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Welcome to the Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter.
August 2019 edition

In this summer newsletter, we are happy to share with you the latest updates on our projects, network activities and events.

Our CEO Catherine Stihler recently spoke to Carnegie Council’s Global Ethics Weekly podcast about our vision and work, as well as how the political climate in the US and UK affects data and internet regulations. You can listen to the podcast, and read the transcript of the interview here.
In addition, Catherine’s opinion piece - Why EU’s reputation as a champion of free society is at risk - was published in The Scotsman this week. 

Against the background of such developments in society, we continue our mission to create a more open world – a world where all non-personal information is open, free for everyone to use, build on and share; and creators and innovators are fairly recog-nised and rewarded. We want to enable as many people as possible to have access to the information they need and the tools and skills to use it to improve the world.

To help us continue our mission, pursue impactful projects, launch vital campaigns and deliver open source tools and services which help open up knowledge to the benefit of all, we have recently updated our Donation page to allow people to make one-off donations as well as supporting us with monthly payments.

A regular $10 per month will help us campaign for everyone to have access to vital information about how public money is spent around the world. $20 per month can help train activists, journalists and citizens to understand, access and work with data on issues they care about.

Thank you for supporting the fight for a fair, free and open future.
The Open Knowledge Foundation team at the staff summit in Edinburgh
Highlights from our projects
In order to facilitate reproducible data workflows in research contexts, we launched the Frictionless Data Tool Fund. 
This one-time $5,000 grant attracted over 90 applications from researchers, developers, and data managers from all over the world. In early July, we announced our four grantees for this round: you can read more on each grantee and their project in this blog.
We look forward to sharing their work on developing open source tooling for reproducible research built using the Frictionless Data specifications and software.

We recently published a blogpost on the Open Fiscal Data Package (OFDP), through which we - in partnership with the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) - support governments in the publication of budget and spending open data. 

We were very happy with the news in early July that Croatia decided to publish their country’s budget as open data through OpenSpending, using our OFDP.

You can view their budget here. 
In June, our Board of Directors accepted the CKAN Stewardship proposal jointly put forward by Link Digital and Datopian. As two of the longest serving members of the CKAN Community, they will jointly take over the stewardship of the CKAN Association. It was felt their proposal would now move CKAN forward, strengthening both the platform and community. OKF will remain the ‘purpose trustee’ to ensure the Stewards remain true to the purpose and ethos of the CKAN project.  Read more
From our network
  • The last couple of months have been quite busy for the team of Open Knowledge Nepal with lots of projects, workshops and events. They summarised their activities in their latest summer update on our blog, with updates on their Open Data Women Fellows, FOSSASIA and Creative Commons summits, Open Data Day and new data literacy events.
     
  • Ahead of the upcoming MyData 2019 conference, Viivi Lähteenoja of MyData wrote a piece on the origins of the movement for a human-centric approach to personal data and their links to the open knowledge movement. They also offer a 10% discount for Open Knowledge subscribers wanting to attend MyData 2019 - read more on our blog.
     
  • In Japan, the MyData movement is growing, due to the increasing awareness of the importance of data reuse and data protection. Our chapter Open Knowledge Japan wrote a blog on the MyData activities in Japan, as well as on some examples of services making potentially inappropriate use of personal data. Read more
Upcoming events
From 24-30 August the IFLA World Library and Information Congress will take place in Athens. Our CEO Catherine Stihler will participate in the session on 20 Years of the IFLA Intellectual Freedom Statement: Constancy and Change, which underlines the commitment of libraries to fundamental freedoms. Expert speakers share their views on what intellectual freedom, and its defence, look like today.
We are excited that our Frictionless Data team was selected to join the eLife Innovation Sprint on 4-5 Sep-tember in Cambridge. The event will focus on how to help drive forward research communication. People working in design, UX, web technology, software development, data science and research will work on developing open science prototypes that can improve the current slow, inefficient and expensive science publishing system.
The Scotsman is organising their annual Data-Driven Innovation conference ‘Doing data right: Through people and partnerships’ on 10 September in Edinburgh. Writer and activist Caroline Criado Perez will give a keynote, as well as participate in the panel 'Women in Data' together with our CEO Catherine Stihler. Our Board member Jarmo Eskelinen is also present to outline the vision for the University of Edinburgh’s data-driven innovation programme. You can find the full conference programme here: registration is free, but tickets are limited.
The MyData 2019 conference is a place for accelerating global change towards a human-centric approach to personal data. On 25-27 September, some 1000 experts from business, legal, tech and society sectors will gather for the fourth time in Helsinki, with the focus on how to effect the change we need. 
On 12 November, the Open Data Institute is hosting its flagship event, the ODI summit, covering critical issues around data and its role and impact – both positive and negative. Gathering people from governments, businesses and civil society, the ODI Summit brings together sectors to discuss major issues of the day – from ethics to trust, business models to emerging technology.
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