The Opportunity and Challenge

Today, governments and corporations are using data to create knowledge about our world, and make decisions about our future. With the revolution and use of technology, the way we pursue the world is rapidly changing. Never before has so much data been collected and analysed. Never before have we had the ability to freely, easily and quickly share information across the globe. But who should control this data and the ability to find insights and make decisions? The many, or the few? This is a choice that we get to make. The future is up for grabs. Do we want to live in a world where access to knowledge is “closed”, and the power and understanding it brings is controlled by the few? Or, do we choose a world where knowledge is “open” and we are all empowered to make informed choices about our future? Here at Open Knowledge Nepal, we believe that knowledge should be open, and that everyone – citizens, scientists, entrepreneurs, activists – should have access to the information they need to understand and shape the world around them.

What We Have Achieved

Open Knowledge Nepal has played a pioneering role in creating and driving forward open data and open knowledge in Nepal. We have encouraged and supported governments, civil societies and researchers to make their data open. We have empowered people the use, benefits, and impacts of open data and turn it into insight and knowledge, giving people access to the information they need to understand and shape the world around them. Where people needed skills, we trained them. Where people needed tools, we made them. Where people needed support and leadership, we provided it.

Some highlights

• We have been regularly organizing International events like Open Data Day, Software Freedom Day, Education Freedom Day, Document Freedom Day etc here in Nepal.
• We had organized open data hackathons, datathons, data hacking hours to harness the power of civic technology to solve the problem faced by Nepal through the use of data.
• To help people understand the value of open data, we localized Open Definition and Open Data Handbook in Nepali language.
• We have developed Open Data Curriculum and Open Data Manual as a reference and recommended guide for university students, private sectors, and civil society.
• We had run open data awareness program, training, workshops to train more than 2000+ students, journalists, civil societies, government officers with the motive of building open data manpower for Nepal.
• We had build Open Data Nepal – a centralized open data portal with comprehensive features and can be used by thousands of users to publish, explore, download and use data to make their own visualisations, apps and services.
• We developed Election Nepal Portal – a crowdsourced citizen engagement portal that includes the local elections data.
• We build Local Boundaries which brings the detailed geodata of administrative units or maps of all administrative boundary defined by Nepal Government in open and reusable format with free of cost.
• We have been regularly contributing to Global Open Data Index and Open Data Barometer since the very beginning. We have also launched Local Open Data Index of Nepal in year 2015.