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I’m proud to introduce the  PRESS RELEASE :

Mapping open data around the world

BERLIN, 30th June 2011 – Today a broad coalition of public bodies, NGOs and international organisations[1] are launching DataCatalogs.org, a new project to keep track of open data initiatives around the world.
Governments are beginning to recognise that opening up public information can bring about a wide variety of social and economic benefits – such as increasing transparency and efficiency, creating jobs in the new digital economy, and enabling web and mobile developers to create new useful applications and services for citizens.
But it can be difficult to keep up with the pace of developments in this area. Following on from the success of initiatives like the Obama administration’s data.gov and the UK government’s data.gov.uk, nearly every week there is a new open data initiative from a local, regional or national government somewhere around the world – from Chicago to Torino, Morocco to Moldova.
A group of leading open data experts are helping to keep DataCatalogs.org updated, including representatives from international bodies such as the World Bank, independent bodies such as the W3C and the Sunlight Foundation, and numerous national governments.
Neil Fantom, Manager of the World Bank’s Development Data Group, says: “Open data is public good, but only if you can find it – we’re pleased to see initiatives such as DataCatalogs.org giving greater visibility to public information, allowing easier discovery of related content from different publishers and making open data more valuable for users.”
Beth Noveck, who ran President Obama’s open government programme and is now working with the UK Government says: “This project is a simple but important start to bringing together the community of key open data stakeholders. My hope is that DataCatalogs.org grows into a vibrant place to articulate priorities, find and mash up data across jurisdictions and curate data-driven tools and initiatives that improve the effectiveness of government and the lives of citizens.”
Cathrine Lippert, of the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency says: “DataCatalogs.org is a brilliant guide to keeping track of all the data that is being opened up around the world. In addition to our own national data catalogue, we can now point data re-users to DataCatalogs.org to locate data resources abroad.”
Andrew Stott, former Director of Digital Engagement at the UK’s Cabinet Office says: “This initiative will not only help data users find data in different jurisdictions but also help those implementing data catalogues to find good practice to emulate elsewhere in the world.”

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[1]A full list is available in the ‘Notes to Editors’ below, and at: http://datacatalogs.org/about

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The Open Knowledge Foundation (okfn.org) is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2004. It has played a significant role in supporting open data around the world, particularly in Europe, and helps to run the UK’s national data catalogue, data.gov.uk.
DataCatalogs.org is being launched at the Open Knowledge Foundation’s annual conference, OKCon 2011 (okcon.org) which brings together developers, designers, civil servants, journalists and NGOS for a week of planning, coding and talks.
Stakeholders represented on the project include:

●    data.gov.uk (UK)

●    Web Foundation (US)

●    mySociety (UK)

●    data.gov.au (Australia)

●    Open Knowledge Foundation (UK/Germany)

●    Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties (Netherlands)

●    RPI (US)

●    CTIC (Spain)

●    Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management (Brazil)

●    Data.gov (US)

●    World Bank (International)

●    Canadian Government (Canada)

●    Sunlight Foundation (US)

●    National IT and Telecom Agency (Denmark)

●    European Commission (Europe)

●    Ministry of Government Administration and Reform (Norway)

●    Civic Commons (US)

●    W3C (International)

●    ICTU (Netherlands)

●    ePSIplatform (Europe)

Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation