Context engineering is the practice of making information an AI system needs explicit, structured, trustworthy, and retrievable at usage. They must be explicitly instructed with all of the relevant context, making context engineering key to realizing the potential of an Open Data Infrastructure. Context engineering helps human consumers of data, tooAll of the context engineering required to make data legible and usable for AI also makes data usable for everyone who might embed it into products or rely on it to support decisions. Externalizing institutional knowledge through context engineering also makes work reproducible, enables meaningful self-service, facilitates collaboration, and makes onboarding and organizational changes easier and safer. Context engineering converts data from something an organization merely possesses into something people and machines alike can reliably understand, use, verify, and maintain.