Open Knowledge Belgium (OKBE) is a non-profit organisation, whose mission is to open up knowledge in Belgium for it to be used and useful. To be open, knowledge should be free to access, use, modify, and share, and it also needs open data as the building blocks. As part of the ODECO project, Liubov Pilshchikova (TU Delft) began a secondment at Open Knowledge Belgium in October 2022.

Liubov’s research focuses on open data, and how non-profit organisations can decrease the barriers to using open data that users face. For example, OKBE performs different activities as part of its projects, such as aggregating open data, making them easier for users to find and overcome the findability barrier. Another important activity is the organisation of campaigns and talks with governmental organisations to open up the data, so the users can access the data they need and overcome the accessibility barrier.

Through interviews and document analysis of the activities that OKBE performs with open data, Liubov will get an insight into what barriers for open data users non-profit organisations can identify, and how they may influence these barriers through their projects.