New Release: Problematising Strategic Tension Lines in the Digital Commons

As a part of our exploration of the open movement, last May, we hosted a workshop with a small group of the movement’s leaders. It was co-organised by our partners at Open Future and Wikimedia Europe. The convening built up on what was found out in Shifting Tides – quality research about the state of the movement conducted […]

How to organise a successful Open Data Day event – a complete guide!

Open Data Day (ODD) is the annual celebration of open data all over the world, where groups from around the world create local events to promote open data or use open data in their communities. 2023 Open Data Day(s) will take place from 4th to 10th March. ODD usually sees thousands of people getting together […]

The UK’s National Data Strategy: first impressions and observations

After years of promises, the UK Government has finally announced the launch of a ‘framework’ National Data Strategy. The aim of the strategy is to “drive the UK in building a world-leading data economy while ensuring public trust in data use” and the government has set out five missions for this work: Unlocking the value […]

New opinion poll – UK contact-tracing app must take account of human rights

A new opinion poll has revealed that an overwhelming majority of Brits want any coronavirus contact-tracing app to take account of civil liberties and people’s privacy. The Survation poll for the Open Knowledge Foundation comes ahead of today’s evidence session at Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights on the human rights implications of COVID-19 tracing […]

World Library Congress – Closing Libraries is ‘short-sighted’

Closing down libraries to save money is ‘one of the most short-sighted decisions that public officials can make’, the World Library and Information Congress has heard. Speaking at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) annual congress in Athens, Open Knowledge Foundation chief executive Catherine Stihler said ‘libraries are too often seen as […]

Fighting for a more open world: our CEO’s keynote speech at Open Belgium 2019

On Monday 4th March 2019, Catherine Stihler, the new chief executive of Open Knowledge International, will deliver a keynote speech – Fighting for a more open world – at the Open Belgium 2019 conference in Brussels. Read the speech below and visit the Open Belgium website or follow the hashtag to learn more about the event. […]

Facebook challenged to tackle the spread of ‘fake news’ ahead of vital European elections

Facebook’s global affairs boss Sir Nick Clegg has been challenged to tackle the spread of ‘fake news’ on Facebook ahead of vital European elections. Catherine Stihler, chief executive of Open Knowledge International and a former MEP, has written to the former Deputy Prime Minister to request more transparency from Facebook and its assistance in resuscitating […]

The Open Revolution: rewriting the rules of the information age

Rufus Pollock, the Founder of Open Knowledge International, is delighted to announce the launch of his new book The Open Revolution on how we can revolutionize information ownership and access in the digital economy. About the book Will the digital revolution give us digital dictatorships or digital democracies? Forget everything you think you know about […]

Podcast: Pavel Richter on the value of open data

This month Pavel Richter, CEO of Open Knowledge International, was interviewed by Stephen Ladek of Aidpreneur for the 161st episode of his Terms of Reference podcast. Aidpreneur is an online community focused on social enterprise, humanitarian aid and international development that runs this podcast to cover important topics in the social impact sector. Under the […]

Joint Submission to UN Data Revolution Group

The following is the joint Submission to the UN Secretary General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution from the World Wide Web Foundation, Open Knowledge, Fundar and the Open Institute, October 15, 2014. It derives from and builds on the Global Open Data Initiative’s Declaration on Open Data. To the UN Secretary General’s […]

Revisiting OKFestival 2014

Hard to believe that a full month has passed since the end of a fantastic OKFestival 2014. While our team is hard at work following up on all the great ideas and impulses from the event, and evaluating what we can learn, we would like to highlight some of the magnificent write-ups and other documentation […]

Open Economics Hackday

The following post is by Velichka Dimitrova coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group. It is great to see people coming together and doing something cool on a Saturday. The Open Economics Hackday gathered more than thirty people at the Barbican and online, crafting fancy visualisations, wrangling data and being creative together. The day was devoted […]

Openness as Strategy: Leading Open Knowledge Communities

The following is a guest blog post from Prof. Philipp Mueller about his talk on Openness as Strategy at the Open Knowledge Conference, June, 30th & July 1st 2011 in Berlin. We live in a world where information and communication technologies have confronted us with new logics of collective action that allow new forms of […]