[okfn-discuss] Roundup of successes from around the OKF network

Wed May 29 13:38:45 UTC 2013

Here's a roundup of recent successes from around the network!  If you have
any achievements, big or small, to share, please just drop an email (one
line is fine!) to *success at okfn.org*

CKAN-based *Data.gov* went live on Thursday:
http://ckan.org/2013/05/23/data-gov-relaunch-on-ckan/ This has been the
Open Knowledge Foundation's Services team’s single largest client
initiative in 2013 and the team delivered brilliant work: Irina
Bolyshevsky, David Raznick, Adrià Mercader, John Glover and Toby Dacre have
been stars. Sean Hammond and Mark Wainwright have been working extremely
hard on restructuring the user- and technical-documentation for CKAN to
improve usability and also creating a new end-user guide.

Inductions of the next round of Open Knowledge Foundation
*Ambassador*applicants are now complete with new activity in Texas,
Canada, Ecuador,
Argentina, the Netherlands and Taiwan.

A big congrats to Adam, Spike and the rest of the team and openspending
community around *Open Budget Oakland* as Oakland City Council passed a bill
to open up the budget process of the
city<http://openoakland.org/city-council-adopts-a-more-open-budget-for-oakland/>.

OpenSpending helped organise a Hack Day in
Brussels<http://openspending.org/blog/2013/04/09/procurement-hack-day.html>to
*open the European procurement register*. Getting access to procurement
data can be a really important source for tracing where the money goes,
especially in countries where transactional spending data is stil
unavailable. It is therefore relevant to ask if OpenSpending should begin
to enable procurements and contracts to be added more easily than today.
Read more in the recap from the Hack
Day<http://openspending.org/blog/2013/05/15/Procurement-Hac-Recap.html>and
let us know you think.

We're planning an online Data Expedition: *Tax Evasion vs Avoidance.* If
you have ever wanted to better understand the distinctions between the
terms, or which the common loopholes commonly exploited are, we welcome you
to join us. More information and how to register can be found here:
http://schoolofdata.org/2013/05/24/data-expedition-tax-avoidance-and-evasion/

This weekend, six teams of intrepid explorers from four continents set out
to tell the story behind the global garment industry in the *"Mapping the
Garment Factories"* Expedition. This was our first experiment in doing a
reactive data expedition in response to a current event and the format
worked really well, and we'll be posting the outcomes and recordings later
in the week. Special thank you to our guest speakers Chris Taggart  (
OpenCorporates) and the OpenGeo team (OpenStreetMap) for their excellent
Google Hangout Introductions to their topics.

The Metametrik sprint of the *Open Economics Working Group* happened on May
25 bringing together economics PhD students and technical experts. The
purpose of the first sprint was to establish the parameters from
regressions in economics that need to be captured in order to do meta
analysis of the empirical literature in economics.
http://openeconomics.net/2013/05/02/metametrik-sprint-in-london-may-25/

The LinkedUp Veni Competition has now opened, and is inviting submissions. The
first of three consecutive competitions, the Veni Competition is calling
for you to submit an innovative and robust prototype or demo that uses
linked and/or *open data for educational purposes*.
http://linkedup-project.eu/2013/05/22/veni-competition-is-inviting-submissions/

Laura James took part in a livechat with the Guardian’s Public Leaders
network about *UK public sector information*; you can read the chat here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2013/may/20/livechat-stephan-shakespeare-open-data-agendaLaura
made an important point: I
find the increasing use of the term "open data" to describe releases of
potentially quite personal and identifiable data very worrying. We need to
be clear about the differences between open data (which has generally meant
non-personal data, commons-owned, such as OpenStreetMap etc) and released
datasets which may relate more strongly to individual citizens (where
questions of ownership and access are less clear cut).
*
*
Rufus Pollock took part in a* radio broadcast* from CBC in Canada,
discussing Big Data, Small Data, Datification, Corellation versus
Causation, Stock Market Trading, Health Informatics, and Open Knowledge.
You can download the podcast here:
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/spark_20130526_36286.mp3<http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/spark_20130526_36286.mp3
   >

Laura

-- 

Dr Laura James

Co-Director  | skype: laura.james  |  @LaurieJ <https://twitter.com/LaurieJ>

The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>

Empowering through Open Knowledge
http://okfn.org/  |  @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN>  |  OKF on
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/OKFNetwork> |
Blog <http://blog.okfn.org/>  |  Newsletter<http://okfn.org/about/newsletter>

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