Open Knowledge Foundation Greece

Open Knowledge Foundation Greece – OKFGR (2nd Project Partner) is the official Greek chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation. OKFGR is a nonprofit organization that has been established by a group of professors and developers and it is supported by a network of volunteers most of which are experienced professionals in the fields of Computer Science, Mathematics, Medicine and Journalism. The major principle of the organization is to disseminate open knowledge and promote the use and positive impact of open data. Therefore, OKFGR supports communities of diverse scientific disciplines and individuals with interests in both open data and the broader concept of open science. Moreover, the organization has organized and participated in many events, including workshops, seminars, webinars, conferences, lectures and plenty of hackathons. The “School of Data” is a remarkable one; empowering civil society organizations, academic researchers, journalists and citizens to use data effectively in their efforts to create more equitable and effective societies.

OKFGR has successfully collaborated with many public administrations in Greece towards strengthening and fostering open governance and open data, through national and international projects, as well as educational activities related to open access or the provision of technological know-how in developing core data infrastructure tools. A lot of initiatives regarding open data policies in Greece have been promoted by OKFGR. The organization has been a major contributor to the Municipality of Thessaloniki Digital Strategy 2017-2030 as an editorial member. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)-application developed by the team of OKFGR has been included in the Municipality of Thessaloniki website to provide deeper information about the fiscal data of the municipality. OKFGR has also provided technical support for the Thessaloniki Risk Data Portal, a cooperation project between the Municipality of Thessaloniki and the World Bank. Moreover, three commitments of the OKFGR have been incorporated in the Greek National Action Plan on Open Government.

The team of OKFGR has extensive experience and expertise in Linked Open Data and Semantic Web Technologies, Data Mining, Data Analysis and Data Modelling. The track record includes the first Greek Linked Open Data Cloud and the implementation of the Greek DBpedia; creating the Internationalized Extraction Framework, which also led to the establishment of the DBpedia Internationalization Committee. Many Greek Linked Open Data datasets and the Greek Open Data Hub, the central repository of the Greek Open datasets, have also been created by the team of OKFGR. The organization has participated in several relevant projects, such as the OpenBudgets.eu, a project that delivers detailed overview of public budget and spending data by using related tools, and thus serving advocacy and fiscal transparency objectives.