The report on open government and open public data

There has been increasing talk recently in Romania about the ideas of open government and open public data.

România Internațional, 08.10.2014, 13:16

The two notions refer to the citizens’ right to have access to information of public interest made available by institutions and authorities. The availability of public data in open format is already standard practice in the most developed countries, enhancing the transparency of government, discouraging corruption and contributing to economic growth.

The Open Society Foundation has recently launched its report on open Government and open public data, which provides an overview of the main developments in the implementation of public policies, thus making government more transparent for citizens. The report reveals that while nobody in Romania is clearly opposed to the idea of open government, nobody truly promotes it either. Andra Bucur, the representative of the Open Society Foundation, explains:

”The report shows that we can have open government in Romania, but there is no political will to achieve this and no culture of transparency. The recommendations in the final part of the report are specifically meant to strengthen open government in Romania and solve those problems. In the report, we defined the idea of open government in terms of three fundamental principles, based on the American model. The first principle is transparency, which refers to the access to information of public interest. The second principle of open government is public involvement in the decision-making process at local and central level, while the third principle has to do with the collaboration between public institutions and citizens in the implementation of public measures and policies, which may take the form of public-private agreements and partnerships.”

Romania made a full commitment to open government in 2011, when, together with 46 other countries, it became a member of the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative aimed at making more information of public interest available to citizens, free of charge using the new technologies. The first National Action Plan for the implementation of the partnership was thus approved and the idea of “open data” concept was made part of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy. The Online Services and Design Department was also created in 2013 and 2014, later becoming the body responsible for the implementation of the Open Government Partnership in Romania and the introduction of the new technologies in the activity of public administration institutions.

Despite these measures, no budget has been made public and it is still unclear what are the resources for their implementation, warns the latest report on open government and open public data published in Romania. A platform was also launched, called data.gov.ro, on which public institutions can upload their datasets in an open file format, so that they can be reused. However, there still does not exist an update procedure for the data, nor the obligation for constant republishing, not to mention that many already published data contain errors, writes the report by the Open Society Foundation.

At the moment, the portal contains about 158 datasets uploaded by 29 public institutions, mostly by the health and justice ministries and the National Institute for Heritage. Andra Bucur gives us an example of what access to information really means:

“The first example I have picked is an application used in London that collects data from several government agencies, such as the environment agency and the employment agency, and provides citizens wishing to move to a certain area in London with information on the quality of life, price of apartments, crime rate and number of schools and nursery schools in this specific area, etc. You only have to visit one website and find out all the information you need before moving to a certain part of the city. This application was designed by reusing the available datasets published by state authorities. This is an example of data reusing which benefits citizens.”

Radu Puchiu, the coordinator of the Department for Online Services and Design, is optimistic about achieving open government in Romania:

“I think that open government is possible in Romania. I believe that governments cannot not ignore the ‘open data’ issue indefinitely, or the concept of ‘open government’, because we have adhered to these principles and are making progress in implementing them. In terms of political support, I would of course like to see the top political decision makers in this country embrace this idea. I think we are on the right track.”

In 2007, 84% of legislative bills were adopted at local level in public meetings attended by 69 citizens on average. In 2009, 65% of European companies accessed the websites of public institutions to look for information or download certain forms. In 2013, 5% of Romanians used electronic government services, which is far below the European average of 41%. In 2013, the Defence Ministry recorded 18,222 requests for access to information and over 50,000 visits to its information desks. In view of such figures, the experts who drew up the report on open government and open public data concluded that while public participation is low in Romania, the need for information is increasing.