Open Steps: A journey to discover and document Open Knowledge projects around the globe

Abstract

Open-Steps (http://www.open-steps.org/) is an initiative we, Alex Corbi (Software Developer, Spanish) and Margo Thierry (European Union Affairs/Politics Associate, French) two young Berliners, undertook to explore where Open Knowledge (OK) projects are underway and how they are being implemented in various sectors. We decided to travel the world for one year to accomplish this goal. We began in July 2013, visiting both organizations and individuals who apply the principles behind Open Knowledge in different domains, including but not limited to policy, human rights, and science. We searched for OK projects not visible to majority of the world. This involved extended periods of time, usually months, exploring expansive geographical areas. Our aim was to both learn from professionals about the opportunities, successes, challenges and drivers of OK projects but also to increase awareness and public engagement in Open Knowledge sharing. We conducted interviews to discern the structure of knowledge sharing, public uptake, societal impact and overall benefits conferred. To increase public awareness and engagement with the concept of ‘Open Knowledge’ we conducted a workshop entitled ‘Visualizing Open Data to Bring Out Global Issues’ (http://www.open-steps.org/workshop/). The workshop was conducted in collaboration with the local groups and organizations involved in those projects for the purpose of introducing the topic to interested individuals in the community, raising awareness about the potential benefits of OK projects, and generating discussion from which the community could extract valuable information about the status of OK policies, as well as initiatives and projects ongoing in each local context. This event was organized more than 40 times in 24 countries. We achieved our goals and were thus able to identify and document the level and quality of community awareness and engagement with various forms of Open Knowledge. Why investigate knowledge sharing projects in various parts of the world? The main goal our initiative was to bring greater awareness of Open Knowledge systems to people on at local level and to teach them how OK projects can benefit society at different levels: changing the relations between public administration and citizens, bringing more awareness to particular informational concerns, and ultimately pushing innovation to solve local or global issues by engaging anyone regardless of their profession, (developer, scientist, academic, journalist, human rights advocate etc.), values, socio-economic status, gender, age or geographical location. Open Knowledge is not only gaining interest among individuals in the IT sector, from where Open Source initiated its now large-scale movement, it is a global topic whose principles can be applied outside IT. Sam Murihead, for example, embarked on a one year journey to live every aspect of his life according to principles of open sourcing (http://www.open-steps.org/year-of-open-source-interview-with-sam-muirhead-berlin-germany/). Sam's experience reflects a major finding of our project, namely that the principles of Open Source and Open Knowledge are increasingly adopted by a broad range of disparate individuals and organizations, which suggests a growing impact and new perspectives that can solve entrenched problems. The ability to accept input in a maximally inclusive and open format, rather than one that is siloed and closed, is permitting fully functional innovations that are immediately adopted, thereby short circuiting market failures due to not understanding the needs of end-users. The impact of relatively new OK projects is already observable. Information generated from public support is being released to the public domain in greater quantity and quality. Governments are thus, giving priority to transparency to their agendas, scientists are sharing data to accelerate progress, just to name a few examples. However, challenges to releasing data to the public domain remain.