This blog post is part of our on-going Community series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the team of Open Knowledge Austria. September was largely a transition period between the old and new board to facilitate the takeover of responsibilities. We also involved our team and the community in […]
PersonalData.IO is a free and open platform for citizens to track their personal data and understand how it is used by companies. It is part of the MyData movement, promoting a human-centric approach to personal data management. A lot of readers of this blog will be familiar with Freedom of Information laws, a legal mechanism […]
This blog post is part of our summer series featuring updates from chapters across the Open Knowledge Network and was written by the team of Open Knowledge Austria. The last two months have been very vibrant within Open Knowledge Austria. We co-organized the monthly Vienna Open Data Meetup, but no other public appearances, because we […]
This blog post is part of our summer chapters updates and was written by the team of OK Brazil. Brazil is not only about the Olympics. A lot has been going on in the Brazilian chapter of the Open Knowledge Network as well. Here we highlight the significant chapter developments, including some new faces and some […]
“Open Spending Data in Constrained Environments” is a project being lead by Sinar Project in Malaysia aimed exploring ways to of making critical information public and accessible to Malaysian citizens. The project is supported by the Open Data for Development programme and has been run in collaboration with Open Knowledge International & OpenSpending In Malaysia, […]
This blog post was written by Riyadh Al Balushi from the Sultanate of Oman. I recently co-authored with Sadeek Hasna a report that looks at the status of open data in the Arab World and the extent to which governments succeed or fail in making their data available to the public in a useful manner. We […]
This blog post was written by Florence Abena Toffa from Code for Ghana. The International Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in various cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analysis of open public data. This year, we partnered with National Information Technology Agency (NITA) to provide us […]
This blog post was written by Justin Yarga. A modest day, but a rich day: Open Data Day in Burkina Faso has helped advance the uptake open data by the open data ecosystem and also helped explore new areas for opening up data. And this time, it is the health sector that was the subject of […]
This blog post was written by the NDI election team -Michael McNulty and Benjamin Mindes How “open” are election results data around the world? Answering that question just became much easier. For the first time, the Global Open Data Index 2015 assessed election results data based on whether the results are made available at the […]
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 […]
After a two months, 82 ideas for datasets, 386 voters, thirteen civil society organisation consultations and very active discussions on the Index forum, we have finally arrived at a consensus on what datasets will be including in the 2015 Global Open Data Index (GODI). This year, as part of our objective to ensure that the […]
This post was co-written by Mor Rubinstein and Neal Bastek. It is cross-posted and available in Spanish at the AbreLatAm blog. AbreLatAm, for us “gringos”, is magical. Even in the age where everyone is glued to a screen, face to face connection is still the strongest connection humans can have; it fosters the trust that […]
This is a guest blog post by Matt Smith, who is a learning technologist at UCL. He is interested in how technology can be used to empower communities. Introduction Fantasy Frontbench is a not-for-profit and openly licensed project aimed at providing the public with an engaging and accessible platform for directly comparing politicians. A twist […]
(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 […]
This is a cross-post from the Open Knowledge Switzerland blog, see the original here. It has been a big year for us in Switzerland. An openness culture spreading among civil administration, NGOs, SMEs, backed by the efforts of makers, supporters and activists throughout the country, has seen the projects initiated over the past three years […]
To what extent is it important to get familiar with our environment? If we think about how the world surrounding us has changed throughout the years, it is not so unreasonable that, while walking to work, we might encounter some new little shops, restaurants, or gas stations we had never noticed before. Likewise, how many […]
This is a guest blog post by Kristina Olausson, Blog writer and editor for Open Knowledge Sweden. You can see the Swedish version it is based on here. Photo by Socialdemokrater, CC-BY-ND Part of the team of Open Knowledge Sweden, Kristina Olausson and Mattias Axell, visited the annual politicians week – the Almedalen week at […]
This is a cross-post from the OKFestival blog, see the original here The time is now. The time is today! If you haven’t already, it’s time to buy your tickets because today, we announce the names of our four amazing keynote speakers! This year, we have the pleasure of welcoming this stellar line-up of activists, […]
This is a guest blog post by Andrew Simms analyst and campaigner at our StopSecretContracts.org coalition partner Global Witness. If you believe public contracts should be open contracts, sign our petition and let world leaders know. This article first appeared on Global Witness’s website. Symbolism doesn’t get much better than this – thousands of homeless […]
Over the last few months we have received hundreds of terrific proposals for this year’s Open Knowledge Festival programme. Thank you for your ideas and your input! There have been more sessions proposed than we could possibly accommodate and as a result, we’ve had the incredibly difficult task of whittling down all of those great […]
We are very pleased to announce that Open Knowledge Ireland has become the newest Chapter of Open Knowledge! Building on their relentless work as an Open Knowledge Local Group over the last 1.5 years, the rapidly growing Irish group is now taking the big next step by becoming an independent, self-sustainable Chapter. The efforts of […]
The following post was originally published on the blog of our Open MENA community (Middle East and North Africa). The Qatari Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (generally referred to as ictQATAR) had launched a public consultation on its draft Open Data Policy. I thus decided to briefly present a (long overdue) outline of Qatar’s […]
The German Federal Ministry of the Interior has sent a cease and desist order to the Freedom of Information (FOI) portal FragDenStaat.de for publishing a document received under the German federal FOI law. The document – a five page study written by government staff – analyses a ruling by the German constitutional court in November […]
This is a guest post by Waltraut Ritter from Knowledge Dialogues and Opendata Hong Kong/Open Knowledge Foundation Hong Kong, who recently visited Myanmar as basis for this interesting account. She can be contacted on waltraut(a)opendatahk(dot)com. New cars, new mobiles – photo by Waltraut Ritter, CC BY-SA The Worldbank Knowledge Economy Index ranks Myanmar as second […]
Ireland: Meetups, OpenSpending projects and prominent media exposure… In July our Irish group held Open Data Ireland Meetup #9, which was dedicated to ‘Local Government’ and was attended by around 20 people – see follow-up blogs posts among other here and here. In October this was followed up with Open Data Ireland Meetup #10 that […]
The following guest post is by Florencia Coelho, from Argentinian daily La Nacion. In Argentina, where a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has yet to be signed, LA NACION and three transparency NGOs – Poder Ciudadano, ACIJ (Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia) and Fundación Directorio Legislativo joined efforts to produce the first […]
Today’s release of an Open Data Charter by the G8 is testimony to the growing importance of open data worldwide. The Charter recognizes the central role open data can play in improving government and governance and in stimulating growth through innovation in data-driven products and services. It endorses the principle of “open by default” — […]
Cape Town City Hall, Felix Gottwald It seems somewhat absurd to me that publicly funded institutions in South Africa should be allowed to copyright data produced using public funds. Of course, it is reasonable to expect that physical assets such as buildings, vehicles or machinery should appear on their balance sheets and be reserved for […]
Many open data initiatives forget to include the basic facts about the government itself In the past few years we’ve seen a huge shift in the way governments publish information. More and more governments are proactively releasing information as raw open data rather than simply putting out reports or responding to requests for information. This […]
This post is a translation of Il nostro contributo per salvare gli #OpenData originally published by Ernesto Belisario on Agorà Digitale. Most links point to documents and websites in Italian. In the past few weeks I have been very involved with transparency (and therefore, open data) together with the friends of Agorà Digitale. Right when […]
This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. For years now, the practice preregistering clinical trials has worked to reduce publication bias dramatically (Drummond Rennie offers more details). Trying to build on this trend for transparency, the Open Knowledge Foundation, which runs the Open Economics Working Group, has expressed support for All Trials […]
This is second of two pieces about “managing expectations” (the first is here). Open data has come a long way in the last few years and so have expectations. There’s a growing risk that open data will be seen as a panacea that will magically solve climate change or eliminate corruption or “fix” democracy. This […]
The Web Foundation and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) are looking to fund case study research on the emerging impacts of open data in developing countries. Open data policies are spreading across the world: but how does open data play out on the ground in different settings? What is needed for the potential transparency […]
What? When?? Where??? How?!?! were the questions that got me started some 10 years ago now, on my free software journey that’s taken me to the heart of the European Parliament. As a young Swedish musician, politically innocent and ignorant as the next, I got worked up together with a bunch of newborn stallmanites unleashing […]
After several months of hard work, the Data Journalism Handbook is almost ready to be released. The handbook will be launched during the School of Data Journalism at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, next week. The handbook is a free, open source reference book for anyone interested in the emerging field of data […]
The following is a blog post by Rufus Pollock co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation. I have a dream, one which I’ve had for a while. In this dream I’m able to explore, seamlessly, online, every text ever written. With the click of a button I can go from Pynchon to Proust, from Musil to […]
The following guest post is by Matt Rosenberg, founder and editor of Public Data Ferret, a project of the non-profit Public Eye Northwest. In this special in-depth report, Matt looks at what it will take for the efforts of the recently formed global Open Government Partnership to succeed, taking in initiatives from across the globe […]
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 […]
Jens Finnäs is a freelance journalist based in Helsinki, the author of Dataist, a blog about data journalism, and a member of the OKF’s Working Groups on Open Government Data and EU Open Data. Parliamentary elections in Finland are usually rather dull. Rarely does the rest of the world bother to pay any attention. But […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Open Knowledge Foundation: General For a fair, free and open future: celebrating 15 years of the Open Knowledge Foundation Why greater tax transparency is needed to help fix the broken global tax system Reflections on the 2019 European parliamentary elections The Sum of Our Parts – Open Organisations Fighting for a more open world: our […]
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