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The Pioneer ov Simplified Speling, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1912)

- January 31, 2017 in english spelling, language, spelling, spelling reform

The inaugural issue of the official journal of the Simplified Speling Soesiety, a group of passionate spelling reformists active in early 20th-century Britain, who boasted George Bernard Shaw amongst their members.

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The Pioneer ov Simplified Speling, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1912)

- January 31, 2017 in english spelling, language, spelling, spelling reform

The inaugural issue of the official journal of the Simplified Speling Soesiety, a group of passionate spelling reformists active in early 20th-century Britain, who boasted George Bernard Shaw amongst their members.

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The Pioneer ov Simplified Speling, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1912)

- January 31, 2017 in english spelling, language, spelling, spelling reform

The inaugural issue of the official journal of the Simplified Speling Soesiety, a group of passionate spelling reformists active in early 20th-century Britain, who boasted George Bernard Shaw amongst their members.

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Open State Foundation Netherlands wins OGP 2016 award for work to advance fiscal transparency through OpenSpending

- January 31, 2017 in Open Spending

Open State Foundation is a non-profit based in the Netherlands, working on digital transparency by opening up public information as open data and making it accessible for re-use. Last December, the organization received one of the seven Open Government Partnership 2016 Awards for its work on OpenSpending at the OGP Global Summit in Paris, France. The awards celebrated civil society initiatives that are using government data to bring concrete benefits. This blog post describes Open State Foundation’s work on advancing fiscal transparency through OpenSpending. The financial crisis and various budget cuts in the Netherlands caused more than ever before the need for citizens to gain real-time access to financial data of all local and regional governments. Civil servants, journalists and citizens alike need data on budgets and spending to hold their own local governments to account. Two years ago, Open State Foundation sat down with some civil servants of the Central District of the City of Amsterdam. We discovered that each quarter they were obliged to send an Excel file with financial data on budgets and spending to the Central Bureau of Statistics. We decided to ask for the same Excel file from all districts of the city of Amsterdam and built a website to visualise the data and make comparison possible. Each district could compare not only its own budget with the actual spending but also could compare that with the other districts. We build a tool to show what unlocking all local government financial data would look like.

Image credit: Amsterdam Canal by Lies Thru a Lens CC BY 2.0

Open State Foundation decided then to approach all local governments ourselves and ask each of them for the data. It was a great opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of open data not only for society but also for the local governments themselves. We thought the easiest thing to do was now to approach the Central Bureau of Statistics and ask for all the files of all local governments. However, we were told that they were not allowed to do this. Each of the 400 municipalities, 12 provinces, 24 water boards and a couple of hundred common arrangements decided on their own in what form they present their financial records to their own citizens. It was the decision of the local governments themselves whether the data could be open or not. We built a template for local advocacy and started by asking civil servants first. We asked for the data and if they declined our request, we then approached the alderman. And if the alderman rejected our request, we approached the municipal council. Sometimes with the help of local journalists. And so, in various municipalities council members raised questions and even resolutions were tabled. Within a year, using this approach, we managed to gain access to financial data of more than 200 local governments in the Netherlands, collecting thousands of files, containing millions of data points. We then approached the Central Bureau of Statistics again. Now, together with the Ministry of Interior, that supported our mission. We could show that there was a huge number of cities and towns that were willing to share their financial information with anyone. And so, not much later, the Central Bureau of Statistics sent out a memorandum to all local and regional governments in the Netherlands, that by the end of that year, all budget and spending of all local governments, regional authorities would be released as open data. Not only was the data released historically, but from that moment, the data was published each quarter in a sustainable manner. The result was not only that data was released historically but also sustainably, by releasing the data every quarter. Municipal council members can now hold their local government to account throughout the year. Civil servants can easily benchmark the financial performance of their own city and create their own benchmarks, something that they in the past spent a lot of money on. Journalists use the tool to see how their local governments are performing. Citizens are now able to challenge the government by showing that they could do things better and reduce costs. Eventually, this success depended on the right approach to trigger various local governments. With a strong community and a mix of technical and political knowledge, everyone should be able to hold power to account. By now, a number of cities are providing data as deep as transaction level. At the moment, Open State Foundation is working with a number of local governments to dive in deeper levels of detail and to make it possible to scale this up. Together with the process to unlock local council data on minutes and decisions we want to continue working towards connecting spending to decisions made.

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Open State Foundation Netherlands wins OGP 2016 award for work to advance fiscal transparency through OpenSpending

- January 31, 2017 in Open Spending

Open State Foundation is a non-profit based in the Netherlands, working on digital transparency by opening up public information as open data and making it accessible for re-use. Last December, the organization received one of the seven Open Government Partnership 2016 Awards for its work on OpenSpending at the OGP Global Summit in Paris, France. The awards celebrated civil society initiatives that are using government data to bring concrete benefits. This blog post describes Open State Foundation’s work on advancing fiscal transparency through OpenSpending. The financial crisis and various budget cuts in the Netherlands caused more than ever before the need for citizens to gain real-time access to financial data of all local and regional governments. Civil servants, journalists and citizens alike need data on budgets and spending to hold their own local governments to account. Two years ago, Open State Foundation sat down with some civil servants of the Central District of the City of Amsterdam. We discovered that each quarter they were obliged to send an Excel file with financial data on budgets and spending to the Central Bureau of Statistics. We decided to ask for the same Excel file from all districts of the city of Amsterdam and built a website to visualise the data and make comparison possible. Each district could compare not only its own budget with the actual spending but also could compare that with the other districts. We build a tool to show what unlocking all local government financial data would look like.

Image credit: Amsterdam Canal by Lies Thru a Lens CC BY 2.0

Open State Foundation decided then to approach all local governments ourselves and ask each of them for the data. It was a great opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of open data not only for society but also for the local governments themselves.We thought the easiest thing to do was now to approach the Central Bureau of Statistics and ask for all the files of all local governments. However, we were told that they were not allowed to do this. Each of the 400 municipalities, 12 provinces, 24 water boards and a couple of hundred common arrangements decided on their own in what form they present their financial records to their own citizens. It was the decision of the local governments themselves whether the data could be open or not. We built a template for local advocacy and started by asking civil servants first. We asked for the data and if they declined our request, we then approached the alderman. And if the alderman rejected our request, we approached the municipal council. Sometimes with the help of local journalists. And so, in various municipalities council members raised questions and even resolutions were tabled. Within a year, using this approach, we managed to gain access to financial data of more than 200 local governments in the Netherlands, collecting thousands of files, containing millions of data points. We then approached the Central Bureau of Statistics again. Now, together with the Ministry of Interior, that supported our mission. We could show that there was a huge number of cities and towns that were willing to share their financial information with anyone. And so, not much later, the Central Bureau of Statistics sent out a memorandum to all local and regional governments in the Netherlands, that by the end of that year, all budget and spending of all local governments, regional authorities would be released as open data. Not only was the data released historically, but from that moment, the data was published each quarter in a sustainable manner. The result was not only that data was released historically but also sustainably, by releasing the data every quarter. Municipal council members can now hold their local government to account throughout the year. Civil servants can easily benchmark the financial performance of their own city and create their own benchmarks, something that they in the past spent a lot of money on. Journalists use the tool to see how their local governments are performing. Citizens are now able to challenge the government by showing that they could do things better and reduce costs. Eventually, this success depended on the right approach to trigger various local governments. With a strong community and a mix of technical and political knowledge, everyone should be able to hold power to account. By now, a number of cities are providing data as deep as transaction level. At the moment, Open State Foundation is working with a number of local governments to dive in deeper levels of detail and to make it possible to scale this up. Together with the process to unlock local council data on minutes and decisions we want to continue working towards connecting spending to decisions made.

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Freies Wissen in der Wikipedia

- January 30, 2017 in Uncategorized

Du interessiert dich für Open Everything? Open Data, Open Government, offene Kulturdaten, Informationsfreiheit und weitere? Dann komm zu unserem Editathon am 18. Februar, um diese Themen in der Wikipedia besser darzustellen! Wer kann dabei sein? Jede und jeder, der/die sich gerne mit diesen Themen beschäftigt und diese gerne zur Verbesserung der Wikipedia einbauen würde. So können wir beispielsweise Ergebnisse von Open Data Projekten als Belege in der Wikipedia anführen, um diese noch fundierter zu gestalten. Was ist ein Editathon? Der Begriff “Editathon” setzt sich zusammen aus dem Begriff “editieren”, also bearbeiten, und “Marathon”. Es kommen also Leute zusammen, die sich darauf stürzen die Wikipedia gemeinsam zu unterstützen und zu bearbeiten. Wann und wo findet der Editathon statt? Am Samstag, den 18.02.2017, von 12 bis 16 Uhr im Büro der Wikimedia Deutschland (Tempelhofer Ufer 23/24, 10963 Berlin). Ihr kommt von außerhalb Berlins und wollt extra anreisen? Kein Problem! Meldet euch bei community@wikimedia.de damit die Reisekosten übernommen werden. Was wird passieren? Zuerst gibt es noch mal einen kleinen Einführungsworkshop dazu, wie man die Wikipedia richtig bearbeitet. Und danach geht es auch schon los! Ihr habt noch Fragen? Wenn ihr noch etwas wissen wollt, kein Problem. Meldet euch einfach bei mir, Leonard Wolf per Mail (leonard.wolf@okfn.de) oder Telefon (+49 30 57703666 0). Wenn ihr dabei sein wollt, dann tragt euch gerne auf der entsprechenden Wikipediaseite dazu ein: 18.02. - Freies Wissen in der Wikipedia Foto: CC BY 2.0 Fotograf: Sebastiaan ter Burg

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Brazil’s Public Spending project is looking for leaders in various regions of Brazil to increase participation in the budgeting process.

- January 30, 2017 in network, OK Brazil, Open Spending

OK Brazil's public spending website

On the 11th of January, OK Brazil launched its new Public Spending website.

The website is part of a wider campaign to search, recruit and support new leaders that wish to work with transparency, mainly public spending, in Brazilian municipalities and is using OKI’s OpenSpending technical architecture. The support will be provided to mentors specializing in law, transparency, technology and open data. The goal here is to increase the transparency in budget execution, bidding process and contractual management of cities. In order that leaders can achieve concrete results, the OK Brazil team will develop a chronogram with each and everyone of them, using the existing legal framework, the support of mentors and digital tools to increase transparency and the participation in the budgeting process.

“The new website demonstrates how to organize the missions and actions of the new leaders, empower the civilian society so that they may be able to monitor public spending and give access to both academics and journalists to budgeting data of cities”, says Lucas Ansei, developer and one of the mentors of the new website.

According to Thiago Rondon, coordinator of the OK Brazil team, the mentors will have a fundamental role to the formation of the leaders. “They’re specialists with experience on the matter at hand and will support the leaders with online conferences that will offer directions so that the impact of the actions of these new leaders is meaningful.” Another goal of this new phase of the project is to reach out to city mayors all over the country with the intention to get them to both sign the Public Spending Brazil Commitment Letter and realize the concrete actions foreseen in the letter.

Be a leader of the Open Spending project in 2017

According to Thiago, there will be an initial agenda of action that functions like a step-by-step manual so that anyone can help to increase the transparency in the city where they reside. “We want to empower the people so that they may do that on their own. To potentialize the divulgation, we will have local leaders in pilot cities that will have a direct support from the OK Brazil.” Those who want to participate as a local leader of the Public Spending project can do so on the website. During this first phase,  the OK Brazil team will select 15 local leaders through answers offered via inscription form.

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Brazil’s Public Spending project searches for leaders in various regions of Brazil

- January 30, 2017 in Open Knowledge

On 11/01, OK Brazil launched its new Public Spending website with a campaign to search, recruit and support new leaders that wish to work with transparency, mainly public spending, in Brazilian municipalities.
The website is using OKI’s OpenSpending technical architecture.  The support will be realized with capacitation held by mentors specialized in law, transparency, technology and open data. The goal here is to increase the transparency in budget execution, bidding process and contractual management of cities. In order that leaders can achieve concrete results, the OK Brazil team will develop a chronogram with each and everyone of them, using the existing legal framework, the support of mentors and digital tools to increase transparency and the participation in the budgeting process. “The new website is demonstrates how to organize the missions and actions of the new leaders, empower the civilian society so that they may be able to monitor public spending and give access to both academics and journalists to budgeting data of cities”, says Lucas Ansei, developer and one of the mentors of the new website. According to Thiago Rondon, coordinator of the OK Brazil team, the mentors will have a fundamental role to the formation of the leaders. “They’re specialists with experience on the matter at hand and will support the leaders with online conferences that will offer directions so that the impact of the actions of these new leaders is meaningful.”. Another goal of this new phase of the project is to reach out to city mayors all over the country with the intention to get them to both sign the Public Spending Brazil Commitment Letter and realize the concrete actions foreseen in the letter. Be a leader of the Open Spending project in 2017 According to Thiago, there will be an initial agenda of action that functions like a step-by-step manual so that anyone can help to increase the transparency in the city where they reside. “We want to empower the people so that they may do that on their own. To potentialize the divulgation, we will have local leaders in pilot cities that will have a direct support from the OK Brazil.” Those who want to participate as a local leader of the Public Spending project can do so in the website between the 11th and 30th of January. During this first phase,  the OK Brazil team will select 15 local leaders through answers offered via inscription form.

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Miniatures from a 12th-century Medical and Herbal Collection

- January 26, 2017 in flora, herbal, herbals, medicine, plants

Wonderful series of miniatures from a late 12th-century herbal with delightfully abstract depictions of plants including Cannabis), and a variety of medieval medical procedures, such as cauterization and the removal of haemorrhoids.

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Miniatures from a 12th-century Medical and Herbal Collection

- January 26, 2017 in flora, herbal, herbals, medicine, plants

Wonderful series of miniatures from a late 12th-century herbal with delightfully abstract depictions of plants including Cannabis), and a variety of medieval medical procedures, such as cauterization and the removal of haemorrhoids.

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