“We Love Open Data” workshop, DMY Festival, Berlin, 3-4th June 2011

The following post is from Esa Mäkinen, an open data advocate, a journalist at Helsingin Sanomat and member of the OKF’s Working Groups on EU Open Data and Open Government Data. Finnish novels used to be 200 pages long in the 1910s. A few hundred years later and the novels are longer: nowadays they are […]

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Hacking for Transparency at Brazil’s Major e-Government Conference

The following guest post is from Daniela B. Silva and Diego Casaes from the Transparency Hacker Community in Brazil. CONSEGI, an open source software and e-Government conference organized by (and mostly for) public IT departments and officers, took place on May 11, 12 and 13th, in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. For the first time, […]

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data.gouv.fr to promote free public data

The following guest post is from Regards Citoyens, a French organisation that promotes open data. Three months ago, the French Prime Minister announced officially the creation of the EtaLab governmental team, dedicated to the future data.gouv.fr. On Friday May 27th, two official texts have been published: a decree (fr) that defines new juridic rules regarding […]

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Hack4Europe!

The following post is from Europeana, cross posted from the Europeana blog. What are the ben­e­fits of mak­ing cul­tural her­itage data open and reusable? How can it sup­port the devel­op­ment of new con­tent mar­kets, gen­er­ate new jobs and enrich people’s life? Euro­peana and its part­ners Col­lec­tions Trust, Museu Picasso, Poz­nan Super­com­put­ing and Net­work­ing Cen­ter and […]

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Open Government Data Workshop, Sofia, 4th June 2011

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. OKF Co-Founder Rufus Pollock is going to speak at Open Camp Sofia 2011 on the 5th June. Just before we’re going to be running a workshop/hackday on open government data. If you’d like to come along, please register here: From the […]

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Guardian piece on open data in science

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Guardian recently published an interesting article on open data in science, including interviews with OKF Co-Founder Rufus Pollock and other leading voices from the world of open science. Here’s Rufus: “The litmus test of openness is whether you can have […]

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Expert Python & Javascript coders wanted!

The following post is from Jason Kitcat, Operations Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Open Knowledge Foundation is currently looking to hire more developers! In brief: What: Seeking top-notch Python and Javascript coders (do not have to be both!) to work on the Open Knowledge Foundation’s world-changing projects including CKAN and OpenSpending When: We […]

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One week left for early bird tickets for OKCon

There is only one week left to get early bird tickets for OKCon, so please hurry if you want to make use of this offer! Early bird applications will close on June 1st. OKCon 2011 in Berlin will include keynotes, panel discussions and workshops on topics ranging from open data’s role in democracy and culture, […]

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Open Data talk at Census Microdata workshop

Jo Walsh, Service Manager at EDINA and a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation board, writes: Yesterday I gave a last-minute talk on open data, the work of OKF and EDINA to a Census Microdata workshop in Edinburgh. The slides consist of screenshots with links and cover the following. CKAN – the Data Hub and […]

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The Open Data Challenge: €20k of prizes, 10 days left to enter!

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. There are currently 10 days left to enter the Open Data Challenge, Europe’s biggest open data competition to date! You can submit ideas, applications, visualisations and datasets until the 5th June 2011 via the following link. We’d be very grateful for […]

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Can Crowdsourcing Improve Open Data?

The following guest post is from Tom Chance (@tom_chance), founder of OpenEcoMaps. This post is cross posted from the London Datastore blog with permission from the author. What happens when open data is wrong? Can crowdsourcing improve it? Often, open data enthusiasts assume that the next step after the release of some government data is […]

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Sustaining open data business

Jo Walsh, who works as a project manager at EDINA and sits on the Open Knowledge Foundation board, writes: These thoughts on sustaining open data business were provoked by ORCID, a not-for-profit business set up by a group of large academic publishers and a few leading universities. Its aim is to provide a central directory […]

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OKCon 2011: Travel Bursaries & Early Bird Tickets Available

OKCon 2011 is now just over one month away. Registration is ongoing at so you can still book your tickets online here. Early bird prices will be available until 1st June 2011 only, so book early! The official deadline for submissions has passed (but if you’ve missed it – please contact us and we will […]

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Workshops Preceding OKCon2011

OKCon2011 is glad to announce that registration has now opened for the pre-OKCon workshops. More details can be found below. Pre-OKCon2011 CKAN Workshop Tuesday, June 28, 2011 from 9:30 AM – 6:00 PM (GMT+0100) A chance to get hands-on with the technical side of working with CKAN. In each session, a core CKAN developer will […]

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The Annotator – Preview

In November 2010, Rufus Pollock announced the Annotator project on the OKFN blog. Since this initial release the project has been developed into a fully fledged product. The Annotator is a JavaScript widget that can be added to any webpage to allow inline annotation of its contents. Combined with a storage system, such as AnnotateIt, […]

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How to study lobbying with crowdsourced open data

The following guest post is from Regards Citoyens, a French organisation that promotes open data. For about a year, Regards Citoyens has been working together with the French chapter of Transparency International in order to bring more transparency in the processes of influence and lobbying within the French parliament. Lobbying is a very controversial subject […]

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Help to map the public domain around the world!

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re currently looking for more people to help map copyright law in countries around the world – so we can make it easier for people to find and reuse works which have entered the public domain. We’re particularly keen to contact […]

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Virtual Workshop on Linking Development Data, 12-13th May 2011

The following guest post is from David Pidsley who is a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Knowledge in Development. Open Data for Development Camp (ODDC) on 12th and 13th May 2011 in Amsterdam focuses on how developers, practitioners and policy makers can harness open international development data more effectively. During […]

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OKCon 2011 Presentation and Speaker Preview

The following post is from Daniel Dietrich, Board Member of OKF Deutschland and main organiser of OKCon 2011 in Berlin. Although the list of keynote speakers and presentations is not yet set in stone, it is shaping up very nicely so far! Here is a bit of a sneak preview of just a few of […]

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Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 17: Jan-March 2011

Welcome to the seventeenth Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter! For a plain text version for email please see Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 17 – on our main okfn-announce list. OPEN KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER NO. 17 Contents: Announcing… The Open Data Challenge! OKCon 2011: Call for Participation New Working Group on Open Economics launches Yourtopia.net GetTheData.org […]

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Your stories here!

Want to share your tales of openness with the world? Got a cool project you’d like to tell people about? Or perhaps some interesting ruminations about open knowledge? The OKF blog is a fantastic place to tell your story, open up conversations, and make sure all your hard work is getting noticed. We want to […]

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New mailing list for open data in Czech Republic

The following is a guest post from Jindrich Mynarz at the National Technical Library in Prague, Czech Republic, member of the OpenData.cz initiative, and one of the organizers of the Big Clean in Prague. The Open Knowledge Foundation has just launched the okfn-cz mailing list: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-cz The short URL is: http://bit.ly/okfn-cz The intent of the […]

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Where does Italy’s money go?

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Over the past 48 hours or so we’ve been busy loading 12 years of Italian spending data into Open Spending. Further details on the project and the data are below. This project was put together by Stefano Costa, Friedrich Lindenberg, Luca […]

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Yourtopia wins 3rd prize at World Bank Contest

The following post is from Guo Xu, a member of the new OKF Working Group on Economics and a member of the YourTopia.net A few months back, we launched a simple app that allows anyone to say what kind of world, what “YourTopia”, they would like to live in. Created with the help of the […]

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#opendata: New Film about Open Government Data

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Open Knowledge Foundation is pleased to announce the release of #opendata, a new short film clip about open government data. The film includes interview footage with numerous open government data gurus and advocates, which we shot at last year’s Open […]

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What do you think about Norway’s new open data license?

The following guest post is from Sverre Andreas Lunde-Danbolt who works for the Department for ICT and renewal in the Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs, and who is a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data The Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration and Reform have just sent a […]

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Voluntary Transparency And Digital Civic Literacy Help Build Strong Communities

The following guest post is by Matt Rosenberg of Seattle, founder of the non-profit Public Eye Northwest and the news knowledge base site Public Data Ferret, a Seattle Times local news partner. There’s no dispute that mandated public disclosure in accordance with freedom of information and open meetings laws is a cornerstone of any modern […]

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Notes from the Big Clean in Prague

The following is a guest post from Jindrich Mynarz at the National Technical Library in Prague, Czech Republic, member of the OpenData.cz initiative, and one of the organizers of the Big Clean in Prague. On the Saturday, March 19th, the Big Clean workshop took place as a twin event in two cities, Prague (Czech Republic) […]

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Wikipedia Academy on Wikipedia and Higher Education

The following guest post is from Alex Stinson, Campus Ambassador at Oxford University for Wikipedia The London Wikipedia Academy is a mini-conference aimed at starting a conversation between academics and Wikipedians in London, moving from ethereal opinions to organised, evidence based, informed discussions. There will be a number of exciting speakers all engaging in a […]

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Announcing the Open Data Challenge – a pan-European open data competition

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. For a long while our Working Group on EU Open Data has been very keen to run a pan-European open data competition. Hence we’re very pleased to announced the opening of the Open Data Challenge, which is precisely such a competition. […]

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Open for Business

The following post is from Professor Nigel Shadbolt, who is on the UK Government’s Public Sector Transparency Board. This article was originally published in Think Quarterly and is reproduced here with permission from the author. The first decade of the twenty-first century has been defined by our insatiable demand for information. It has led to […]

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Building the (Open) Data Ecosystem

The following is a post by Rufus Pollock, co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Present: A One-Way Street At the current time, the basic model for data processing is a “one way street”. Sources of data, such as government, publish data out into the world, where, (if we are lucky) it is processed by […]

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Bounties for scrapers: a new approach to opening global data

This is a guest post by Chris Taggart, co-founder of OpenCorporates.com and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data. On Friday we at OpenCorporates announced an innovative (and frankly untested!) way for the open data community to work together in helping opening up one of the most important datasets there […]

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The Aid Revolution begins with XML

The following guest post is by Claudia Elliot from Publish What You Fund. IATI XML data After two years of negotiating, the 18 donors of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) agreed on February 9th the final details of a new global standard for publishing aid information. This format makes aid information internationally comparable, and […]

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The next OGD frontier: Low and middle income countries

The following guest post is by Aman Grewal and Carlos de la Fuente, from the World Wide Web Foundation and CTIC Foundation Last year we witnessed an impressive expansion of Open Government Data initiatives all around the world. We can assert without any doubt that it was clearly the year when Open Government spread throughout […]

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Open Data Search: finding useful datasets, worldwide

The following post is from Friedrich Lindenberg, who is a developer at the Open Knowledge Foundation working on CKAN, PublicData.eu and Open Spending. Recently, there has hardly been a week in which there hasn’t been an announcement of a new local, regional or national open data initiative – including ever more extensive catalogues of data […]

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Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2011: 30th June & 1st July

The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010 Call for Participation and Registration is now open! We would be grateful for help in circulating the call to relevant lists and communities! You can reuse or point to: This blog post Main CFP page Plain text announce (bottom of page). Open Knowledge Conference 2011: Call for Participation When? […]

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Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2011: 30th June & 1st July

The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010 Call for Participation and Registration is now open! We would be grateful for help in circulating the call to relevant lists and communities! You can reuse or point to: This blog post Main CFP page Plain text announce (bottom of page). Open Knowledge Conference 2011: Call for Participation When? […]

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Public Transport Data for Berlin

The following post is from Stefan Wehrmeyer, who has worked on projects such as Mapnificent, and has recently joined the Open Knowledge Foundation as a developer! Public Transport Data is awesome! It’s one of the few datasets that people actually use every day when they ask for the next bus or the fastest route. And […]

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“Should Britain flog off the family silver to cut our national debt?”

The following post is from Francis Irving, CEO of ScraperWiki. ‘Should Britain flog off the family silver to cut our national debt?‘ — that’s the question the UK current affairs documentary Dispatches tackled last Monday. ScraperWiki worked with Channel 4 News and Dispatches to make two supporting data visualisations, to help viewers understand what assets […]

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A Kafkaesque Data-trail: the Hunt for “Europe’s Hidden Billions”

The following guest post is by Cynthia O’Murchu, investigative reporter at the Financial Times, and previously their deputy interactive editor. She is a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data At its inception, “Europe’s Hidden Billions”, a joint investigation by the Financial Times and the then newly formed Bureau of […]

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The Public Domain Calculators code is now in a separate library

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. As many of you will know, the Public Domain Calculators aim to make it easier to find out which works are in the public domain in a given jurisdiction. There are two main parts of the project: A collection of flowcharts, […]

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Open Government Data in Slovakia

The following guest post is by Zuzana Wienk, from the Slovakian watchdog the Fair Play Alliance. She is also a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data When we started to build a data catalogue of all possible flows of public finances to the private sphere in 2003, we had no […]

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Project Gutenberg adds their 40,000th free eBook!

The following guest post is from Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on the Public Domain It’s The Year of the eBook! Project Gutenberg, the granddaddy of all eBook libraries, announced today they have put number 40,000 of internally produced free eBooks online as of March […]

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Introducing FigShare: a new way to share open scientific data

The following post is from Mark Hahnel, founder of the Science 3.0 network and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Data in Science. Scientific publishing as it stands is an inefficient way to do science on a global scale. A lot of time and money is being wasted by groups around […]

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Keeping Open Government Data Open?

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. An unprecedented amount of freely reusable government information is currently being released by public bodies around the globe. This is being consumed and reused by numerous stakeholders – including civic developers, data literate citizens, data journalists, NGOs, researchers, and companies. There […]

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CityCamp Colorado – gov 2.0 goes local.

The following guest post is from Scott Primeau from Colorado Smart Communities, member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data Just over a year ago, Kevin Curry started the CityCamp movement to bring together local government officials, government employees, private sector technology experts, journalists, and citizens to share perspectives and insights […]

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Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No.16 Sept-Dec 2010

Welcome to the sixteenth Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter! For a plain text version for email please see Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 16 – on our main okfn-announce list. OPEN KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER NO. 16 Contents: Open Government Data Camp 2010 Launch of PublicData.eu Europe’s Energy CKAN keeps on growing – new releases, and launch […]

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Open Data in Brighton and Hove

The following guest post is from Greg Hadfield, a former Fleet Street journalist and internet entrepreneur, and founder of the Open-data Brighton and Hove group. Greg is also director of strategic projects at Cogapp, and a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data. Brighton and Hove is a special place. […]

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Experts to underpin Wikipedia’s open wisdom? Turning anecdotes into data.

The following guest post is from Dr Panagiota Alevizou, member of the Wikimedia Research Committee, Research Fellow in Education and Educational Technologies at the Open University, and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Science. Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary last January was followed by a frenzy of media coverage in the mainstream and […]

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