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Data-Driven Journalism In A Box: what do you think needs to be in it?
The following post is from Liliana Bounegru (European Journalism Centre), Jonathan Gray (Open Knowledge Foundation), and Michelle Thorne (Mozilla), who are planning a Data-Driven Journalism in a Box session at the Mozilla Festival 2011, which we recently blogged about here. This is cross posted at DataDrivenJournalism.net and on the Mozilla Festival Blog. We’re currently organising […]
Read moreHow to Build an Open Data Initiative for your City
The following guest post is by Montréal Ouvert, the open data organisation for the city of Montreal in Canada. Montréal Ouvert is a citizens’ initiative to obtain a formal open data policy for the city of Montréal, Canada. Launched by four Montrealers in August 2010 to mobilize public and political support for the adoption of […]
Read moreExtension of Copyright Term for Sound Recordings in the EU
The following is a guest post, by John Hendrik Weitzmann from iRights.info. Term extension for sound recordings is imminent on the EU level. iRights.info compiled a dossier about how this was possible and what it is about. It’s a hostage-taking of the subtle kind and a brilliant piece of lobbying: after the EU Commission’s proposal […]
Read moreMozilla’s Media, Freedom and the Web Festival, November 2011
The following guest post is by Michelle Thorne from Mozilla. The OKF is really excited to be a partner in the upcoming Mozilla Festival on Media, Freedom and the Web. Look out too for our forthcoming collaborative challenge, Data-Driven-Journalism-in-a-Box – more details soon! Media, Freedom and the Web is Mozilla’s second annual innovation festival. Three […]
Read moreOpen 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 […]
Read moreFreeing Train Data
The following guest post is by Peter Hicks, IP Network Engineer and Open Transport Data advocate. In the late 1990s, I decided to learn more about why my commute to and from London wasn’t always a smooth process. Having an inquisitive nature, I set about casually talking to people ‘in the know’ – friends inside […]
Read moreForthcoming Series of Open Articles on Open Shakespeare
This is a cross-posting from Open Shakespeare to announce the culmination of a project run over the summer to encourage greater participation in the website and greater awareness of its goals of promoting open critical commentary. From Monday 12th September to Monday 10th October, Open Shakespeare will host a series of articles on the topic […]
Read moreOpen GLAM Workshop, Warsaw, 15th September 2011
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. How can we encourage more galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM institutions) to open up their holdings – including metadata about their collections, and digital copies of works which have entered the public domain? Following on from my post on opening […]
Read moreCall for Participation: Open Government Data Camp 2011
This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We are pleased to announce that today we are launching the call for participation for OGDCamp 2011. This event and will bring together the international Open Government Data Community, so please: be bold! We encourage people to submit talks, workshops and satellite […]
Read moreInternational Travel Bursaries for Open Government Data Camp Announced
This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. It gives us great pleasure to announce a series of international travel bursaries for Open Government Data Camp 2011. These travel bursaries available to support participants who could otherwise note afford to attend the camp. Bursaries include: A European bursary for EU27 […]
Read moreGeo-enabling Aid Data: What is, and what’s next
The following guest post is by Josh Powell from Development Gateway, who works on their AidData programme. Last week, the geocoded locations of all African Development Bank (AfDB) projects continent-wide approved from 2009-2010 were made available at open.aiddata.org. The data include more than $10 billion in AfDB Group funding to 43 African countries, and were […]
Read moremySociety launches FixMyTransport.com
The following guest post is from Tom Steinberg, Director at mySociety. The organisation that I run, mySociety, has just launched our biggest project in three years, and as open data hackers I thought it might tickle your fancy. FixMyTransport.com has been built with two goals – to make it easier for people to report public […]
Read moreWe’re hiring!
The following post is from Jason Kitcat, Foundation Coordinator at the OKF Thanks to the incredible support and interest in our work, the OKF is growing. We have just refreshed our jobs page and on there you will find three new job openings have been posted: Community Coordinator Foundation Administrator Designer / Developer with UX […]
Read moreIntroducing the Open Knowledge Index
The following post is from Guo Xu, Coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group Despite the increasing efforts in opening data and making information and knowledge accessible to a greater audience, there has not been an explicit way to measure openess in knowledge creation and dissemination. This has made it very difficult to compare country […]
Read moreGreater Manchester – Open Data City
The following guest post is by Julian Tait, the key coordinator of the Open Data Cities project for FutureEverything in Greater Manchester and ongoing advocate for the DataGM datastore. ###Open Data in Manchester How would cities evolve if all data were made open? Would the same inequalities and asymmetries persist? What would need to happen […]
Read moreEU Travel Bursary for Open Government Data Camp 2011
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The European Commission has very kindly offered to provide an EU travel bursary for Open Government Data Camp 2011. It will cover travel and accommodation for up to 30 participants from across Europe. You can find full details here: Here’s an […]
Read moreOpen Kent
The following guest post is by Noel Hatch, Projects and Research Lead at Open Kent, and member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. A couple of months ago, we launched openkent.org.uk, a project working with 14 public service agencies across our county to open up data that matters to local people – […]
Read moreOpen Aid Data Conference and Hackday, Berlin, 28th-29th September
The following post is by Christian Kreutz, co-founder and board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. Help us find innovative solutions for aid transparency and make development aid more effective. Germany is one of the largest donors in development aid worldwide. Every year over 6 billion euros are spent by the Federal Ministry for […]
Read moreRegistration for Open Government Data Camp 2011 is now open!
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re delighted to announce that registration for Open Government Data Camp 2011 is now open! This will be the biggest international open data event to date. An quick overview in numbers: 2 days of talks, workshops and code sprints 10 days […]
Read moreExploring open aid data with aidinfo labs
The following is a guest post from Tim Davies, open data action researcher, currently curating the aidinfolabs.org website for aidinfo, and a member of the OKFN Working Group on Open Development. The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) was set up in 2008 by 18 leading international development organisations. It aims to make information about aid […]
Read moreOutOfCopyright.eu makes Public Domain Calculators available for the entire European Union
The following guest post is by Maarten Zeinstra from KnowledgeLand. Maarten is a member of the OKF Working Group on the Public Domain. Works that have fallen into the public domain after their term of copyright protection has elapsed can be freely used by everybody. In theory that means that these works can be reused […]
Read moreAustria adopts CKAN and CC-BY as nation-wide defaults
The following post is by Theodora Middleton, the OKF blog editor. Fantastic news from our fledgling Austrian chapter, the Open Knowledge Forum Österreich! The cities of Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, and Graz, together with the Chancellor’s office, have established the “Cooperation OGD Austria” – a new alliance bringing together federal, state, and city governments, as well […]
Read moreEx Libris, Alma and Open Data
This guest post is written by Carl Grant, chief librarian at Ex Libris and past president of Ex Libris North America, in answer to some questions that Adrian Pohl, coordinator of the OKFN Working Group on Open bibliographic Data, posed in the beginning of July in response to Ex Libris’ announcement of an “Expert Advisory […]
Read moreData-Driven Journalism Workshop on EU Spending: Tools & Techniques. Utrecht, 8th-9th September.
The following post is by Liliana Bonegru, Project Coordinator at the European Journalism Centre (EJC), and Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The post announces a joint workshop between the EJC and OKF, focusing on how to get started with data-driven reporting on spending data. This workshop will focus particularly on EU […]
Read morePublic Data Consultations: Making Open Data a Reality
This post is from Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Earlier this month, the UK Government published the ‘Open Data Consultation Paper’. Its aim is to establish a “culture of openness and transparency in public services” and the Government is turning to the general public for their preferences on how this should […]
Read moreMontevideo: proud of our data
The following post is by Guillermo Moncecchi of Intendencia de Montevideo in Uruguay. Here, in Montevideo, we are proud of our data. The Intendencia de Montevideo drives the economic, social and cultural life of the city, producing data. Lots of data. The government has spent years developing its information services, almost all government processes produce […]
Read moreThe Public Domain Review has a new website!
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. As part of our work to open up the wealth of cultural works which have entered the public domain, earlier this year we launched the Public Domain Review. Adam Green, the Public Domain Review‘s wonderful Editor, has been hard at work […]
Read moreUpdate: Text Camp: 13th August 2011
The Open Knowledge Foundation’s first ever Text Camp will be taking place this Saturday 13th August, thanks to JISC offering us the use of their meeting rooms in London. Details Where? Brettenham House, 9 Savoy Street, WC2E 7EG, London. – Meet outside ‘The Savoy Tup’ Pub, Savoy Street, at 10am to be guided to the […]
Read moreDataPatterns.org: let’s collect some tricks for data wrangling!
Friedrich Lindenberg, data wrangler and member of OKF Germany, advocates for the creation of Data Patterns book to complement the existing Open Data Manual. How do you scrape a massive online archive? How do you fix a broken CSV file? How do you normalize entity names in a large collection of records? There is a […]
Read moreIntroducing a new list just for open data on companies
The following is a guest post from Chris Taggart, co-founder of OpenCorporates.com and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data One of the key types of data that affects all our lives in a multitude of ways is that on companies and corporate entities. As companies have changed from being single entities to multifaceted, […]
Read moreOpenSpending seeks Spending Cartographers: Register Now!
This post is by Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator for OpenSpending at the Open Knowledge Foundation The OpenSpending team is currently looking for volunteers for a crack-team of ‘spending cartographers’ to guide people with datasets through the OpenSpending loading process and to help them make the most of their data once it is loaded. Interested in […]
Read moreOpenCorporates hits 20 million companies, an open data milestone
The following is a guest post from Chris Taggart, co-founder of OpenCorporates.com and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data Less than eight months ago, OpenCorporates : The Open Database Of The Corporate World launched with the rather ambitious goal of creating a URL for every company in the world. Five months later, it had […]
Read moreFragDenStaat.de: OKF Deutschland launches new German FOI portal
The following post is from Friedrich Lindenberg and Stefan Wehrmeyer from OKF Deutschland. Today the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland is launching a new Freedom of Information (FOI) portal called “Frag den Staat”. The new site enables citizens, journalists and researchers to request information from over 830 federal agencies and institutions across Germany. Requests can be […]
Read moreVisualising Italian Spending Data
The following guest post is by Daniele Galiffa, CEO at Visup. Some weeks ago we had the opportunity to develop a 24-hour quick prototype regarding the way the Italian Public Administration spends our money. Our goal was to highlight the value of using simple and effective information visualization solutions to gain greater insight into data, […]
Read moreAnd so corporations begin to open data…
The following post is by Francis Irving, CEO of ScraperWiki. Now it seems almost normal that red in tooth and claw competitors, like Microsoft and Google, are both major contributors to the latest version of a popular open source operating system kernel. Businesses are gradually realising they can share the costs of anything based on […]
Read moreAnnouncing… Text Camp 2011
The following post is from James Harriman-Smith, coordinator of the OKF’s Open Literature Working Group, and Lecteur at the ENS de Lyon. The OKF’s first ever ‘Text Camp’ hopes to bring together many different people, all interested in the relationship between digital technologies and literature, with a strong focus on the creation of open knowledge. […]
Read moreEstonian Spending Bubbles
The following guest post is by Tanel Kärp from the Estonian Academy of Arts. He’s a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. MeieRaha.eu (OurMoney) is the first interactive visualization of the Estonian budget which was initiated and built during 48 hours at a local hackathon called Garage48 for Public Services. The […]
Read moreOKF at the Open Government Partnership
The following post is by Theodora Middleton, blog editor at the OKF. The new Open Government Partnership, a “multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance,” was announced last week by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Brazilian […]
Read moreRufus Pollock on Open Science
The following guest post is by Maria Neicu, who’s studying at the University of Amsterdam. She’s a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Data in Science. Rufus Pollock of the Open Knowledge Foundation recently gave a video interview on the topic of open science. Here are the videos, and summaries of what he […]
Read moreMeasuring the success of your project on Open Data
The following guest post is by Armand Brahaj, who works on Open Data Albania. He’s also a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. I had the chance to visit the Transparency Camp in Washington DC this year. The event was organized by the Sunlight Foundation, who invited international activists that were […]
Read moreDoing Good With Data: Data Without Borders
The following guest post is by Jake Porway from Data Without Borders. We live in a time of unprecedented access to data and computational power. The open data movement is quickly digitizing and making available tomes of information about the way our governments work, the way our cities move, and the patterns of our daily […]
Read moreCall for action: Got Linked Data? Tell the world about it!
The following guest post is by Pablo Mendes and the rest of the team working on the new LOD cloud diagram. The LOD cloud diagram is a depiction of datasets that have been published in Linked Data format, by contributors to the Linking Open Data (LOD) community project and other individuals and organisations around the […]
Read moreNew EU consultation on open access to scientific information
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The European Commission has recently announced a consultation on access to scientific information. If you’re interested in open data in science (e.g. as per the Panton Principles for open data in science), then we’re sure the EC would love to hear […]
Read moreWhy censoring Slovak spending app means bad news for open data
The following guest post is by Eva Vozarova from the Fair Play Alliance in Slovakia. Eva is also a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. When we first started working on ZNasichDani.sk in October last year, it looked like a promising, useful idea. Creating a tool that would enable journalists and […]
Read moreOpen content film blocked by YouTube in Germany
The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. Cartoonist, animator and activist Nina Paley recently got in touch with me after her talk at OKCon 2011, saying that her openly licensed film Sita Sings the Blues has been blocked by YouTube in Germany: GEMA has blocked Sita Sings the […]
Read moreApps for Germany
The following is a post by Daniel Dietrich, coordinator of the working group Open Government Data and chairman of the German Chapter of the OKFN. We are delighted to announce the launch of “Apps für Deutschland” – the first open data competition in Germany. Apps für Deutschland (Apps4De) will officially be launched on November, 8th […]
Read moreOpen Government (Data) Wien/Vienna – data.wien.gv.at
The following guest post in by Brigitte Lutz from the City of Vienna. The city of Vienna wants to open governmental data to be freely accessible for further use. The “Open Government Data (OGD) – initiative” is part of the coalition agreement. The open data catalog was presented to the city in a press conference […]
Read moreRelease of Whole of Government Accounts
The following guest post is by Dan Herbert, who works on our Where Does My Money Go and Open Spending projects. He is the Programme Manager for MSc Accounting at Oxford Brookes University. This week sees the publication of the first Whole of Government Accounts for the UK. WGA represents the end of a decade […]
Read moreFree! Music! Contest – fewer choices, more freedom
The following guest post is by Christian Hufgard, chairman of Musikpiraten, and member of the OKF’s Working Group on the Public Domain. The Free! Music! Contest is a contest for bands and artists releasing their songs under a creative commons license. In its third year the focus is set on enabling remixes – and freeness. […]
Read moreReport from JISC Open Bibliography
The following post is the majority of the final report from our Open Bibliography Working Group‘s collaborative Open Bibliography project with JISC. Further information is available on the original report post Congratulations to all involved on the successful completion of the project! Bibliographic data has long been understood to contain important information about the large […]
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