Once again, it's a time to reflect and share our accomplishments at Link Digital over the last twelve months. 2024 has seen us continue a wonderful journey in creating impact, marked by new clients, significant company milestones, and a continued commitment to driving change in data management for governments, the not-for-profit and research sectors, and business.

This blog post was co-authored by Andrew Nette, Link Digital’s technical writer, researcher and analyst.

As has been the case since the company was founded as Link Web Services at the end of the dot-com bubble in 2001 and renamed Link Digital in 2004, this is not just about what we have done. It’s about the events we have taken part in and the networks, communities, and clients that we have the pleasure of working with in Australia and internationally.
Here are four milestones that we think made 2024 another exciting and noteworthy year for us and the community.

Go to a specific topic:

Global clients

Core to everything Link Digital does is our commitment to providing high-quality tailored solutions to meet the needs of clients. This year we continued to work for a broad range of clients, from governments to not-for-profits and academic institutions. 

Among our international projects was ongoing work for the Pacific Community, the principal scientific and technical organisation supporting development in the Pacific region. We also collaborated with long-term partner Living Lakes Canada on the development and implementation of a customised extension to improve the data visualisation capabilities of their award-winning Columbia Basin Water Hub. The Hub is helping researchers and policymakers interpret environmental data more effectively and is empowering them with better tools for data-driven decision-making in support of ongoing conservation efforts.

In Australia, we finalised the website for the new Vehicle Emissions Star Rating (VESR). A New South Wales program endorsed by the Commonwealth Government and all states and territories, the VESR website is designed to assist Australian consumers to factor in the environmental impact when planning their next vehicle purchase. We worked with the NSW Government on several other projects: an internal asset register that now services two state government departments, the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure and Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water; the highly innovative Data4Me project, an internal-facing data portal designed to identify and smooth over the pain points that occur over the workflow involved in using data; and the ongoing revamp of the Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data (SEED) portal. SEED added a multi-hub service with the launch of several integrated themed hub environments, and Link Digital worked to add the Koala Hub. This involved integrating the abilities of CKAN –  the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network – with advanced data management features, enabling improved data-sharing functionalities and cross-sector collaboration for development projects.

In addition to our existing customers, going into 2025 we are excited to add several large international clients, including a new Canada-based project, a leading European educational institution, and a major multilateral agency.

Empowering open data communities globally

It has been another big year for CKAN and for Link Digital’s role as one of its co-stewards. With a dedicated team of experts, Link Digital continued to play a major role in the CKAN ecosystem by providing solutions for open data portals worldwide. But Link Digital’s role in relation to CKAN is not only about data as a driver of economic value. We also strive to continue to help build and strengthen the community of like-minded people interested in open data and stay up to date with the latest developments in the field. The growth of CKAN and its community, and the software’s increasingly important role as a form of digital public infrastructure, informed two announcements by Link Digital in 2024.

First, in May, Link Digital announced a substantial investment to fund several new roles targeted at enhancing CKAN’s core capabilities. These new roles, in addition to our current support for the software, focused on:

  • Support for CKAN to improve interoperability with Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) 3, the global standard for making data catalogs interoperable.
  • Providing a better user experience and enhanced file management.

These capabilities also align with improvements as part of the release of the next version of CKAN, known as v3.0, and are very much aimed at helping smaller and less resourced users to get more out of CKAN’s out of the box experience. 

Second, are ambitious changes to Link Digital’s operations, announced by founder and Chairman, Steven De Costa. These include the transition to a different operating model and the establishment of a public beneficiary fund that would sit above Link Digital’s commercial entity. This fund aims to supplement government funding for civic tech initiatives involving digital public goods, collaborative governance, and public code globally. You can read more about these future plans here.

Secure Data Exchange 

Another highlight of 2024 was the successful rollout of Secure Data Exchange (SDE) as part of starting a broader conversation on the topic of how to securely exchange data using CKAN and Drupal, a content management system used to build and manage websites. A new capability to help data custodians in large organisations exchange data in a completely secure manner across their domain, SDE comes from our understanding of the challenges involving collaboration, regulatory compliance, accountability, and the safeguarding of sensitive data. It is also part of a broader trend in which the public governance achieved through open data and transparency fosters greater trust among individuals and institutions.

SDE is a powerful, flexible, and easy to use approach for data custodians to manage the complete lifecycle of their data across multiple departments, organisational branches, and internal and external users, in a completely controlled access environment. It offers structured data sharing, a streamlined and easy-to-use and to interpret dashboard where they can view all data requests, their status (pending, final approval, ended), and all data sharing agreements. This includes the ability to revoke approval to use data, and a customized metadata scheme.

SDE won’t solve all the problems facing data custodians in government and other large organisations. But it can assist large organisations to develop the innovative solutions they require to simplify complex data sharing and delivery across their operations. You can learn more about SDE here.

Thought leadership

2024 saw Link Digital continue to amplify our voice in open source and open data forums. 

At the State of Open Con, Link Digital’s Chief Technology Officer, Paul Walsh, presented at a high profile panel on reimagining open data portals, which has led to Paul being involved in an exciting research project related to the topic.

International open data week is celebrated globally, in person and virtually. Link Digital experts participated in this through the CKAN Demo Days. These allowed contributors from diverse backgrounds to share stories, projects, and insights about CKAN. The full playlist is available here. 

Our expertise was on display at the Canadian Open Data Society’s Canadian Open Data Summit, where representatives from our Canadian office presented on the new SDE capability and contributed to critical discussions on CKAN and open data. 

In November, Link Digital’s Spain-based Senior Solutions Architect, Adrià Mercader, participated in a panel at the annual conference of CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure), a network of mostly European research centres specialising in language research to support humanities and social science. Adrià discussed the challenges and lessons of building bridges between CKAN and the private sector.

And the provision of resources for the CKAN community continued to be a core part of our work. Earlier this year, we launched Tuesday Tutorials presented by one of our global team of CKAN experts, Sergey Motornyuk. The videos are in Russian, but you can easily install an add-on for English translation. Also popular was a series of articles on various aspects of CKAN by our DevOps Engineer Brett Jones. We also launched ’Tuesday Talks with Alex Gostev’, a video series designed to educate and inspire new audiences and strengthen our position as a CKAN expert.

Looking Ahead to 2025

As we look toward the new year, our vision remains the same: to empower organisations with open-source solutions that make data management accessible, secure, and impactful. 

Our mission to create meaningful change also remains the same. This won’t happen overnight; it will continue as we believe in our team, clients, and community. None of this would have been possible without the dedication of the people involved.

Here’s to a successful 2024 and an even brighter 2025. Thank you for being part of our journey.