Open Data Services Co-operative joins as Django Girls Global Partner

Django Girls is excited to have yet another great organisation join as global partner, Open Data Services Co-operative!

Open Data Services Co-operative is a workers co-operative, founded in 2015 to support individuals and organisations to publish and use open data effectively. Their team includes researchers, analysts and developers, allowing them to offer support across all aspects of an open data project - from design and development, to software builds, training, and ongoing support.

Open Data Services Co-operative are leaders in the field of open data standards. Their ongoing projects include:

• Managing the technical infrastructure, data standard and global helpdesk for the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS), a major anti-corruption initiative used by more than 30 countries and cities around the world.
  
• Providing technical and data standards support to 360Giving, an organisation that has helped trusts and foundations publish details of over a quarter of a million grants in the UK in line with the 360Giving Standard.
  
• Extending the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard to support collaboration amongst agricultural development funders with the Open Ag Funding project, and providing support to numerous organisations publishing aid data to the IATI standard.
  
• Building the new Beneficial Ownership Data Standard alongside OpenOwnership, a project that aims for transparency and accountability in the corporate sector by linking firms with their true owners.
  
• The creation of a platform to transform and validate data-sets across multiple data standards: CoVE (Convert, Validate Explore).

The majority of Open Data Services Co-operative work takes place through long-term partnerships, working alongside social-sector organisations to develop and sustain open data platforms, products and services. Throughout this, they aim to build the capacity of their partners, avoiding dependency, and focusing instead on creating space for continual development and innovation.

They are committed to working with open source software, supporting community engagement in projects, and finding synergies between the different projects they work on. Principle 7 of the co-operative movement is ‘concern for the community’ and, as part of this, Open Data Services maintain a budget for donations to community causes. They are delighted to be able to help Django Girls with their mission to design resources with empathy and make technology a more welcoming place for women. We are so excited to have them on board.

Thank you Open Data Services Co-operative <3!