Open Government Partnership should mark end to “transparency hypocrisy” 20 September 2011: With 46 countries gathering in New York today to launch the Open Government Partnership, Access Info Europe warned that the promises being made must be carefully monitored to prevent participating governments from using the process to give a false impression of their transparency credentials. “This initiative has the potential to promote higher standards of openness, in particular in the area of proactive publication of information, but care must be taken to ensure that it does not become a window-dressing exercise,” said Helen Darbishire, Executive Director of Access Info

What is open government data? Open government data is about getting access to information held by government bodies formats that anyone can use for any purpose. To qualify as “open”, it must be possible for the data to come in formats which allows it to be freely copied, shared, combined with other material, or republished as part of websites which allow users to explore, analyze, visually represent, or comment on the material, as well as transform it into other formats. Examples of the datasets held by governments which can, potentially, be opened up range from national statistics to budgetary information,

Access Info Europe in the jury of the Open Data Challenge Access info Europe will be part of the jury that decides the winners of this year’s Open Data Challenge. The OD Challenge is a competition on how to reuse European public data for building new useful applications. This competition is organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation and is taking place until the 5th of June and the winners will be announced at the European Digital Assembly in Brussels that will take place on the 16th and 17 of June. For further information on this completion please check the official

Looking for data and ideas for Visualizar'11 Access Info Europe is helping the information designers secure access to data that will be used as part of the “Visualizar’11” a two-week programme on data vizualization. Organised at Medialab Prado Madrid , Visualizar is a participative research and knowledge –exchange process on the theories  and strategies for visualizing  information. The Vizualizar project depends on information designers having access to data bases. Access Info Europe will give participants guidance on accessing data bases from public bodies and will monitor levels of access. This year Visualizar is devoted to Understanding Infrastructures. The call for

Ten Open Data Guidelines launched in Tbilisi Access Info Europe welcome the publication this week of the Ten Open Data Guidelines drafted by TI Georgia, in consultation with Access Info Europe. These guidelines are designed as a guide to help agency heads, IT managers, and web developers create open data websites. The guidelines provide details of how these are to be achieved. They provide a useful structure which Access Info recommends as a model for the elaboration of similar principles in other countries and at an international level.

Barcamp: Data Journalism Pro Bono Publico and Access Info Europe are organising a Barcamp about Data Journalism on Tuesday the 15th of february at 17:00 in MediaLab Madrid (Plaza de las Letras. C/ Alameda, 15, 28014 Madrid – Metro and Train Station: Atocha). The disclosure of public data (public databases and other collectives) raises the questions “who is going to process this data so that citizens can use it?” and “who is going to extract the stories that arise from the combination and comparison of various data sources.