Yesterday, while David Cameron was rearranging his Cabinet, one significant piece of news (apart from the DRIP Bill. Ed.) seems to have escaped the personality-obsessed British media. The news was the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills announced that Companies House is to make all of its digital data available free of charge. It has […]
On Friday evening the Open Rights Group organised one of a series of nationwide European Digital Rights hustings at St Werburgh’s Community Centre in Bristol. This was a chance for local people to quiz MEP candidates from the South West about their views on digital rights and ask them to sign up to the 10 […]
Bath University has published its programme of forthcoming public lectures. Of these, one in particular caught our eye. Entitled “Drowning in data: who and what can we trust?“, it’s being given by Professor David Rhind from 17:30-18:45 on Wednesday, 2nd April 2014 in the Chancellors’ Building, Lecture Theatre 1.10. It has been estimated that in […]
Malta’s new open data website is running on open source software, according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site. The site, which is run by the Maltese Local Councils Association, uses Centos Linux as its underlying operating system, the MySQL database management system, the Nginx web server and WordPress as its content […]
The French government’s open data site has undergone a facelift, according to Le Monde Informatique. Now more ergonomic and featuring more new data sets, the site wants to be the pivot for the policy to open up public data. The in-depth revamp of the data.gouv.fr has been given a high level relaunch. The French Prime […]
There’s an open data meet-up taking place in Bristol next month. It will be held on 30th January 2014 at the Watershed, 1 Canon’s Road, Bristol, BS1 5TX (map) from 7 pm to 10 pm. The few details that are available at present can be seen here. Topics to be discussed will include licensing, linked […]
In the week a major international summit on government transparency is held in London, the Open Knowledge Foundation has published its 2013 Open Data Index, showing that governments are still not providing enough information in an accessible form to their citizens and businesses. The UK and USA top the 2013 Index, which was compiled from […]
The Swiss Federal Government launched its open data portal opendata.admin.ch comprising over 1,600 public data sets, including election results, key figures for cantons and local authorities, as well as demographic information and data at the start of the Open Knowledge Conference 2013 in Geneva, the German technology news site Heise reports. The portal will provide […]
The British National Archives announced last week that it has released version 2.0 of the Open Government Licence (OGL) following consultation on how the licence could be developed further to reflect new and emerging thinking on the licensing of public sector information. The OGL is an open licence allowing information to be used and re-used […]
Dr Martin Poulter, Senior Web Developer for Bristol University’s Economics Network and New Media Manager for the Children of the 90s project, has been appointed Jisc-Wikimedia Ambassador to facilitate a project to bring the academic world and Wikipedia closer together. Based at the University of Bristol, this joint project between UK education charity Jisc, which […]
Yesterday, in the final stage of the EU approval process, the European Parliament formally adopted updated EU rules on the re-use of public sector information. The Council of Ministers had already agreed to the new rules at last week’s Telecoms Council. European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes said: “Today we can celebrate our efforts to bring […]
Wikimedia Commons is a great resource: nearly 17 mn. freely usable media files that anyone can use for any purpose and to which anyone can contribute too! Contributing to Wikimedia Commons is also getting easier: it’s now possible to transfer images to the Commons database from an Android or iOS smartphone using a free and […]
Are you looking for a temporary job? Do you enjoy editing Wikipedia and can you teach others to do it too? If the answer to these questions is yes, a current vacancy at the National Library of Scotland may interest you. The National Library of Scotland and Wikimedia UK are joining forces to support and […]
According to Ellak, a Greek open source advocacy organisation founded by 25 universities and research centres, Greek regional administrations should consider using open technologies, including free software and open data, when drafting their next regional management plans, EU open source public sector website Joinup reports. Last week Ellak sent a letter explaining the advantages of […]
According to its website, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where its member organisations, a full-time staff and the public work together to develop web standards, whose mission is to lead the Web to its full potential. These standards have so far been characterised by complete openness: all web standards are […]
A day’s training in editing and using Wikipedia in Oldham (reputed home of the country’s best black puddings. Ed.) has been announced by Wikimedia UK, the charity supporting the work of the US-based Wikimedia Foundation. The training day will be held on Saturday, 27th April from 10:00am to 4:00pm at Oldham Library, Greaves Street, Oldham, […]
The words free (as in freedom. Ed.) and open are quite commonly associated with academia and education: free thought, open access to knowledge and such like. Indeed, these concepts are actually embodied in the names of some academic institutions, such as the UK’s Open University and Germany’s Free University of Berlin. However, there are signs […]
If you’re in the Manchester area in mid-March, this event may be of interest to you. A panel discussion on the aspects of an the future of open data will be held at MadLab, 36-40 Edge Street, Manchester M4 1HN (map) on Tuesday, 19th March 2013 from 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm. Over the past […]
A couple of dates for your diaries, readers: 16th and 17th March 2013. On those dates env[:hack] will be taking place all day in Bristol. According to the blurb, env[:hack] is a Hack Day organised by the Environment Agency with help from Geeks of London and the Ordnance Survey. The Agency will be bringing together […]
An Open Data Insitute blog post of the first ever survey* into civil servants’ awareness of open data reveals an astonishing level of ignorance. Among the survey’s main findings were the following: 78% of civil servants do not know about government plans for open data and the benefits that follow; 75% say they don’t know […]