Open Data Round Up: 30/08/13

I attended a briefing this week on the Open Data Challenge Series (formerly the Immersion Programme) which is being jointly run by The Open Data Institute and Nesta. As the programme is still fairly new the session was primarily an opportunity to introduce the three current themes (crime and justice, energy and environment, and midata) and to get people talking about how they might want to get involved. The Open Data Challenge Series intends not only to create impact – using open data to create innovative solutions to real world problems – but to increase awareness, use and availability of open data. It’s a really exciting programme and one I’m sure Horizon will be continuing to engage with as it develops.

Some other interesting snippets from around the open data world this week include:

• Laura James of the Open Knowledge Foundation has written a really interesting blog post on Open Data Privacy which discusses definitions for open, personal and anonymised data as well as calling for a set of privacy principles for Open Data
• Horizon Director and Connected Digital Economy Catapult CIO Derek Mcauley has also been talking about privacy, this time in relation to big data and distributed computing
• Ahead of OKCon in Geneva next month the Open Knowledge Foundation have produced a preview video for the conference which features a number of OKFN community members. The latest OKCon agenda is here.
• The latest Open Data Research Network newsletter includes a progress report on the Open Data in Developing Countries project as well as a good round up of recent research and upcoming events in the open data world

As you can see privacy remains a hot topic in the world of open data – something which I think is likely to continue to develop as more and more people become aware of the benefits and pitfalls of increased openness. It’s also an issue that continues to be contentious whenever the midata programme is discussed. What are your thoughts – are open and big data innovators doing enough to safeguard personal privacy?