What is Open Data Day?

Open Data Day is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from around the world create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities. It is an opportunity to show the benefits of open data and encourage the adoption of open data policies in government, business and civil society.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

Open Data Day
mini-grants

For Open Data Day 2022, we will give mini-grants focused on the key areas below that we believe open data can help solve:

  • Environmental data

  • Tracking public money flows

  • Open mapping

  • Data for equal development

  • Ocean data for a thriving planet

Register your event 0 events registered in 2021

Who is this for? Everyone!

If you have an idea for using open data, want to find an interesting project to contribute towards, learn about how to visualise or analyse data or simply want to see what's happening, then come participate! Participation is a core value of Open Data Day, everyone is free to voice their opinions in a constructive manner. No matter your skill-set or interests, we are encouraging organisers to foster opportunities for you to learn and help the global open data community grow.

Event Resources

Need some inspiration for an Open Data Day event, or don't know where to find the data you need? Check out our event resources.

Resources

Materials

Create a logo for the event in your city using the logo generator!

Ideas and data sources

Hey there open data enthusiast! You just saw that Open Data Day will be on Saturday 6th March 2021 and you're interested in hosting an event in your locality? Your only challenge now is finding the idea that will hit the right spot. Our friends from the open data community have some ideas and data sources worth checking out.

Visit the CKAN website to discover all the organisations around the world using CKAN to publish their data.

Use data.world to upload or find data from many sources and organise all aspects of a project - including data, notebooks, analysis and discussions - in a single workspace.

If you have data but don't know where to put it, you can use DataHub. You can publish datasets, search for relevant data, browse thematic data collections and request help with your open data publishing.

Environmental data

To discover environmental or climate data to use or get inspiration from for your Open Data Day event: visit the ResourceWatch.org site, a World Resources Institute data portal; explore NASA's open data website; head to geoportal.org for earth observation data; or discover forest cover/loss data with Global Forest Watch.

If you want information on disaster risk management or resilience to natural hazards for your event, visit the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery Labs or Open Data for Resilience Initiative websites to discover tools and projects or find open data and resources to use via the Open Cities Africa project, Think Hazard, OpenDRI Index and Risk Data Library.

OpenOil, Extract-a-Fact and the Open Data Charter's OpenUp guide to climate data may also provide useful guidance and advice.

Tracking public money flows

The Open Contracting Partnership and Hivos' Open Up Contracting websites provide lots of guidance and examples for people looking to do Open Data Day events focused on public procurement and spending. See also: the Open Data Charter guide to using open data to combat corruption.

Open mapping

Find out more about open mapping via the Mapbox, OpenStreetMap and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap websites.

Data for equal development

The Centre for Humanitarian Data has over 17,000 humanitarian open datasets available via the CKAN-powered portal at data.humdata.org which may help to highlight key issues about equal development. You can also visit the United Nations' Open SDG Data Hub, the World Bank Open Data portal or the large data harvesting portals like the European Data Portal.

Ocean data for a thriving planet

General ocean data portals include EMODNet and the Pacific Data Hub. For oceanographic data - seafloor maps, temperatures, currents - try the International Oceanographic Data Exchange and Schmidt Ocean Institute. For data on ocean wildlife try the Ocean Biological Information System the Global Biological Information System and the Ocean Tracking Network. Global Fishing Watch focuses on fishing, especially on the high seas and Marine Traffic shows all kinds of vessels.

Support Scheme

The 2021 mini-grant scheme has now closed. Read our blogpost to find out more about the organisations receiving mini-grants this year

Read more
The Open Data Day 2021 mini-grants scheme was kindly supported by:
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