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Fields of Gold: short film about open data on European farm subsidies
Farm Subsidy have recently released a short film called Fields of Gold: Lifting the Veil on Europe’s Farm Subsidies. The film tells the story of a campaign to open up data about where money from the Common Agricultural Policy goes – from national Freedom of Information requests from the likes of Jack Thurston and Nils […]
Read moreDiscovering Where My Money Goes I: PESA
This is the first of a series of post looking at the data challenges for the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Where Does My Money Go project, for which I’m helping to gather and analyze data. I got involved in the project because I wanted to know how much money the Department of Energy spends on different […]
Read moreSwedish translation of the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD)
We’ve just added a Swedish translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Peter Krantz (who’s work on open data in Sweden we recently blogged about) and Staffan Malmgren. http://opendefinition.org/1.0/Svenska 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 […]
Read moreNew report on sharing aid information is now open for comments
We’re pleased to announce the publication of a new report, Unlocking the potential of aid information. The report, by the Open Knowledge Foundation and Aidinfo, looks at how to make information related to international development (i) legally open, (ii) technically open and (iii) easy to find. The report and relevant background information can be found […]
Read moreAbusing “Open”: Macmillan’s Open Dictionary
Jonathan recently wrote about the availability of open dictionaries. In a recent comment to that post someone pointed us to Macmillan’s “Open” Dictionary (the reasons for the quotes will soon be apparent). With a sense of excitement I followed the link: “Could it be”, I thought, “That a mainstream dictionary producer has decided that open […]
Read moreOpen licensing for philanthropic foundations – “Why not?”
Harvard University’s Berkman Center, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute recently released a report on copyright and open licensing for private philanthropic foundations. The report examines: […] the copyright licensing policies and practices of a group of twelve private foundations. In particular, it looked at the extent […]
Read moreWhere’s my nearest postbox? Open data for UK postbox locations
Where is your nearest postbox, and when is the post collected from it? Now you can get open data showing the locations and collection times of over 116,000 postboxes in the UK. You can browse relevant datasets on CKAN at: http://ckan.net/tag/read/postboxes The story behind this data reads like an inverted version of The Little Red […]
Read moreOpengov.se – a registry of open government data in Sweden
Opengov.se is a registry of open government data in Sweden: Opengov.se is an initiative to highlight available public datasets in Sweden. It contains a commentable catalog of government datasets, their formats and usage restrictions. It makes a note of what percentage of the datasets are fully open – i.e. material that is free for anyone […]
Read moreWhere is the nearest bus stop? UK Department for Transport adds NaPTAN data to Open Street Map
The UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) has recently released data from the National Public Transport Access Node (NaPTAN) database to be put on Open Street Map (OSM). As it says on the NaPTAN website: NaPTAN provides a unique identifier for every point of access to public transport in the UK, together with meaningful text descriptions […]
Read moreOpening Up Government Data: Give it to Us Raw, Give it to Us Now
Last month Rufus Pollock, Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, spoke at OpenTech 2009 in a session with Richard Stirling of the Cabinet Office and John Sheridan of the Office of Public Sector Information. His talk gave a blueprint for how to open up government data: Opening Up Government Data: Give it to Us Raw, […]
Read moreWhat do you think about open government data in Australia?
Back in June the Australian Minister for Finance announced a new Government 2.0 Taskforce. Part of the work of this new taskforce includes: increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information Paralleling recent initiatives such as the UK’s Power of […]
Read moreCKAN 0.9 Released
We are pleased to announce the release of CKAN version 0.9! CKAN is the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, a registry of open knowledge packages and projects. Changes include: Add version attribute for package Fix purge to use new version of Versioned Domain Model (vdm) (0.4) Link to changed packages when listing revision Show most recently […]
Read moreNew report published: The Socioeconomic Effects of Public Sector Information on Digital Networks
The National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. has just published a new report, The Socioeconomic Effects of Public Sector Information on Digital Networks, edited by Paul Uhlir from the U.S. National Committee for CODATA. There are lots of interesting contributions in the report, including from OKF Advisory Board member Chris Corbin, Communia Coordinator Juan […]
Read moreOpen Plaques: open data about UK heritage sites
Open Plaques is a project to find and document all the UK’s blue heritage plaques, which commemorate sites where famous events occurred, or with a connection to notable historical figures. There are currently over 1700 plaques, which can be browsed by area, by person, by role or by organisation. Though the project is currently in […]
Read moreOpen Data and the Semantic Web Workshop, London, 13th November 2009
We’re currently organising a workshop on ‘open data and the semantic web’, which will take place in London this autumn. Details are as follows: When: Friday 13th November 2009, 1000-1800 Where: London Knowledge Lab, 23-29 Emerald Street, London, WC1N 3QS. (See map) Wiki: http://wiki.okfn.org/SemanticWeb Participation: Attendance is free. If you are planning to come along […]
Read moreOpening up local government data?
Openly Local is a recently launched “first draft of getting hold of and making accessible local government data in a consistent and useful form”. There is generally a lot of support for open data from central government in the UK – particularly from the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), the Cabinet Office and with […]
Read moreOpen Data Session at Repository Fringe 2009
Earlier today the OKF’s Jordan Hatcher and Jo Walsh gave a tutorial on open data at the Repository Fringe 2009. There are some detailed notes on the JISC Datashare blog: Repository Fringe 2009: Afternoon Tutorial (Open Data) Jo gave an overview of the Open Knowledge Foundation – in particular focusing on four principles for developing […]
Read moreNew business models for subscription services?
There are a lot of subscription based models around for access to data services. I notice this more since I’ve been working for UK HE/FE. One example of such a service is the SCRAN image archive, another is the Statistical Accounts of Scotland. The subscription-based model has to expose something to prove it’s worth subscribing […]
Read moreWhat features should be included in a catalogue of open government data?
There have recently been several posts about what features are desirable in government data catalogues. The Sunlight Foundation recently announced they are planning to build on data.gov to allow “community participation so that people can submit their own data sources” (including support for adding data that is not open such as data with noncommercial restrictions). […]
Read moreOpen dictionary databases: an overview
Open dictionaries are excellent examples of open knowledge projects. Whether monolingual or bilingual, and whether dealing with definitions, etymology, translation or pronounciation – they can often be large, collaborative undertakings. Dictionary databases have a wide variety of potential applications – from education and research to machine translation and integration with software applications and services. We’ve […]
Read moreInterested in open knowledge and international development?
Next Wednesday 22nd July there will be a virtual meeting for a new Working Group on Open Knowledge in Development: http://wiki.okfn.org/wg/development If you’re interested in open knowledge and international development you’re welcome to come along and join in discussion, which will be about what the new working group should focus on – as well as […]
Read morePostmaster General Ernest Marples’ Postcode Lookup API
Harry Metcalfe and Richard Pope recently let us know about their new postcode lookup API, named after Ernest Marples, the Postmaster General who introduced the Postcode: http://ernestmarples.com/ More about the service: Post codes are really useful, but the powers that be keep them closed unless you have loads of money to pay for them. Which […]
Read moreBeta release of Weaving History!
We are pleased to announce the first public beta of Weaving History! Weaving History lets you create ‘factlets‘, containing basic information about historical events, persons, and so on, which you can string together to create historical ‘threads‘. These threads can then be visually represented on maps and timelines. There’s a function that lets you automatically […]
Read more2nd Communia Workshop, Torino
Just over a week ago was the 2nd Communia Workshop, which took place in Turin. The theme was ‘Global Science and the Economics of Knowledge-Sharing Institutions’ – and there was a great line up of scientists, economists, and legal scholars, as well as representatives from various research bodies and NGOs. Papers, slides and audio will […]
Read moreSpeaking at OpenTech 2009
Tomorrow I’ll be talking at OpenTech 2009 in a session on “Open Government Data” with Richard Stirling of the Cabinet Office and John Sheridan of OPSI. With the recent, and very welcome, news on opening up government data both here and abroad I’ll be giving some suggested dos and don’ts for this process under the […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 11
Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 11 has just been sent out: Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter No. 11 Welcome to the eleventh Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter! Contents: The OKF turns five and we need your support! Open Database License (ODbL) goes 1.0 European Open Data Inventory + Summit Launch of the Open Data Grid New developments […]
Read moreOpen Database License (ODbL) v1.0 Released
Open Data Commons have released v1.0 of the Open Database License (ODbL), a share-alike license for data and databases. This is really big news for anyone working on open data as there are very few open data licenses available and none that provide for share-alike. From the announce: We are delighted to announce the release […]
Read moreThanks for all the fish (data)!
EUTransparency, who created FarmSubsidy and organised the European Open Data Summit have launched a new site with data on payments made under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. From the press release: Today sees the launch of fishsubsidy.org, a new transparency website from the farmsubsidy.org stable. It presents data on 97,260 payments totalling 8.5 billion euro […]
Read moreNew developments on ‘Where Does My Money Go?’
We’ve been doing some more work on Where Does My Money Go?. The project, will provide an interactive represention of UK public finance using maps, timelines, and best of breed visualisation technologies. We’ve now put together a basic visualisation based on data we’ve cleaned up from the Treasury: http://www.openeconomics.net/wdmmg/dept/ We’ve also had confirmation from the […]
Read moreFrench translation of the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD)
We’ve just added a French translation of the Open Knowledge Definition thanks to Caroline Ker and Séverine Dusollier at the University of Namur, Belgium! http://opendefinition.org/1.0/Francais 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 at info (at) the OKF’s […]
Read moreNew developments on Public Domain Works!
We have now completed a major load of data into the Public Domain Works database: http://publicdomainworks.net/ There are now 125318 persons, 12840 items and 299141 works in the database. The data we have there comes primarily from two sources: people and book data from Philip Harper’s NGCOBA and recordings data from the online discographies provided […]
Read moreODC Open Database License (ODbL) Release Candidate 2 is Out
Open Data Commons, a project we help host and run, has put out its second and final “Release Candidate” of the Open Database License (ODbL). As it states in the announcement: The Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0 “Release Candidate 2” is now available at: http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/ As expected there haven’t been many changes from the first […]
Read moreKForge v0.16 Released
Another release (v0.16) of KForge is now out. It’s amazing to think this will mark KForge’s 4th anniversary! KForge is the software behind our KnowledgeForge service and the code is now very stable — we plan for the next release to be our official “1.0”. On this occasion there are the following changes worthy of […]
Read moreTwo new board members: James Casbon and Paula Le Dieu!
We are pleased to welcome two new members to the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Board of Directors: The first is James Casbon, a bioinformatics programmer: James Casbon has been working with open knowledge throughout his professional career. He has been responsible for analysing and managing large scale data sets in genomics, aerospace and finance. He is […]
Read moreThe OKF Turns 5 – And We Need Your Support
This month the Open Knowledge Foundation is five years old. Over those last five years we’ve done much to promote open access to information — from sonnets to stats, genes to geodata — not only in the form of specific projects like Open Shakespeare and Public Domain Works but also in the creation of tools […]
Read moreNew mailing list for open knowledge in development
We’ve just launched a new mailing list for those interested in open knowledge in development: http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/open-development As you may have seen we had a session on Open Knowledge for Development at OKCon 2009. There was also discussion of the value of sharing knowledge for development at the 5th Communia Workshop – particularly from Pierre Guillaume […]
Read moreVirtual meeting for Working Group on Open Data in Science
Next Tuesday 2nd June the Working Group on Open Data in Science will have their first meeting. While the meeting will focus on the Working Group’s activities, anyone is welcome to participate. Details are as follows: When: 2nd June 2009, 1600 GMT Where: #okfn IRC channel on oftc.net (you can connect via Mibbit) Wiki: http://wiki.okfn.org/wg/science/1 […]
Read moreFlickr put shapefiles in the public domain
Last week there was some great news from Flickr: We are releasing all of the Flickr shapefiles as a single download, available for use under the Creative Commons Zero Waiver. That’s fancy-talk for “public domainâ€. They gave the following reasons for their decision: We want people (developers, researchers and anyone else who wants to play) […]
Read moreINSPIRE Directive heading towards UK law
INSPIRE, the directive establishing a spatial data infrastructure for environmental information in Europe, is heading into UK law at last. DEFRA is doing a consultation on the transposition of the law and OKFN will hopefully co-submit a response by 26th May with the Open Rights Group, a summary of the responses is on the okfn-discuss […]
Read moreData.gov goes live!
The US governments new data.gov site (which we blogged about last month) is now live! There are currently a selection of core datasets available – from information about World Copper Smelters to results from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Raw data is available in XML, Text/CSV, KML/KMZ, Feeds, XLS, or ESRI Shapefile formats. As well […]
Read moreOpen Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009 – Post-Event Information
We’re pleased to announce that slides, audio and photos from OKCon 2009 are now available at: http://okfn.org/okcon/2009/after Speakers included: Mark Charmer, AKVO Vinay Gupta, Appropedia Simon Parrish, Aidinfo + Karin Christiansen, PublishWhatYouFund Tom Scott, BBC Jeni Tennison, London Gazette + RDFa Leigh Dodds, Talis David Bollier, OnTheCommons + Author of Viral Spiral If you have […]
Read moreVirtual Meeting for Open Textbooks, 20th May 2009
The Community College Open Textbook Project, California Digital Marketplace, and the Open Knowledge Foundation invite those with an interest in open textbooks to a meeting on Wednesday, May 20th at 1330-1530 pm PDT (2130-2330 GMT or 2230-0030 CET). The meeting will be primarly focused on metadata, tagging, interoperability issues, and repository efforts for open textbooks. […]
Read moreLaunch of Open Data Grid
In the last couple of months we’ve had several threads on the okfn-discuss list about distributed storage for open data (see here and here). Last month we started a distributed storage project, aiming to provide distributed storage infrastructure for OKF and other open knowledge projects. After researching various technical options, we’ve launched an Open Data […]
Read moreCornell University Library keeps reproductions of public domain works in the public domain
Yesterday Cornell University University Library announced that it will ‘remove all restrictions’ on digital reproductions of public domain works, meaning these are open as in opendefinition.org. From the press release: ITHACA, N.Y. (May 11, 2009) – In a dramatic change of practice, Cornell University Library has announced it will no longer require its users to […]
Read moreCKAN 0.8 Released
A new release of CKAN is now out together with a new, and substantially improved versioned domain model library. Changes include: View information about package history (ticket:53) Basic datapkg integration (ticket:57) Show information about package openness using icons (ticket:56) One-stage package create/registration (r437) Reinstate package attribute validation (r437) Upgrade to vdm 0.4 The CKAN code […]
Read moreEuropean Open Data Summit
Last week was the first European Open Data Summit in Brussels (which we blogged about here) organised by EU Transparency, who created farmsubsidy.org. The event brought together journalists, researchers, civic hackers, and representatives from European institutions for two days of documenting and building on documents and datasets from European institutions and member states. At the […]
Read moreCKAN package party and general online meetup: Saturday 16th May 2009
We’re planning another CKAN package party + general OKFN online meetup for Saturday 16th of May. It’s a general meetup but with a focus on CKAN packaging so feel free to come and chat about anything open knowledge related — everyone and anyone is welcome. When: Saturday 16th May 2009, 1430-1730 BST (1330-1630 GMT, 0930-1230 […]
Read moreOpen Data Commons Release v1.0 Release Candidate for Open Database License
Open Data Commons, a project we help host, has put out a v1.0 “Release Candidate” for their Open Database License (ODbL). As it states in the announcement: This updated version of the license incorporates a whole set of changes arising out of the earlier comments period and the main changes are summarized below. As the […]
Read more5th Communia Workshop: Post-Event Information + Statement
The 5th Communia Workshop took place last month at the London School of Economics. It brought together researchers, policy-makers, stakeholders and representatives from across Europe, the United States and Australia for two days of talks and discussions about reusing public sector content and data. In the afternoon of the first day, participants co-drafted a simple […]
Read moreEuropean Open Data Inventory
We’re currently working on a European Open Data Inventory: This is an inventory of EU-relevant datasets that is being compiled by EU Transparency, the NGO that made farmsubsidy.org and the Open Knowledge Foundation. It includes data that is already available, as well as data that we know exists but is not published – from budget […]
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