Day: June 13, 2025

It began as a meeting of many worlds. On May 29–30, government officials, civil society organizations, and academics from Mexico, Latin America, and the European Union gathered for “Reconfiguring Open Government: A New Era for Open Data in Mexico,” organised by Indico Global open call winner Ethos and the Agency for Digital Transformation and Telecommunications. The shared question was simple: how do we make open data not just available, but useful?

Standards, when done right, can reshape everyday life by making complex systems interoperable and efficient. A classic example is the shipping container, which replaced slow, manual loading with a universal format that transformed global trade. In 1956, trucking entrepreneur Malcolm McLean patented the first container structure after seeing the waste in manual cargo handling; proof that a standard is always a trade-off with prior practice. Today, the vast majority of non-bulk cargo travels in containers.