Introducing: MyData

this post was written by the OK Finland team What is MyData? MyData is both an alternative vision and guiding technical principles for how we, as individuals, can have more control over the data trails we leave behind us in our everyday actions. The core idea is that we, you and I, should have an […]

Open Knowledge International – our new name!

Notice something a little different? We have had a change of name! As of today, we officially move from being called “Open Knowledge” to “Open Knowledge International (OKI)”. “Open Knowledge International” is the name by which the community groups have referred to us for a couple of years, conveying our role in supporting the groups […]

Open Data Day Uganda – Promoting girls in Science and Technology

This post was written by Alwenyi Catherine Cassidy from Fund Africa Inc. Fund Africa Inc. is powered by Open Knowledge International, in partnership with NetSquared and Communication Without Boarders. We’re excited to be part of the 2016 International Open Data Day celebration in Kampala, Uganda. This event topic focused on open science and methods to encourage girls […]

International open data day report from Yaounde Cameroon

The Open Data Day 2016  was successfully hosted and celebrated in Cameroon by the netsquared Yaoundé community.  The theme of the day was ‘Empowering Cameroonians to accelerate open data’, bringing together 90 participants. The event was hosted in Paraclete Institute in Yaoundé, which brought together multiple stakeholders and students, to empower them in advancing open […]

Open Data Day Spain – Towards IODC 16

This post was written by Adolfo Anton Bravo from OK Spain. Open Data Day in Spain is not something exceptional anymore. Five years after the first Open Data Day was born in Canada, nine Spanish cities have adopted in 2016 this celebration by organizing various local events It is not a coincidence that Spain will host […]

International Open Data Day in Addis Abba, Ethiopia

This blog post was written By Solomon Mekonnen Co-founder, Code4Ethiopia & Local Organizer, Open Knowledge An open data interest group representing 25 participants from universities, NGOs, CSOs and government ministries attended an open data event on 5th March, 2016, with theme “Raising Open Data awareness in the grass root community of Ethiopia”. The event was organized […]

Open Data Day Guyana – Bringing Open Street Map to the classroom

This blog post was written by Vijay Datadin from the GIS collective Open Data is a new and still not very well understood concept in Guyana, as is probably the case in other countries as well. The GIS Collective, a group of volunteers, each highly skilled and experienced in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), know the value […]

Open Data Day Santiago: “Bringing an “open” philosophy to the people”

This post was written by Manuel Barros Open Government Partnership coordinator at Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente. Read the full blog in Spanish on the ILDA site. One of the pillars at Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente has been to strengthen democracy through the creative use of information technologies. Inevitably, that mission has always been strongly linked to the […]

#OpenDataDay 16 in Quito, connecting people and data-driven ideas

This post was written by Julio López P – 2015 School of Data Fellow. Julio is currentl working on energy information management and capacity building projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. See post in Spanish on ILDA’s (Iniciativa Latinoamericana por los Datos Abiertos) blog In 2016, the Quito open data community  joined the worldwide celebrations for Open […]

New Report: “Changing What Counts: How Can Citizen-Generated and Civil Society Data Be Used as an Advocacy Tool to Change Official Data Collection?”

Following on from our discussion paper on “Democratising the Data Revolution”, today we’re pleased to announce the release of a new report titled “Changing What Counts: How Can Citizen-Generated and Civil Society Data Be Used as an Advocacy Tool to Change Official Data Collection?”. Undertaken as a collaboration between Open Knowledge and the CIVICUS DataShift, […]

New Initiative: Open Data for Tax Justice #OD4TJ

Every year countries lose billions of dollars to tax avoidance, tax evasion and more generally to illicit financial flows. According to a recent IMF estimate around $700 billion of tax revenues is lost each year due to profit-shifting. In developing countries the loss is estimated to be around $200 billion, which as a share of […]

ILDA to join Open Data Day Mini grants!

This post was written by Fabrizio Scrollini We are happy to announce that The Latin American Open Data initiative (ILDA) is joining the global efforts to enrich Open Data Day mini aims to promote and support the engagement of the Latin American community on Open Data Day. Our support will go to Latin American individuals and […]

The Open Data Utopia of the Pampas

An Ad Hoc Introduction to Argentine Affairs This post was written by Andres Snitcofsky an open government / data activist in Argentina. See Andres Medium account for more posts – https://medium.com/@rusosnith Since a new government took office in Argentina, a party alliance called #Cambiemos (Let’s Change), a lot of things have changed. Less than one month has […]

Forbes Philippines & BlogWatch win best story award as Data Journalism PH wraps up

At the end of November, Open Knowledge, School of Data and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) wrapped-up their six-month data journalism training for media organisations in the Philippines, the first of its kind. Over 100 journalists and civil servants gathered at the Cocoon Hotel in Quezon City to see the twelve participating media […]

Global Open Data Index – Kosovo Insight

his post was written by Arianit Dobroshi Kosovo is ranked 35th in the 2015 Open Knowledge Global Open Data Index , down from 31st place in last year’s measurement and marked as 43% open. In South East Europe, Albania ranked 37th and Macedonia, 69th. Others, such as Serbia and Bosnia, have not been scored since they […]

Join the School of Data team: Technical Trainer wanted

Background The mission of Open Knowledge International is to open up all essential public interest information and see it utilized to create insight that drives change. To this end we work to create a global movement for open knowledge, supporting a network of leaders and local groups around the world; we facilitate coordination and knowledge […]

Open Data Day report #3: Data Fiesta in Latin America and the Caribbean

(This post was co-written by Open Knowledge and Fabrizio Scrollini from ILDA) In our follow-up series about Open Data Day 2015, which took place on February 21 across the world, we will now highlight some of the great events that took place across the Latin America and the Caribbean. See our previous post about Asia-Pacific […]

All-star wrap-up of a month of Open Knowledge events all around the world – May 2014

Last month flew by! It’s already June and time to turn the spotlight on the Open Knowledge community’s events which rocked the month of May! Bikestorming goes Pecha Kucha in Argentina Bikestorming is a mobile app to grow urban cycling in cities around the world, developed by members of Open Knowledge Argentina’s community. Matías Kalwill […]

Open Data London meetup 3rd October 2011, 7pm

This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Back by popular demand, the OKF is hosting the second Open Data London Meetup for those interested in getting involved with open data communities in the city. We now expect that this will turn into a bi-monthly event – so make sure […]

Exploring European Energy Data

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Today was the Eurostat Hackday, where coders and designers in several European cities gathered to dig into the Eurostat data, the biggest source of statistical information about Europe and European member states. We met at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in […]

Lessons learned from organising the first ever virtual csv,conf

This blogpost was collaboratively written by the csv,conf organising team which includes Lilly Winfree and Jo Barratt from the Open Knowledge Foundation. csv,conf is supported by the Sloan Foundation as part of our Frictionless Data for Reproducible Research grant. The original post can be found here: https://csvconf.com/2020/going-online A brief history csv,conf is a community conference […]

Ubernomics: Platform Monopolies & How to Fix Them

First version: Dec 2016, updated Feb 2018. This blog is a summary of the full article at http://rufuspollock.com/ubernomics Around the world countries have struggled to work out how to deal with Uber, AirBnB and their like. Are these new apps something to be welcomed or something to be stopped? But how we treat Uber-like companies […]

Creativity and mobile solutions can help combat road accidents

This blog is part of the event report series on International Open Data Day 2018. On Saturday 3 March, groups from around the world organised over 400 events to celebrate, promote and spread the use of open data. 45 events received additional support through the Open Knowledge International mini-grants scheme, funded by Hivos, SPARC, Mapbox, […]

Solving the Internet Monopolies Problem – Facebook, Google et al

The good news is that an increasing number of people seem to agree that: Facebook, Google etc are monopolies That is a problem Agreeing we have a problem is always a crucial first step. But to go further we need to: Correctly diagnose the disease — in particular, avoid confusing the symptoms with the root […]

A lookback on 2017 with OK Brazil

This blog has been written by Natalia Mazotte and Ariel Kogan, co-directors of Open Knowledge Brazil (OKBR). It has been translated from the original version at https://br.okfn.org/2017/12/29/como-foi-o-ano-de-2017-para-a-okbr by Juliana Watanabe, volunteer of OKBR. For us at Open Knowledge Brazil (OKBR), the year 2017 was filled with multiple partnerships, support and participation in events; projects and campaigns for mobilisation. In […]

2017: A Year to Remember for OK Nepal

This blog has been cross-posted from the OK Nepal blog as part of our blog series of Open Knowledge Network updates. Best wishes for 2018 from OK Nepal to all of the Open Knowledge family and friends!! The year 2017 was one of the best years for Open Knowledge Nepal. We started our journey by […]

How to innovate? Prototype everything!

We recognized a problem. There are so many individuals and small teams with good ideas out there, but there is little to no financial support. We wanted to change that. This is how the idea for the Prototype Fund came to life. Usually, in order to receive funding, teams need to have a clear-cut business […]

Remix public domain artworks: join the GIF IT UP 2017 competition

This blogpost has been adapted from the press release by Europeana. Open Knowledge International has for many years advocated for the importance of open cultural data, which enables citizens from across the world to enjoy this material, understand their cultural heritage and re-use this material to produce new works of art. Some examples of this work […]

FutureTDM symposium: sharing project findings, policy guidelines and practitioner recommendations

The FutureTDM project, in which Open Knowledge International participates, actively engages with stakeholders in the EU such as researchers, developers, publishers and SMEs to help improve the uptake of text and data mining (TDM) in Europe (read more). Last month, we held our FutureTDM Symposium at the International Data Science Conference 2017 in Salzburg, Austria. With the project drawing […]

Always Already Computational Reflections

Always Already Computational is a project bringing together a variety of different perspectives to develop “a strategic approach to developing, describing, providing access to, and encouraging reuse of collections that support computationally-driven research and teaching” in subject areas relating to library and museum collections.  This post is adapted from my Position Statement for the initial […]

Our country sample (and what it tells about our contributors)

The Global Open Data Index has changed a lot this year, from our methodology to our software. This has been a community effort. This year we also collaborated with an amazing group of community leaders who helped gather the submissions in different regions as well as an extraordinary group of reviewers who helped make sure […]

Assessing the State of Infrastructural Development  in FCT: The Mixed Lessons

Open Knowledge International is a member of OD4D, a global network of leaders in the open data community, working together to develop open data solutions around the world. Here, the Women Environmental Programme (WEP) of Nigeria talks about their work on assessing the state of infrastructural development in three Area Councils of the Federal Capital Territory […]

Nobody wants to become an activist!

Hacking the Entry Point to Digital Participation During the recent Ultrahack 2016 tournament in Helsinki (one of the biggest hackathons in Europe for the development ideas and software), we formed a team called Two Minutes for My City that participated on the #hackthenation track. Our initial idea to improve the visualization of municipal decision processes evolved into a prototype of a mobile […]

Municipal Money: Making municipal budgets more accessible

Code for South Africa just launched https://municipalmoney.gov.za/, a New Municipal Money project for South Africa, in partnership with the National Treasury. This is a step forward in collaboration with government. Code for South Africa’s goal is to empower citizens to hold their municipal officials to account. The focus of the portal is on municipal financial […]

Announcing IODC Unconference

We all know the feeling of the end of a conference, where after long days full of content, you leave with more unanswered questions. Conferences are a great place for networking, learning different topics and sharing achievements (and sometimes even failures), but in their nature, they are organised in a way that is less participatory […]

Introducing Viderum

Ten years ago, Rufus started CKAN as an “apt-get for data” in order to enable governments and corporations to provide their data as truly open data. Today, CKAN is used by countless open data publishers around the globe and has become the de facto standard. With CKAN as the technical foundation, Open Knowledge has offered […]