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The Most Open Public Institutions Report, Presented by IJC

05 February 2014
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La CJI

The Licensing Chamber (with 16 datasets), the State Tax Service (with 14 datasets), and the Ministry of Transport and Road Infrastructure (with 12 datasets) hold the first three positions in the top of public institutions with the greatest number of open data on the portal www.date.gov.md[1], according to a report of the Independent Journalism Center (IJC), produced as part of the project Open Government for an Informed and Active Society.
 
The list is continued by the Ministry of Health (11 datasets) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Customs Service (with 9 datasets each).
 
The top has been produced on the basis of a report assessing the process of opening public government data in 2013 in the context of implementation of the Open Government Action Plan. During the reported period (June–December 2013), the number of ministries and central administrative authorities present on date.gov.md remained unchanged – 41 institutions. In six months, 14 out of the 41 authorities (34%) published new datasets on date.gov.md. Overall, the 14 institutions published 90 new datasets.
 
When comparing the leaders of the period of April 2011–May 2013 (period covered by the first monitoring report launched by the IJC on 3 July 2013)[2] with current leaders, one can see that two institutions maintained positions in top five – the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The other four leaders, according to the previous IJC report, used to be on the last positions (the Licensing Chamber, the State Tax Service, the Ministry of Transport and Road Infrastructure, and the Customs Service).
 
Patru autorităţi publice centrale nu au publicat niciun set de date de la lansarea portalului date.gov.md, în aprilie 2011. Este vorba de Agenţia Medicamentului, Centrul de Acreditare în domeniul Evaluării Conformităţii Produselor, Centrul Naţional de Sănătate Publică şi Centrul Naţional de Transfuzie a Sângelui.
 
Four central public authorities published no datasets since date.gov.md was launched in April 2011: the Medicines Agency, the Center of Accreditation in the Field of Products Conformity Assessment, the National Center of Public Health, and the National Center of Blood Transfusion.
 
Under the aspect of the usefulness of public data for journalists and civil society representatives, in comparison with May 2013, the percentage of those who find data useful has increased significantly (from 47 to 71%), and the number of respondents that find datasets of little use has dropped (from 41 to 20%). In addition, no journalist or civil society representative finds that datasets are useless, while 3% of respondents found so in May 2013. When asked if they ever use the data published on date.gov.md when writing articles, studies, etc., 47% of journalists answered positively. Thus, in comparison with the previous assessment, the percentage of those who use information from date.gov.md in their work increased from 28 to 47%.
 
Similarly to the previous monitoring period, the main deficiencies in the process of opening public government data are as follows:

  • Some ministries and public institutions do not engage or engage only occasionally in opening public data on date.gov.md;
  • The impossibility to sort datasets by the institution’s field of activity or by year and the lack of systematized data for past years make visitors use the websites of ministries, and not date.gov.md;
  • Some datasets are either incomplete, or do not contain all relevant public government data, or are not up-to-date;
  • There is no single format for publishing data.

The analysis contains recommendations for improving the process of opening public government data. Here are the main recommendations:

  • To change the principles of operation of date.gov.md according to the needs of journalists, the civil society, etc.;
  • To improve the engines for sorting and searching data on the portal, in order to ensure greater accessibility of the data published on date.gov.md;
  • To identify clear criteria for establishing the entire range of government data that must be opened by each institution, which shall be done by institutions in collaboration with the civil society; to establish well-defined criteria for publishing open datasets, so that they are complete, comprehensive, and up-to-date;
  • The civil society is recommended to continue monitoring the process of opening public government data. 

 
The report can be found here.
 
The project Open Government for an Informed and Active Society is being implemented by the Independent Journalism Center (IJC) and the Association for Participatory Democracy “ADEPT” between March 2013 and March 2014 at the initiative and with the financial support of the Soros Foundation–Moldova as part of the Good Governance Program. Details about the project can be found on www.soros.md (Soros Foundation–Moldova), www.media-azi.md (the IJC) and www.e-democracy.md (ADEPT).

 

[1] On 29 April 2011, by Directive no. 43, the Government of the Republic of Moldova launched a public government data portal, www.date.gov.md, “to ensure the transparency of decision making, citizen participation in governance, and access of citizens and businesses to public government data.”