March 3 is Open Data Day, and groups all around the world will be using Open Data in their communities, to show its benefits and to encourage the sharing of more data from government, business and civil society.

Obviously, that depends on their having some good-quality data to work with — and we’d like to help make that happen. Or, more accurately, help you to help make that happen.

Just as with Global Legislative Open Week last October, we’ll support groups who would like to run a workshop, getting together with other like-minded people to improve the open political data available for your country in Wikidata.

Funding and support available

Thanks to the Wikimedia Foundation, we’re able to offer some support to individuals/groups who are interested in running Wikidata workshops during February. If you’d like to hold an event like this, it’s pretty simple: all you need is a space, and someone with some existing Wikidata skills who can show others how to add or improve data. Then you just have to pick a date, and put out the word for people to join you.

We can help with a few things, so let us know once you’ve decided to take part, and we’ll chat with you about what might be useful. Here’s what we can offer:

• A small amount of funding to help cover event costs
• In-person support during your event – we may be able to send one of our EveryPolitician/Wikidata team to your event to present, participate and advise
• A review of your country’s existing political information in Wikidata and some pointers about possible next steps
• Ideas for how you and your attendees can:
  a) Use the data for interesting research and projects, and
  b) Improve the data for future research queries/projects

Workshops can take place at any time until the end of February.

So, if you’d like to be part of this push to improve and use political information in Wikidata in order to contribute to the Democratic Commons, we’d be thrilled to hear from you. Please do get in touch: gemma@mysociety.org