Government Licence is now compliant with the Open Definition
On Friday the UK National Archives launched a new version of the Open Government Licence, which is now the default licence used by the UK government to publish the lion’s share of its public sector information. While the announcement hardly made headlines, there is one small addition to the text of the licence that we […]
Read moreOpen company data on the rise: featuring G8, World Bank, EITI…
The following guest post is by Chris Taggart of OpenCorporates. Here he rounds-up recent developments within the field of Open Company Data. This article is cross-posted from http://blog.opencorporates.com/, published by Chrinon Ltd, a company dedicated to improving and publishing public data under an open licence that allows and encourages reuse, including commercially (direct link to […]
Read moreMeeting the Latin American open knowledge community
Over the past couple of weeks, our resident Data Diva Michael Bauer, and International Community Manager Zara Rahman have been in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Their mission was twofold; raise awareness of the impending launch of the Escuela de Datos, our School of Data project in Spanish, and try to find and meet with as […]
Read moreThe Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, July 2013
Sign up for monthly updates to your inbox here It’s been a month for big announcements on openness, and we’ve been at the forefront as ever. The G8 summit in Northern Ireland catalysed a whole load of activity around open government data, and we want to make sure that words are translated into effective action. […]
Read moreHola Escuela de Datos!
Today, we’re pleased to announce the launch of School of Data in Spanish! The Website was launched at the AbreLatam, on the 24th June, with a workshop focusing on building the Latin American network. This follows a series of warm up events thanks to the wonderful generosity of our hosts, in particular – the Hacks […]
Read moreUnderstanding Barriers to Open Government Data
The following guest post is by Chris Martin, researcher at the University of Leeds. Here he presents the results of his recent research into perceptions of the barriers to open government data. He looks at the similarities and differences between public and non-profit sector perceptions, pointing to the utility of greater cross-sectoral collaboration. Earlier in […]
Read moreHow is Obama’s new climate action plan going to use open data to tackle climate change?
Last night US President Barack Obama announced a major new action plan to fight climate change. The plan includes measures to regulate coal, cut emissions in many areas, boost green energy, increase climate resilience as well as to take stronger international leadership in achieving carbon emissions cuts. We were delighted to see that the plan […]
Read moreWhat data needs to be opened up to tackle tax havens?
How to tackle tax havens and how to open up official data were two of the headline topics at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland last week. But unfortunately the bold plans and commitments that many were hoping for did not materialise. It seemed that the G8 countries might lead a new global initiative to […]
Read moreRigour and Openness in 21st Century Science
Here’s a few great videos from a recent conference attended by members of our Open Science Working Group, about Rigour and Openness in 21st Century Science. A team of researchers at the University of Oxford and University of Koblenz recently joined forces to organise an event on ‘Rigour and Openness in 21st Century Science‘ examining […]
Read morePrinciples for Open Contracting
The following guest post is by the Open Contracting Partnership, announcing the release of their Principles for Open Contracting. It is cross-posted from their website. Over the past year, the Open Contracting Partnership has facilitated a global consultation process to create a set of global principles that can serve as a guide for all of […]
Read moreCarbon emissions transparency should be at the heart of the global open data agenda
This week eight of the world’s most powerful nations made unprecedented multilateral commitments to open up their data: the Open Data Charter says that that public information should be published in accordance with open data principles by default; the Lough Erne Declaration emphasises the importance of increased transparency in cracking down on tax evasion, corruption […]
Read moreOpening the weather, part 2
See also “Opening the weather, part 1” I began paragliding a few years ago. It’s maybe the most weather-dependent sport in the world. We often fly in mountainous areas, very close to the ground. We need to know about local effects like thermal updrafts, clouds growth, mountain-breeze, foehn wind and all sorts of other micro […]
Read moreMaking Transparency Visible: an update on OGP in Ireland
This is cross-posted from the Open Government Partnership blog. In my previous post on the Open Government Partnership website, I posed the question ‘Is Ireland closing the door on Open Government?’. At that time I expressed the view that Ireland’s government was uninterested in the benefits of open government. Now, eight months later, I am […]
Read moreG8 Open Data Charter Highlights Open Data as Crucial for Governance and Growth
Today’s release of an Open Data Charter by the G8 is testimony to the growing importance of open data worldwide. The Charter recognizes the central role open data can play in improving government and governance and in stimulating growth through innovation in data-driven products and services. It endorses the principle of “open by default” — […]
Read moreOpening the weather, part 1
Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight A cow with its tail to the west makes the weather best Onion skins very thin, mild winter coming in Humans have always wanted to know what the weather has in store for them, and have come up with a whole load of ways to predict what’s coming; some […]
Read moreOKCon 2013: selected proposals, updated programme and Early Bird tickets!
Cross-posted from the OKCon Blog. We received more than 300 proposals and selecting the submissions that we could fit in the 2-and-a-half-day schedule was a real challenge. We had to leave out several truly exciting applications and believe us, that wasn’t easy. But today: here we are, ready to announce the list of selected proposals […]
Read moreAfricanising the Open Government Partnership
This is cross-posted with permission from the Development Initiatives blog “OGP will be real, only when it starts to make sense to the citizens out there” (Robert Hunja – World Bank) The government of Kenya recently hosted the first ever OGP regional forum in Africa. The event aimed to establish guidelines for OGP activities for […]
Read moreG8 Science Ministers Support Open Data in Science
As you may have seen, open data and transparency is set to be a major topic of discussion at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland next week. We were pleased to see a joint statement from the G8 science ministers released yesterday – expressing a strong commitment to open data in science. The third section […]
Read moreG8 countries must work harder to open up essential data
PRESS RELEASE. Cambridge, UK, 14th June 2013. Also available in Chinese, German, Russian, Spanish and other languages here. Open data and transparency will be one of the three main topics at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland next week. Today transparency campaigners released preview results from the global Open Data Census showing that G8 countries […]
Read morePanton Fellowships: Apply Now!
The Open Knowledge Foundation is delighted to announce the launch of the new Panton Fellowships! Funded this year by The Computer & Communications Industry Association, Panton Fellowships will be awarded to scientists who actively promote open data in science, as per the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science. Visit the Panton Fellowships home page […]
Read moreNews from the Open Knowledge Foundation Events Team
Events have a significant role for the Open Knowledge Foundation. They focus attention on the key issues of the day, gather interested individuals and organisations around specific topics, and represent the public face of the open knowledge community and its many and various projects. They also provide occasions for open data enthusiasts to meet face-to-face, […]
Read moreAnnouncing the Global Open Data Initiative
The Global Open Data Initiative (GODI) is a new initiative led by the Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Institute, Fundar, Sunlight Foundation and the World Wide Web Foundation. It mission is to share principles and resources for governments and societies on how to best harness the opportunities created by opening government data. The initiative is intended […]
Read moreFrom PSI to open data – LAPSI is ready for a new round of legal questions
In February, 23 partners kicked off the LAPSI 2.0 thematic network on the legal aspects of public sector information in Leuven, Belgium. The network, consisting of academic institutions and stakeholders from 15 countries, will continue where the previous LAPSI network left off, and look at the remaining legal barriers hindering the full and open availability […]
Read moreOpen knowledge at the Open Government Partnership conference in Mombasa, Africa
Last week, the Open Knowledge Foundation had the pleasure of attending the Open Government Partnership conference in Mombasa, Kenya. Participants from all over Africa as well as the rest of the world convened to discuss transparency, citizen engagement and open knowledge – including open data – in this inspiring event to set the course for […]
Read moreSecond Open Economics International Workshop
Next week, on June 11-12, at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Open Economics Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation will gather about 40 economics professors, social scientists, research data professionals, funders, publishers and journal editors for the second Open Economics International Workshop. The event will follow up on the first workshop held […]
Read moreData Expedition story: Why garment retailers need to do more in Bangladesh
This post is cross-posted from the School of Data blog On May 25-26 almost 50 participants from several teams set out on a data expedition to map the garment factories. This is a report from the team comprised of Roy Keyes, Naomi Colvin, Sybern, Bhanupriya Rao and Daniela Mattern. The team used a crowdsourced database […]
Read moreIntroducing the OKF French-speaking community!
View the French version of this post here It is estimated that around 900 million people are able to communicate in French in the world. All those people do not necessarily speak English, and a lot of them use French as their Lingua Franca. After a suggestion from the French local group, the Open Knowledge […]
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