User:Nikesh balami/sandbox

Open Knowledge Nepal (OKN) is a non-profit civic tech organization comprised of openness aficionados. OKN believe that openness of data is powerful in order to have a participatory government with civil society, eventually leading to sustainable development. The organization has been involved in research, advocacy, training, workshops and developing tools related to open knowledge. OKN also provides data services and solutions to various agencies and specialized in solving data related problems through consultation and tools development. OKN want to make sure that everyone in Nepal has free and open access to the key information, empowering themselves to be able to make decisions about their own lives based on the information that wasn’t available before. Open Knowledge Nepal has been a local chapter of Open Knowledge Foundation since February 2013.

Vision
OKN seek a world in which open knowledge is ubiquitous and routine – both online and offline. OKN promote open knowledge because of its potential to deliver far-reaching societal benefits which include the following :


 * Better governance: openness improves governance through increased transparency and engagement.
 * Better culture: openness means greater access, sharing and participation in relation to cultural material and activities.
 * Better research: for research to function effectively, and for society to reap the full benefits from research activities, research outputs should be open.
 * Better economy: openness permits easier and more rapid reuse of material and open data and content are the key raw ingredients for the development of new innovative tools and services.

Impact
Open Knowledge Nepal has played a pioneering role in creating and driving forward open data and open knowledge in Nepal. OKN has encouraged and supported governments, civil societies and researchers to make their data open. OKN has empowered people the use, benefit, and impact 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.

Some of the highlights includes
 * OKN has been regularly organizing International events like Open Data Day, Software Freedom Day, Education Freedom Day, Document Freedom Day etc in Nepal.
 * OKN has 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, OKN localized Open Definition and Open Data Handbook in the Nepali language.
 * OKN has developed Open Data Curriculum and Open Data Manual as a reference and recommended guide for university students, private sectors, and civil society.
 * OKN has 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.
 * OKN has built 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.
 * OKN developed Election Nepal Portal – a crowdsourced citizen engagement portal that includes the local elections data.
 * OKN 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.
 * OKN has been regularly contributing to the 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.