Open Knowledge Foundation

Open the menu

We catalyse communities, help organise events and advocate for change as part of our mission to pursue the openness of all forms of knowledge to secure a fair, free and open future.

Community

We support the Open Knowledge Network which connects those in the open knowledge movement, helping people take local action to achieve local impact and collaborate with like-minded communities around the world.

We are the purpose trustee of the CKAN project, the world’s leading open source data portal platform, which is jointly stewarded by Link Digital and Datopian.

With Datopian, we are joint stewards of the Frictionless Data project which shortens the path from data to insight with a collection of specifications and software for the publication, transport, and consumption of data.

We facilitate open data events, such as Open Data Day, the annual celebration of open data all over the world, and csv,conf, a community conference for data makers everywhere. We have also ran large global open data events, including the first international open government data event in the world in 2010, and the Open Knowledge Festival in 2012 (Helsinki) and 2014 (Berlin).

Campaigns

In 2021:

  • We joined with colleagues at the UK Open Government Network in expressing concerns about the UK Government's failure to deliver on its open government promises
  • We launched strategic litigation as part of our Open Knowledge Justice Programme to challenge the misuse of remote proctoring software

In 2020:

  • We demanded answers to questions about the UK government's plans to build an NHS COVID-19 datastore alongside dozens of leading digital rights organisations

  • We revealed that the British public would overwhelmingly value openness, transparency and respect for human rights in the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic

  • We appealed to governments around the world to embrace openness and transparency in their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

  • We welcomed a call by the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation to overhaul social media regulation in the UK

In 2019:

  • We challenged Facebook to tackle the spread of ‘fake news’ ahead of vital European elections, supported Mozilla’s campaign to fight disinformation and asked the president of the European Commission to focus on the actions of online platforms

  • We criticised the deeply disappointing passage of the European Union’s controversial copyright crackdown

  • We joined forces with six other international “open” organisations to address our shared challenges 

  • We laid out how the UK government could transform the UK’s data ecosystem by creating a National Data Strategy that emphasises the importance of sharing more, better quality information and data openly

  • We highlighted the missed opportunities in the EU’s revised open data and re-use of public sector information directive

  • We explained that closing down libraries to save money is ‘one of the most short-sighted decisions that public officials can make’

  • We called on the European Union to finally pass improved tax transparency measures after years of inaction

  • We pressed the UK’s health secretary to address the global lack of access to medicines

  • We opposed the sale of the Public Interest Registry, which oversees the .org domain, to a private equity firm

  • We endorsed a call from the Open Contracting Partnership for the European Union to publish its procurement data in line with open standards

  • We added our name to the Web Foundation’s Contract for the Web, a global plan of action to make our online world safe and empowering for everyone

Support a fair, free and open future.

Donate now