As we say goodbye to 2022 and look ahead to 2023, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on Link Digital’s accomplishments over the past year and, with immense gratitude, give thanks to the amazing clients, staff and CKAN community members who have continued to define this company’s purpose. Thank you!

This year we celebrated our 20th year anniversary and continued to grow with new people, new projects and expanding opportunities. Our team of digital engineers implemented open data solutions for clients around the globe, helping to create meaningful change with open data. 

As we move into 2023, we remain committed to our mission and look forward to continued growth and success.

Here are just a few of our favourite Link Digital moments from 2022:

CKAN Stewardship

Link Digital funded Alex Gostev to provide additional care for one of the key foundations on which our company stands – CKAN. Throughout this year, Alex conducted global user research by interviewing across 17 countries, made three presentations around product strategy, delivered frequent reports to the CKAN community and held more than 30 open-office meetings with our executive director and CKAN project co-steward, Steven De Costa. Alex has become an active contributor within the CKAN project, facilitating an ongoing product discussion where every community member will be heard. 

Link Digital is proud to have brought Alex into the CKAN community and we wholeheartedly support his commitment to nurturing and improving CKAN. 

Furthermore, Brett Jones, our Germany-based DevOps engineer became the second of our team members to be appointed as a core technical team member of the CKAN project, after providing long-term technical support to the community. Great work, Brett!

Our Staff

New hires

In 2022 Link Digital expanded at a significant rate. In the past 12 months we’ve added five new roles (including a marketing manager, human resource manager and a new CEO), enabling quicker development of our products, systems and services for both our long-term and recently on-boarded clients.

Our Impact

We’re excited to have returned to in-person events this year, exhibiting at great conferences like Digital NSW, IXSummit, and Innovate Australia. Link Digital received excellent customer feedback from attending these events, and we’re eager to keep up the momentum in 2023.

In November, Steven De Costa delivered three presentations for the Canadian Open Data Summit. These covered CKAN 101, the state of open data in Australia and varied case studies to inspire best-practice implementations of CKAN.

This year we were excited to sponsor the Pacific #DataViz Challenge 2022. The competition sought to inspire entrants to bring the power of data visualisation to life. We sponsored the winning prize of 1,000 Euro this year and would like to congratulate Artème Pointel from New Caledonia for their winning entry.

Throughout the entire year, our product owners have worked across the globe to understand, envision and deliver solutions for our clients. As a virtual team we’ve run many of our workshops and working ceremonies via video calls, so it was something of a treat for Iaroslav Pereiaslovets to attend a significant customer-led workshop in London this month. After a successful series of workshops, the backlog development and release planning for 2023 work is well underway.

Awards 

In August, we were named a finalist for the Australia-wide Innovation award in the 2022 #ARN Innovation Awards. This award recognises our team’s dedication to providing market-leading technology consulting and implementation services. We are proud to be recognised as an industry leader and will continue striving to provide innovative solutions for our clients.

Recognition

This year, we joined up as corporate members of The Open Data Institute (ODI) – a network of organisations and individuals committed to solving similar challenges and staying up to date with data policy, news, events and innovations.

We’re proud to be an important voice in championing open data practices and were fortunate enough to have our work profiled by ODI this year.  We’re grateful to have been recognised by ODI as an important voice in the open data movement. Our innovative work aligns with our mission, and it’s great to see it being shared on their website for the wider open data community. 

Projects

We’re proud to have worked on some amazing projects that have made a real difference this year. Our strong relationships with clients and government agencies have been key to our success in 2022.

Some the fantastic projects from the past year include CKAN portals for customers from Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific, Europe and North America. We now support seven portals in NSW alone, 5 State-level portals across Australia and over 50 CKAN environments worldwide.

It is not just government organisations that benefit from our services. This year Link Digital worked with an increasing number of Universities and Non Profit organisations on their public data programs.

The Canadian Watershed Information Network was a stand-out project this year.  Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing our planet today and Link Digital is proud to have been involved in a project that aims to help people become better informed about this complex challenge and make informed decisions to protect our environment.

The Canadian Consortium for Arctic Data Interoperability (CCADI) data provides insights into how climate change affects different areas of our globe, what data gaps exist, and how we can manage human activities to minimise harm to ecosystems. This information is vital for developing effective policies to combat climate change. 

We are excited to have played a role in this important project!

Link Digital’s Ukrainian team

Since 2013, our company has operated with a highly skilled development team in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Since the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve worked hard to support them. We are extremely grateful for our Ukrainian employees’ ongoing courage, resilience and inspiring spirit. If you would like to share your own support with Ukraine then United24 is a great place to do that.

Farewell to our General Manager 

We’re excited to announce that our General Manager, Angela Hulford, will be going on maternity leave on December 23, 2022.  Today!

Angela has been with Link Digital for 12 years and has been instrumental in Link Digital’s growth during that time, assuming many different roles across multiple departments throughout the organisation. She’ll be much missed — but wow, what incredible news! 

We don’t need to miss her for long, though — we will have Angela return in  January 2024 as our new Head of Finance! Until then, we wish her a healthy and happy pregnancy, 

Angela — congratulations again. Thanks for everything!

As we look back on 2022, it’s clear to see how far we’ve come and what we’re capable of achieving. As we enter into 2023, we’ll do so with determination and enthusiasm for all that lies ahead. Here’s to a great year full of possibilities!

“It has been an honour to join the Link Digital team this year. Link Digital is not only strong but also very aware and resilient in the face of challenges. The commitment to create meaningful change will continue to propel us forward, thanks to our amazing team members.

2023 is going to be an incredible year for Link Digital.”–  Marc Evans, CEO of Link Digital