Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s Open Data Institute celebrates open innovators worldwide

The Open Data Institute have announced the winners of its third annual Open Data Awards at the British Film Institute, London, honouring innovation and excellence in open data across the world.

Hosted by ODI CEO Jeni Tennison, 80 delegates convened to recognise today’s unsung open data champions, after receiving 200+ nominations from Brazil, Nigeria and New Zealand, to Burundi, Mexico, and Ukraine.

“The Open Data Awards are a brilliant opportunity to reflect on the enormous positive impact the open data movement has achieved.” said Tennison, CEO at the ODI.

“Whether it’s opening up data to help charities find funding or using open data to promote transparency in the oil industry, our winners represent the people and organisations on the frontline who are working tirelessly to ensure that the potential of open data is realised. Congratulations to both our award winners and nominees for their achievements – and thanks to our judges and team for reaching such a diverse set of leaders and innovators from around the world. “

As a pioneer of gender diversity within the tech industry, the ODI this year introduced a new ‘Women in Data’ award that recognises trailblazing women creating social, environmental or economic impact with open data.

2016 Open Data Award winners

Open Data Business Award winner: cMapIT is an open access platform providing tools for citizens to track public policy and governance in Nigeria. Using geospatial data and drone technology the platform has improved government leadership, triggered a Nigerian civic tech community, supported health and agriculture sectors, and is recognised as the most effective way to track government activity in Nigeria.

Open Data Publisher Award winner: Data Mill North, based in Leeds, is a UK–leading open data repository that publishes swathes of open data from all sectors in North England. Its use has led to new app development, analysis, websites and increased citizen engagement in the north.

Open Data Innovation Award winner: The Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) is an open data platform that convenes and shares a multitude of humanitarian data around the world. Since its beta launch in July 2014, over 200 organisations have shared 4000+ datasets with 220,000 users worldwide and is now recognised as the ‘go-to’ for crises data worldwide.

Open Data Social Impact Award winner: OpenOil has the largest open corporate document database for oil, mining and gas companies. Using this data, it provides governments, civil society organisations and businesses frameworks for understanding and analysing the extractive industries. Under its public interest financial modelling program, it uses open data to create financial models of oil, gas and mining projects, which enable better governance of natural resources.

Open Data Individual Champion Award winner: Giuseppe Sollazzo is known for his open data policy expertise, writing, advocacy and activism. He has worked as an Open Data User Group policy expert and is the co-founder of OpenDataCamp and UKHealthCamp. He was also named one of the JISC 50 Most influential higher education professionals on social media.

Women in Data Award winner: 360Giving is the first worldwide project that has created an open data standard for the notoriously opaque grant-making sector. Recently the female-led team launched Grantnav, a search tool for charities to see who is funding what, where and how much.

The ODI is a non-profit organisation that was co-founded in 2012 by the inventor of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee and AI expert Sir Nigel Shadbolt to address today’s global challenges using the web of data. It also boasts Lastminute.com founder Baroness Martha Lane Fox and former European Commissioner Neelie Kroes as board members.

Find out more about the ODI’s work here