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This handbook discusses the legal, social and technical aspects of open data. Open data, especially open government data, is a tremendous resource that is yet to be tapped properly. It is targeted for civil servants, journalists, politicians, data professionals or anyone interested in open data. It can be used by anyone but is especially designed for those seeking to open up data. It discusses the why, what and how of open data - why to go open, what open is, and the how to 'open' data. This book explains the basic concepts of 'open data', especially in relation to government. It covers how open data creates value and can have a positive impact in many different areas. In addition to exploring the background, the handbook also provides concrete information on how to produce open data.

I was lucky to be in Berlin with some colleagues earlier this month for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival and associated fringe events. There's really too much to distill into a short post-from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, making the case for " Embracing the open opportunity," to Patrick Alley's breathtaking accounts of how Global Witness uses information, to expose crime and corruption in countries around the world.

A useful summary of some of the key take-aways from the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival, courtesy of Tariq Khokhar From the article: 1. There are some great open data initiatives around the world and two common themes are the need for a strong community of technologically literate data re-users, and the sustained effort needed within governments to change how they create, manage and publish data in the long term. 2. Spreadsheets are code and we can adopt some software engineering practices to make much better use of them. There are a number of powerful tools and approaches to data handing being pioneered by the scientific community and those working in other fields can adopt and emulate many of them. 3. Open data fundamentally needs open source software. App reuse often doesn't happen because contexts are too different. Reusable software components can reduce the development overhead for creating locally customized civic software applications and a pool of high quality civic software components is a valuable public good worth contributing to. Reading time: 15mins

I see that Google are the sponsors of the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival but despite having little knowledge about Google's role and interest in the Open Knowledge , I also feel they are the culprit when it comes to data manipulative for their own profit motives.

I dare also to share this paper which recently appeared on seminar.net. It deals with my PhD project and tries to link open government data with educational concepts, merging a critical perspective with productive approaches. If any other people in this MOOC are interested in this field, I would be truly glad to discuss these ideas and read/hear your opinions about it!

Using game like concept to teach kids and adults is becoming more and more recognize a great learning and teaching tool. I am also interested on using games for computer cognitive rehabilitation exercixes.

A very thorough paper especially useful for its careful analysis of the "flip side" of open government data. It presents the main objections raised against the OGD "paradise" and also analyses ways in which media pedagogy can alleviate these problems. It culminates in a very important question: » An educational conception towards 'governing students not to be governed (that much)' within formal, obligatory education can too easily act out what it pretends to counteract. Informal settings, however, run the risk of fortifying social injustice and privilege - if largely used by well-educated citizens and semi-experts, as assumed. «

This blog examines open data that is provided by the New York City government. It is written by a visiting assistant professor at Pratt College in Brooklyn NY. He uses the open data in his statistics and city planning course there. The interesting thing is that every open data set has a story to tell. Journalists are realizing this and are starting to analyze this open data to write stories, it is called data journalism. If you are interested data journalism, there is a course offered on the canvas network titled Doing Journalism with Data: First Steps, Skills and Tools (link provided) https://www.canvas.net/courses/doing-journalism-with-data The great thing about this in my opinion is that with open data the world starts to become more transparent. Everyone with some statistical knowledge can access these data, analyze them, and answer questions.

An interesting article arguing for the creation of open licenses for data. They make the point that the use of creative commons licenses is mistaken as these are designed for creative work not data or data bases. Unfortunately the argument - which is repeated several times - is not very thoroughly presented. The Talis Community License is mentioned as a possible alternative. The paper dates from 2008 and is thus - apart from the forceful argument for open licenses as the more viable alternative to the public domain - primarily of historical interest. Much progress has been made in the field with Open Data Commons Licenses now being an accepted standard as well as well as country specific licenses such as Open Government License UK, Open Government License Canada or Data License Germany (cf. http://opendefinition.org/licenses/).

"Open data could add up to $3 trillion worth of economic activity per year worldwide, according to a study by McKinsey Consultants. But in the race to liberate thousands of data-sets from the government and business sectors, the African continent is seen as lagging behind. "

If there is any continent that needs Open Data most, it is Africa. African needs transparency and accountability, which are the core foundation of Open Data, to create meaningful change on the continent. But making data available and Open is just the initial stage of accomplishing something. The challenge here is how to ensure that the people of Africa have knowledge of the information and are ABLE to ACCESS the information. What use is information when still limited Internet access, scarce electricity, and other ICT infrastructure, including language barriers continue to act as roadblocks to accessing Open data? Wow!! Just when I finished this short posting, the light went off. Couldn't access the Internet. Everything is dead. I have being waiting 30mins, 1hr, 2hrs, 2hrs 45mins … and now its 4hrs and my laptop battery power is running down. ALAS!! Finally power is restored after 4hrs 49mins for me to make my post. You feel me? This is not the exception, and this is not a coincidence but the norm

Paper Conclusions: While sources differ in their precise estimates of the economic potential of Open Data, all are agreed that it is potentially very large. In countries which were early movers in Open Data there is already evidence of significant businesses having developed to exploit that potential. Leading governments have recognised that their role is not simply to publish data - they are supporting the whole value chain of the use of data through four distinct though interlinked roles. Other governments should consider how to use their Open Data to enhance economic growth, and should put in place strategies to promote and support the use of data in this way.

The home of the U.S. Government's open data Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more. This tool is very powerful for researchers that may not access to the funds and resources of researchers from well funded universities or that of the US Government. This resources breaks the data out into 21 different topics covering areas from education to the ocean. Each section has data sets to choose from and access to grant information as well as articles and updates on each topic. Even it you are someone that does not have the capacity to use these resources, I believe that it is good to know where to find this source so that you can share it with others, or perhaps one day you will have the ability to use this resource more fully.

Open Government Indonesia recently launched a new open data portal at data.id. Check out the blog for some examples of its uses.

What Forbes has to say about Open Data.

Shule.Info is a project that puts data about Tanzanian schools online, providing information for the overall country, regions, and individual schools. The website is also in both English and Swahili, the language of the majority of Tanzanians. This is a great attempt at making this open data accessible and understandable to the people to who need it. "We all know that education in Tanzania is in a state of crisis. Massive failure rates. Not enough teachers. Not enough books. Poor teaching. And many more problems. So what do you do if you are a parent, brother or sister and want to find a good school? What if you are a council or national government leader and want to track progress? Right now it is very difficult to do so, because data is not easily available. And when you can access data, it is very difficult to understand and use. Open data is in fact relevant to all of us in making beter decisions. It is not just a concept for technical experts. If we knew which medicines were available in our nearest health centres we would save ourselves wasted trips. If we had live traffic updates we could better plan our travel. And if we had data on school performance we would have the chance to make better decisions about our children's education and potentially shape the course of their future differently."

A local group of the open knowledge foundation 1. Push for Open Science and Research practices in Indian research institutions. . 2. More involvement of citizens in the spirit of Open Knowledge Involvement of the masses in order to work towards making ourselves a better managed nation. Constitutional instruments like the Public Interest Litigation (PIL), the Right To Information (RTI), etc., lose their relevance without complete transparency in the dissemination of government as well as non-government data. Building a mass-based system of knowledge-banks can help us a lot in achieving our goal. We can assist the governments for making more information public, wherever necessary. 3. Push for education. Involving the masses can to a great extent result in a quicker transformation of the present scene (for example, we can have citizens making study material open and free and also involve them more in the dispersion of education). We aim to arrange for vocational profession-based education for the adult population.

The possibilities of open data have been enthralling us for 10 years. I came to it through wanting to make Government really usable, to build sites like TheyWorkForYou. But that excitement isn't what matters in the end. What matters is scale - which organisational structures will make this movement explode?

Creative Commons began providing licenses for the open sharing of content only a decade ago. More than 400 million CC-licensed works are now available on the Internet, varying from music, photos, research findings to entire courseware. Creative Commons provides the legal and technical infrastructure that allows effective sharing of knowledge, art and data by individuals, organizations and governments. Millions of creators world over are taking advantage of that infrastructure to share work that enriches the global commons for all humanity. The book The Power of Open collects the stories of those creators, some such famous creators are like ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative news organization or the nomadic filmmaker Vincent Moon. The breadth of uses is as great as the creativity of the individuals and organizations choosing to open their content to the rest of the world.

Hasadna LeYeda Tziburi, the Public Knowledge Workshop in English, is a non-profit, non-partisan organisation that was founded in 2011. Its mission is to allow the public to engage more meaningfully with Israeli government and public interest data by making it more accessible to the public.

The name means something. I can only guess Le = the and Tziburi = the songs. I am probably wrong. Please translate for us.

The translation for Hasadna LeYeda Tziburi is Hebrew for Public Knowledge Workshop.