Our warm festive greetings to all friends of Open Knowledge – For the last two years we have been advocating that for open data to make a difference in lives of people it has to be put in use. Open data must be seen as a digital public infrastructure. It must be permanent, linkable and trustful. In the last year we organised and participated in events, tried out new technologies and demonstrated usefulness of open data. Here are some things we did in 2016 to spread this message.   In January, in collaboration with Wikimedia Ireland, we discussed how open health data can save lives and help all of us to make better-informed decisions about health matters. Featured speakers:

• Caroline Carswell, founder of Sound Advice
• Adrian Corcoran, Open Knowledge Ireland Project Lead 
• Richard Corbridge, CIO for the Health Service Ireland

Round Up Our Slides   In March  Open Government Partnership Mid-term report on the progress with National Action Plan was launched.  In May we presented Hospital Waiting List project and spoke about importance of preservation of open knowledge for future generations at Knowledge for Health conference  , organised by the Institute of Public Health    In June we held a discussion dedicated to preservation of knowledge created today for generations of the future. Speakers and panelists included:

• Dr. Rufus Pollock, founder of Open Knowledge International
• Stanislav Nazarenko, Open Knowledge Ireland core team member and the founder of Nihonto Club, an online community dedicated to appreciation and preservation of Japanese swords and the largest public database of Japanese metalwork artists
• Dr. Kalpana Shankar, Head of School of Information and Communication Studies, University College Dublin

Photos   In July we were invited to the Isle of Man to share our open data experiences at  #offcamp unconference. We took this opportunity to highlight importance of trust in data. Photos   In September we contributed to the second Irish Open Government Partnership National Action Plan. Our submissions are here.    In October we co organised with the Institute of Public Health half-day workshop dedicated to “Open Access: Tackling Health Inequalities”. Best international practices and opportunities which arise from technological advances for making knowledge universally fair, accessible, interoperable and reusable were discussed.   In November our colleague Dr. Ingo Keck delivered a presentation on open data challenges and raised questions about open data sustainability at the event dedicated to the World Usability Day in Berlin.

“Open Data has to be seen in the context of empowering citizens to do informed decisions. Without information, citizen can not decide in an informed way who to vote for, so democracy can not work without open information. But open data is not a cause in itself. It also means that people must be able to understand the data easily, be able to access it without problems and can work with it. Only then people will realise the importance of open data and only then will „opening up“ data be sustainable. Open Data, Usability and Sustainability therefore can not be separated.”

What we are planning to do in 2017? We are going to focus on Healthcare data and planning to run 4 events with support of  DPER’s Open Data Engagement plan and continue to demonstrate….. We have a long to go until Open Data will become a digital public infrastructure: permanent, linked and secure. This infrastructure needs to be designed, built and maintained, which require human and financial resources. Open data must be findable, accessible, interoperable and findable in order to help a real person to make decisions on daily basis. ———– Many thanks to Open Knowledge Ireland colleagues: Flora, Salua, Ingo, Adrian, Shawn, Stan, Eugene and Denis Special Thanks to all supporters and collaborators: TCube, the Science Gallery We wish you happy Christmas and the very best in 2017!