[foundation-board] CEO Update 10 / 2016

Tue Oct 18 14:33:33 UTC 2016

Dear all,

please find below an overview of the highlights of the last month here at
Open Knowledge International. As always, you can find the same text as a
Google doc here
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xtV7OXKbVeiK3IT3PIfiNCJNvpm7aLxd--kV-kQvJIs/edit?usp=sharing>
.

Cheers,

Pavel
Highlights from Tech/ Projects

   -

   There has been solid progress on the technical and methodological
   aspects of the Global Open Data Index (GODI) platform. Data collection
   for GODI 2016 is scheduled to start on the first week of November.
   -

   Work on the new tooling of the OpenSpending platform is ongoing while
   the testing of the Fiscal Data Package specification continues after the
   launch of the pilot with the Mexican Government.  Work is underway with
   Open Knowledge Germany on a project to collect all EU subsidy data and get
   it into OpenSpending, this is funded by Adessium
   -

   Regarding OpenTrials, the beta launch of the platform accompanied by a
   hackathon in Berlin and an announcement occurred at the World Health Summit
   on 10th October.
   -

   In Frictionless Data, the working group around the specs has kicked off
   with great success, and with a commitment made to get all specifications to
   v1 by end of 2016 with representatives across civic data, academic, and
   commercial solutions providers. Work on the Registry has begun and will be
   a key outcome of the project. Considerable interest was generated from
   International Data Week conferences and discussions and opportunities are
   underway with many new partners including the creation of new working
   groups and new areas of research - the first likely to be in Agricultural
   data
   -

      The FIWARE project came to an end in September following the update
      of the platform to the the new CKAN release 2.6. The project ended with a
      presentation from OKI on the work done as part of the project at
CKANCon as
      part of IODC. The CKAN platform will continue to be promoted by
FIWARE and
      supported by the community.
      -

      The Right to Education Index (RETI) has been published:
      http://www.rtei.org/en/
      -

      Work on the IBP tracker continues, ad is due to be completed in
      October
      -

   FutureTDM held its first high profile Workshop in Brussels with
   presentations and a keynote by Julia Reda. The event was sponsored and
   Chaired by the European Parliament Digital Agenda Intergroup.
   <http://digitalagendaintergroup.eu/> Attendees included EU policy
   shapers - advocacy organizations and representatives from the Parliament
   Commission and Council - alongside the broader TDM community that we have
   been engaging with for the past year. The FutureTDM project poster was
   selected to be presented at various events such as the GTM2016, University
   of Southampton IClick and at  RDA Plenary, where we also took part in the
   IG session on education and formed a new working group on TDM.
   OKFN representing FTDM gave a presentation at Digital Infrastructures
   for Research.
   -

   Regarding School of Data (ScoDa), we're organising a special event
   during Abrelatam in Colombia, early next month. The event will be about
   connecting CSOs and newsrooms that are data driven for them to share common
   challenges and lessons learned.
   We organised a capacity building event in Madrid in partnership with
   MediaLab Prado and Open Knowledge Spain which sought to teach journalists
   data-skills. We also participated in IODC as Action Anchors, curating,
   moderating and reporting on panels on the capacity building track. Our
   contributions eventually made to the final report of the conference.
   -

   ROUTETOPA: Work started on piloting tools built by other partners in the
   consortium

Viderum Updates

   -

   On business: We've started delivery on the new project with Shell. We
   also closed the renewal of the Birmingham hosting contract. While we still
   haven't closed on HPE, talks are now under way with Energinet, the Danish
   gas and electricity grid operator, to build an open data portal including
   near-real-time energy consumption data. Developer team size has grown again
   to 5 contractors in order to meet the demands of the ongoing projects.
   -

   On finance: As a result of increased business in the past two months,
   Viderum's financial situation has improved somewhat. Once billings from the
   Shell project turn into receipts (expected for November), things should
   clear up significantly.
   -

   On transition: Yesterday, the last customer moved onto our cloud-hosted
   infrastructure. With that, the transition project has come to its end.

Operations Update

   -

   Pensions has been boarded as planned
   -

   Charity application on going
   -

   The reversals has been completed to minimise corporation tax exposure
   -

   We currently have the ability to board key team members who are based
   overseas; updates will presented at the next board meeting
   -

   Sanders reintegration to OKI planned for November.
   -

   The Year-End Accounts
   <https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2rJgDegDOWdWGlNRGZ3RGttYVFfV3pTdHFiRlYzYThHZ0VJ/view?usp=sharing>
has
   been finalised. Regarding the attached Accounts; you will notice that Part
   3 is highlighted in yellow; so far we have reduced our corporation Tax
   exposure from £61,000 to £18,000.  However, Mark is convinced this will
   come down, with the intention of zeroing it out or receiving an actual Tax
   return from the Revenue. Unfortunately, these figures cannot be confirmed
   to be 100% this week.
   -

   Please note that Buzzacott Auditors will be at the next Board Meeting to
   present the Accounts.

Funding Omidyar Network

Pavel, accompanied by Mark and Karin made a presentation
<https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/186qFxn04POwov2YWSgpqogeAbQsp6HDwwMkT4wwTYwA/edit?ts=57fb8d2f#slide=id.p>
to the Investment Committee of the Omidyar Network on 28th September. We
are expecting feedback on the grant in the next few weeks.
Sigrid Rausing

In addition to the 2016 grant report, we submitted a new proposal
requesting for a 3year general core grant.

StaffLive vacancies

There are currently no open positions at OKI.
New Staff

   -

   Serah Rono, based in Nairobi, Kenya filled our Developer Advocate
   position. Serah comes to us from Code for Africa, and brings a wealth of
   knowledge to the role. Serah is focused on ROUTETOPA, and assists on
   Frictionless Data, and OK Labs.
   -

   Our Junior Designer position was filled by Ewelina Woloszyn. Ewelina
   will work with our Senior Designer Sam Smith, who is now part time.
   -

   Shireen Kovoor joined OKI on 3rd October as our HR Manager. Shireen has
   vast experience working in both the not-for-profit as well as the
   commercial sectors, having previously worked for the SSAT(The Schools
   Network), Heathrow Airport Holdings (formerly BAA), Balfour Beatty, Dubai
   World Trade Centre and Tata Consultancy Services, in the UK, Dubai and
   India.
   -

   Nicky Trijssenaar will be joining OKI next week as a Project Manager for
   our NEXTGeoss project.

Network

We organized the Open Exchange for Social Change at the IODC16. It was
successful and we got good end products from it, including discussions
about open washing. Also, preparation for the Open Data Day with the
community has started. Our last community call on the topic had 60
participants.

Regarding Research,  we co-anchored the research track at IODC and started
a new project with CIVICUS on the DataShift  project.
AOB

The next in-person meeting of the Board is on 9th November, 2016 at 5:30pm.
The venue is Canonical.

OKI’s Autumn  Summit is taking place on 21-23 November, 2016 in
Thessaloniki, Greece.

I will send the next CEO Update in the middle of December. Please do give
feedback on these reports, so that I can provide you with the information
that you require.
What I have been thinking about / what’s concerning me this month

A lot of time and effort went into the presentation for the Omidyar Network
investment committee. We will hear from them any time soon, I hope.

A real highlight was the International Open Data Conference in Madrid. I am
usually not a big fan of these large conferences and find them not too
helpful for me. But in Madrid it was different. This time, I found the
panels very good, I found the networking very helpful (especially at the
Omidyar meetup on Monday and Tuesday), and it was great to meet with a
large part of our staff and see them “in action”.

One thing that I am looking forward to is the project management training
that all our project managers are undergoing in October in London. We are
investing a lot of money and effort in this, but I am confident that we
will see improved collaboration and planning coming to our projects.

October and November are very intense, in terms of conferences and travel,
and also for fundraising. But I found the last month to be very productive
and interesting, and I really like it that talking about our new strategy,
I get good feedback from people who know OKI for a long time.

-- 
Kind regards

Pavel Richter
CEO
Open Knowledge International
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