Everything Open 2025: The balance between open and trust

Hopepunk is about ‘fighting for positive change, radical kindness, and communal responses to challenges’. Coined by Nicola Nye at Everything Open (EO2025)(external link), hopepunk describes the kaupapa of the conference. Everything Open focuses on open technologies, including Linux, open source software, open hardware and open data, and their communities. The conference provided a unique opportunity for Catalyst team members Aleisha Amohia, Rōpū kohinga technical lead, and Don Christie, managing director, to connect with the open source community. 

Open knowledge also has important applications in policy and decision-making. Emma Davidson shared lessons learned as a former Australian Capital Territory Minister, including a justice reinvestment approach to community safety. This approach depends on having better datasets to inform evidence-driven policy. “We end up with fragmented decision-making because we can’t quantify gaps in our services and the impacts of that, so the Government can’t fund it”.

“Libraries do ‘open’ really well”, Sae Ra Germaine stated in her presentation discussing digital exclusion. Sae Ra described libraries as a bridge to society for key information and services that are responsive to community needs. For example, Koha library management system is the world's most used library system and was developed to support libraries during the Y2K bug.

Academic institutions have been spearheads of all things ‘open’, as shown in a history of Openness in academia presented by Sarah Brundrett. Often, academic institutions (alongside libraries) formed coalitions promoting open access, open data, and open education. For example, SPARC(external link)'s(Advancing Open Access, Open Data, Open Education)' tagline is “Sharing knowledge is a human right”. Auckland University of Technology champions this belief and builds systems to ensure access to information is available to communities who need it. 

Listening to the speakers, Aleisha felt proud to champion open knowledge, support libraries, uphold Indigenous data ethics, and advance open education.

The tension that Open presents

Data

This information age is obsessed with data. Kathy Reid noted in her presentation, The Token Wars: Why not everything should be open that data has become a form of capital, driving business, policy, and innovation. But, the overwhelming desire for data, especially with the increasing interest in artificial intelligence (AI), is causing a quality crisis. The training data AI models use from the public web is laced with synthetic data or data generated by AI. Like photocopying a photocopy, each iteration of data processed through an AI model depletes quality, authenticity, and usefulness.

Other considerable risks Kathy mentioned in her presentation include:

• Nearly half of all web content is served by non-human actors (bots);
• Internet users are sabotaging content to poison AI models;
• Paywalls block both bots and humans from accessing web content;
• AI models re-colonise cultural data because non-human actors don’t have the emotional care for the relationships or context that knowledge holds. 

It’s increasingly important to be at events such as EO2025 and participate in these conversations. Those working in the GLAM sector and all technologists should be informed and prepared for how technology trends may influence how we think about and work with data. 

After the conference, Aleisha noted, “This is why it’s more important than ever to build technology solutions with care. We can ensure our solutions enable information to be both accessible and protected.”

Catalyst’s AI principles(external link) put humans at the fore, acknowledging the opportunity and the adverse impacts that AI system decisions may have on people.

When open source projects are guided by frameworks such as the one suggested by Justin, it supports their sustainability and credibility. Koha is the world’s most installed library system because the users contribute to the community, enabling the project to thrive. Ideas turn into features, and their grievances turn into fixes. The Koha project has sovereignty because it is governed by the collective rather than controlled by a single support vendor. User input is valued - every code change benefits the collective. For example, Rōpū kohinga recently contributed a set of enhancements to Koha that were co-sponsored by a number of partner libraries. Their collaboration streamlined the upload of their catalogues to Te Puna Search(external link), which is now standard functionality for all Koha installations. Open source projects like the Koha project are successful because of their guiding values, and the community that upholds them. 

Our relationships with technology are more intimate than they were in the past. Our lives are deeply intertwined with the internet – our devices and online accounts are essentially extensions of ourselves, and there are associated risks because of this. We don’t need to be fearful of technology, but we should be aware of the impact of our interactions with it. 

Rōpū kohinga supports organisations with consulting services and technology, enabling organisations to care for their collections in line with their values. Our team is happy to support data governance, cultural considerations, and technical requirements to support your goals. Contact us to chat about your goals.