Reflections from Bologna: CKAN and the Power of Community Data at csv,conf,v9
CKAN community members share insights from csv,conf,v9 in Bologna — exploring open data, community impact, and the power of digital public infrastructure.
As many of you know, a team from the University of Pittsburgh and datHere have been working to develop a plan to strengthen the CKAN ecosystem thanks to support from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program. For more context, read our previous article about Towards a Robust, Open-Source Civic Data Ecosystem.
The team has collaborated with members of the ecosystem to co-create a list of questions it is working to answer through its ecosystem discovery activities and has started to conduct interviews with people that play different roles in the ecosystem, including stewards, maintainers of the code base, code and documentation contributors, and people that install or manage CKAN implementations.
There are two ways to be involved in the ecosystem discovery work:
Once the ecosystem discovery phase is complete in late spring, the project team will invite members of the ecosystem to participate in sense-making activities that will help the team interpret what was learned through the ecosystem discovery process. Activities this summer will also capture your ideas for strengthening the ecosystem, which can be included in a Phase II proposal to the NSF (due on September 7).
CKAN community members share insights from csv,conf,v9 in Bologna — exploring open data, community impact, and the power of digital public infrastructure.
Spain co-chaired the 2025 OGP Summit with a focus on people, institutions, and technology. This article offers a systems-level view of open government, highlighting infrastructure challenges, policy signals, CKAN’s enabling role, and the themes shaping the future of transparency and participation.