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Data Hunt events for Open Government Data?
At the Open Knowledge Foundation we have been working hard to support the development of open data catalogues around the world. The main purpose of these is to make official datasets easy to find and to reuse — whether by researchers, journalists, or web developers building new applications or services for citizens. Work is underway […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Scotland, this Thursday May 13th, 3-7pm Edinburgh #okscotland
After having a good look at Inspace set up for a talk session, decided to up the maximum capacity, so there’s no longer a waiting list for OKScotland. If you’re planning to attend on Thursday afternoon then please do register now. Here’s the draft OKScotland schedule for the afternoon – note that there is coffee […]
Read moreOKF Germany launched at Leipzig Semantic Web Day!
We are delighted to announce the launch of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, which took place yesterday at the Leipzig Semantic Web Day. The OKF Germany chapter will be dedicated to promoting all forms of open knowledge in Germany — including open government data, open data in science, and the public domain. Work is already […]
Read moreA Picture of the Election
The following post is from Donovan Hide, a developer working on the Straight Choice project. Donovan explains how he made an increasingly popular picture of the election. Over 5000 leaflets have been collected, scanned or photographed and then uploaded by the public to the the straight choice. All these images were very colourful and varied, […]
Read moreElection data!
If you’d asked me back in 2005, I’d have told you that the 2010 election would be the first online election. It turned out not to be. For example, the YouTube and Facebook leaders debate was much less important than the Television debates. However, there are a few places relating to data where the Internet […]
Read moreWarwickshire County Council launch new open data site!
Warwickshire County Council pinged us earlier this week to let us know about the launch of their new open data site! The site hosts a range of data sets – available in CVS or XML. For example there are details about education in the region, including: Number of pupils enrolled in Warwickshire schools by school […]
Read moreCanadian citizen-driven data catalogue datadotgc.ca is powered by CKAN
Not so long ago we were in contact with David Eaves, a Canadian public policy analyst and open government data advocate (who advises the Mayor of Vancouver about open data and open government), about starting an catalogue for Canadian open government data. A couple of weeks ago he and a small team of coders and […]
Read moreOpen Government Data in Austria
The following guest post is from Andreas Langegger who is at the Johannes Kepler University Linz and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on EU Open Data. Historically, transparency has never been our strength – let’s shape the future. Transparency and public sector information policy have always been rather infamous topics in Austria. […]
Read moreRussian translation of the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD)
We’ve just added a Russian translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Maxim Dubinin. http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/russkiy If you’d like to translate the Definition into another language, or if you’ve already done so, please get in touch on our discuss list, or on info at the OKF’s domain name (okfn dot org).
Read moreOKCon 2010 tomorrow in London!
We’re very excited about this year’s annual Open Knowledge Conference, OKCon 2010, which will take place in London tomorrow! http://www.okfn.org/okcon/ Speakers and sessions include: ‘State of the Nation’ Keynotes: Matthias Schindler, Wikimedia (Germany) on ‘Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain’ Glyn Moody, on the ‘Post-Analogue World’ Peter Murray-Rust, on ‘Recent Developments in Open Science’ Chris […]
Read moreNorwegian translation of the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD)
We are pleased to now have a Norwegian translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Svein-Magnus Sørensen, Harald Groven and Olav Anders Øvrebø. http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/norsk_bokmaal/ If you’d like to translate the Definition into another language, or if you’ve already done so, please get in touch on our discuss list, or on info at the OKF’s […]
Read moreThoughts from the GLA’s Possibilities of Real Time Data conference
The following post is from David Read, a developer working on the Open Knowledge Foundation’s CKAN project. David attended the Greater London Authorities’ Possibilities of Real Time Data conference earlier this week. London’s authorities have opened up lots of their data this year, kicking off in January with the launch of the London Data Store […]
Read moreWorld Bank Opens Up Development Data
Today, the World Bank announced that it’s making a large portion of its development data open and available from a dedicated new website at: http://data.worldbank.org The excellent set of new term and conditions are http://opendefinition.org/-compliant so this is real open data, available under an explicit license which allows for use, reuse and redistribution by anyone! […]
Read moreOKCon 2010 Nearly Here: 24th April 2010 in London
It’s April, and in the UK the sun has, at last, been sighted! To add to the cheer, The Open Knowledge Foundation’s 5th Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) takes place in ten days time on Saturday 24th April in London. Tickets for OKCon 2010 are selling rapidly, so for those who’d like to ensure their place […]
Read moreThe COINS database — what we know and how we know it
The following post is from Lisa Evans, who is doing research on UK public finance data sources as part of our Where Does My Money Go? project. Freedom of information: sharing our experiences I’ve been reading some debate on the extent to which Freedom of Information (FOI) requests are a drain on public resources. A […]
Read moreOpen government data in Germany: what next?
Following is a guest post from Daniel Dietrich, Chairman of the Open Data Network, Official Representative of the Open Knowledge Foundation in Germany and Researcher at the centre for Computers and Society at the Technical University Berlin. In this post I will try to give you an overview and update on what is happening on open […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Scotland, May 13th, 3-7pm, Edinburgh
Open Knowledge Scotland “brings together interested parties from across the open knowledge spectrum based in Scottish educational institutions, Scottish research organisations, Scottish local and national government, and members of the public for the purposes of teaching, learning and discussion”. OKCon in London is now in its fifth year. It seemed like time to put together […]
Read moreChinese translation of the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD)
We’ve just added a Chinese translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Mao, Ching-Chen at Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan. http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/chinese If you’d like to translate the Definition into another language, or if you’ve already done so, please get in touch on our discuss list, or on info at the OKF’s domain name (okfn […]
Read moreLaunch of Norwegian instance of CKAN!
The following guest post is from Olav Anders Øvrebø, Assistant Professor at the University of Bergen, and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Working Group on EU Open Data. At the government data project at the University of Bergen, we see the Norwegian language version of CKAN, launched this week, as a significant step on […]
Read moreOpen bibliographic data promotes knowledge of the public domain
The following guest post is from John Mark Ockerbloom, library scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and editor of The Online Books Page. He blogs at Everybody’s Libraries. I’ve recently gotten involved with two Open Knowledge Foundation working groups, one on open bibliographic data and one on identifying public domain materials. Folks who follow […]
Read moreNat Torkington joins OKF Advisory Board!
We’re delighted to welcome Nat Torkington to the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Advisory Board! You may have seen his two recent pieces on O’ Reilly Radar on the future of open data: Truly Open Data and Rethinking Open Data (also co-posted on the OKF blog). His thoughts on the topic have a lot in common with […]
Read moreOrdnance Survey opens up UK mapping data!
Subsequent to the recent consultation on Ordnance Survey data and Gordon Brown’s commitment to opening up (an unspecified amount of) the data in a speech last week – today the UK’s mapping agency is releasing a significant portion of their data for free use by the public. More information is available in the following report, […]
Read moreAid Information Challenge, London, 10th April 2010
The Open Knowledge Foundation has a keen interest in opening up data on international development – from our international development panel at OKCon 2009, to our recent report on unlocking aid information, to our working group on open knowledge in development. Hence we are delighted to be co-organising the Aid Information Challenge, along withAid Info, […]
Read moreIceland: from the financial crisis to open data
The following guest post is from Hjalmar Gislason, an open data activist, member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on EU Open Data, and founder of structured data start-up, DataMarket. The Wave of Open Data Open access to public sector information, or simply “Open Data” is gathering a lot of momentum these days. High […]
Read moreComments on the Panton Principles and Data Licensing
These comments were originally written a few weeks ago as part of an interesting thread on John Dupuis’ blog post about the Panton Principles. What’s “Open” and Why Do the Panton Principles Recommend PD-only The Open Knowledge Foundation’s general position is one of supporting open data where “open” data includes data made available under licenses […]
Read moreGreat News for Open Government Data in the UK
Today, in a speech on “Building Britain’s Digital Future”, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced wide-ranging plans to open up UK government data. In addition to a general promise to extend the existing commitments to “make public data public” the PM announced: The opening up of a large and important set of transport data (the […]
Read moreA free software model for open knowledge
Notes describing the talk on the work of the Open Knowledge Foundation given last week at Jornadas SIG Libre. I was happily surprised to be asked to give this open knowledge talk at an open source software conference. But it makes sense – the free software movement has created the conditions in which an open […]
Read moreResponse to the consultation on opening access to Ordnance Survey data
The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, founded in 2006 is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open knowledge in all its forms. What follows is […]
Read moreThe cake test of freedom
At last week’s Jornadas SIG Libre in Girona, Ivan Sanchez of the Spanish OpenStreetmap community told me about the cake test of data freedom. What is the cake test? Easy: geographic data, or a map, is open only if someone can make you a gift of a cake with your map on it. The cake […]
Read moreLibraries in Cologne open up bibliographic data!
The following press release is reproduced with permission from Adrian Pohl and Felix Ostrowski, who are both at the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center and who are both members of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data – launched earlier this month. We’ve added a koeln-library-data package to the bibliographic data group […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 14
Welcome to the fourteenth Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter! For a plain text version for email, please see Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 14 – on our main okfn-announce list OPEN KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER NO. 14 Contents: Mapping open government data around the world Launch of the Panton Principles for open data in science Where Does […]
Read moreTalking at Open Up the City in Helsinki
This Thursday (11th March) I’m speaking at the Forum Virium’s Open Up the City event in Helsinki. This year their focus is on “open data, design, interfaces and innovation” and I’m speaking under the title “Open Data: What, Why, How?”. It looks like this will be a very interesting event and it’s also a chance […]
Read moreOKFNer Jo Walsh Speaking at IV Jornadas de SIG Libre
The IV Jornadas de SIG Libre is taking place this week from the 10th-12th of March in Girona, Spain. This is the premier spanish F/OSS GIS event and OKFNer Jo Walsh will be speaking: http://www.sigte.udg.edu/jornadassiglibre/keynotes
Read moreNew working group on open bibliographic data!
In the past few weeks there have been a number of developments related to opening up bibliographic metadata. At the end of January we blogged about CERN opening up their library data. Just recently Ghent University Library have published their data under an open license (see ugent_biblio and ugent_catalog) – which is excellent news! At […]
Read moreOpen Data in Archaeology
The following guest post is from Stefano Costa at the University of Siena. He is Founder of the IOSA initiative and Coordinator of a new Open Knowledge Foundation Working Group on Open Data in Archaeology. Archaeological data is often not shared According to Wikipedia, archaeology is the “science and humanity that studies historical human cultures […]
Read moreA tour of climate data at CKAN
The following guest post is by David Jones who is, among other things, a curator of the climate data group on CKAN (the OKF’s open source registry of open data) and co-founder of Clear Climate Code (which was previously featured on our blog here and here). Take a tour of some of the additions we’ve […]
Read moreIntroducing Datapkg: A Tool for Distributing, Discovering and Installing Data “Packages”
Datapkg 0.5 has been released! This is the first release deemed suitable for public consumption (though we are still in alpha)! This announce therefore serves as both introduction and release announcement. Introduction From the docs: datapkg is an user tool for distributing, discovering and installing data (and content) ‘packages’. datapkg is a simple way to […]
Read moreThe Hunt For COINS
I’ve been investigating data for use in the project ‘Where Does My Money Go’. One of the first reports we looked at was the Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis (PESA) — it looks like this:
http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/prototype/
So an obvious question is where does the data in the PESA report come from, I mean, where is the PESA data stored?
Read moreLaunch of the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science and ‘Is It Open Data?’ Web Service
We are pleased to announce the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science: http://www.pantonprinciples.org/ From the preamble: Science is based on building on, reusing and openly criticising the published body of scientific knowledge. For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavours, it is crucial that science data […]
Read moreOpen government data in Norway: mounting interest but no breakthrough yet
The following guest post is from Olav Anders Øvrebø, Assistant Professor at the University of Bergen, who recently worked on a report on open government data in Norway. A loose community is forming, slowly pushing open data higher on the agenda of Norway’s politicians and civil servants. But these developers, journalists, academics, and IT business […]
Read moreMapping open government data initiatives around the world
The Open Knowledge Foundation and Access Info are currently seeking information on open government data initiatives around the world, as part of a scoping paper supported by the Open Society Institute: With major announcements from the UK and and the US in the past few months, and numerous open government data catalogues popping up around […]
Read moreOpen data on international development: let us know what you think!
Last autumn we released the first draft of a working paper on opening up data related to international development. The report covers how to legally and technically open up aid data, as well as recommendations for how to make aid data easier to find and reuse. This is now up on a dedicated website at: […]
Read moreCKAN 0.11 Released
We are pleased to announce the release of version 0.11 of the CKAN software, our open source registry of open data used in ckan.net and data.gov.uk. This is our biggest release so far (55 tickets) with lots of new features and improvements. This release also saw a major new production deployment with the CKAN software […]
Read moreInterested in making an open data catalogue? Virtual meeting on 11th February 2010
We’ve been working hard to set up instances of CKAN for open government data – most notably in data.gov.uk but also for open government data in Germany, France, Canada and elsewhere. We are currently soliciting for feedback on how we can improve CKAN’s user interface and for suggestions for new features. We’re also in touch […]
Read moreBook Search, Museum View, and Exploitation
Read today a Google Books PR piece on the Guardian website. Of out-of-print or hard-to-get books, it says, “Although copies may be available in libraries, they are effectively dead to the wider world.” Also heard today that Google Street View is proposing inside views, museum interiors. Last week, I and some OKF people heard a […]
Read moreRethinking Open Data: Lessons learned from the Open Data front lines
Nat Torkington recently wrote the following piece on O’Reilly Radar. He kindly gave us permission to republish it on the Open Knowledge Foundation blog… In the last year I’ve been involved in two open data projects, Open New Zealand and data.govt.nz. I believe in learning from experience and I’ve seen some signs recently that other […]
Read more7th Communia Workshop, Luxembourg
We recently attended a workshop in Luxembourg as part of Communia, the EU policy network on the digital public domain. There was a focus on bringing together themes from previous events to make a series of policy recommendations to the European Commission (watch this space!). Below are a few notes highlighting some of the talks […]
Read moreCERN opens up bibliographic metadata!
As regular readers of the Open Knowledge Foundation blog will know, bibliographic metadata is a subject close to our heart (see e.g., here, here and here). Hence we were delighted to see today’s announcement that CERN Library are releasing their bibliographic metadata under an open license! From the announcement: Librarians are in general very favourable […]
Read moreClear Climate Code, and Data
The following guest post is by David Jones who is, among other things, a curator of the climate data group on CKAN (the OKF’s open source registry of open data) and co-founder of Clear Climate Code (which we blogged about back in 2008). Clear Climate Code have been working on ccc-gistemp, a project to reimplement […]
Read morePublic Domain Manifesto
On Monday the Public Domain Manifesto went live: http://www.publicdomainmanifesto.org/ From the introductory paragraph: The public domain, as we understand it, is the wealth of information that is free from the barriers to access or reuse usually associated with copyright protection, either because it is free from any copyright protection or because the right holders have […]
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