Linked, Open and Participatory Budgets (GR0061)

Context “Democratic political life as we know it is inconceivable without public access to information about public money” says Jonathan Gray, director of Policy and Research at Open Knowledge International. Although the number of available public budget and transaction data increases, the different data standards and accounting models, restrict its utility. The heterogeneity and lack of standardization of open spending and budget data block the development of many interesting and useful applications. For instance applications related with comparative analysis between different cities or regions in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending. Commitment description Open Knowledge Greece in the context of OpenBudgets.eu -a Horizon 2020 funded projectis developing together with the project partners an open ecosystem that aims to solve the problem of standardization of open spending and budget data and the problem of interoperability of the applications by developing an open technical specification for public sector budget and spending data: the Fiscal Data Package based on OpenSpending Ecosystem and the Fiscal RDF Data Model based on DataCube Vocabulary. In OpenBudgets.eu an open participatory platform for budgets is developed that will be easy to use, flexible and capable of interpreting previously incompatible forms of budget and spending data, provide advanced capabilities such as calculations of economic indicators(KPIs), statistical analysis and data mining techniques with the appropriate visualizations. At a glance, Openbudgets.eu will offer: A semantic data model A library of visualisation tools A library of data mining and comparative analysis tools A feedback and citizen engagement interface All this features will be integrated into a comprehensive portal, deployed as a software-as-aservice(SaaS). This commitment concerns the use and the adaptation of the openbudgets.eu results at national, regional and municipality level; and the structural linkage of all open budget data of Greek regions and municipalities that will be interested of using it. OGP Values Open Budget application ecosystem satisfies all the four (4) OGP principles Principle Implementation requirements Access to information 1. Primary information 2. Processed information Active participation of bodies and citizens in decision making 1. Participative budget 2. Proposal submission 3. Submitted proposals voting Public accountability 1. Analytical presentation of the data 2. Publish of the results Use of technology and innovation on openness and accountability 1. Use of the platform and technology created by OpenBudgets.eu for open participatory budgets Implementation bodies Implementation by: Open Knowledge Greece Contact Information: Dr. Charalampos Bratsas, CEO of Open Knowledge Greece e-mail: charalampos.bratsas@okfn.org Entities involved Public Government (Regional and local authorities, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Government reconstruction) Citizens, Organizations of the society of the citizens, private sectors, working groups Objective The goals of the proposed ecosystem of the web applications are: 1. The provision of analytical information to the citizens for the utilization of public funds through publishing data journalism articles 2. Semantic representation of Numerical Codes of incomes and Expenses(K.A.E.) of budget figures and linkage of them 3. Linkage of budgets and semantic representation using Data Cubes for better statistical analysis. 4. Data visualizations and statistics of incomes and expenses of budgets and other economic indicators(KPIs). 5. Digital signing of the data and the visualizations. 6. Citizens’ active participation in decision making through participatory budgets. Means for the implementation The commitment relies on: 1. The technical solution, includes the semantic linkage of open fiscal data and the web applications of the OpenBudgets and OpenSpending ecosystem. 2. The participation of the citizens in the decision making through the use of the ecosystems’ applications.

Commitment 30, 31, 32 and 33: Commitments from Civil Society

Commitment 30. Open Data Index for cities and local administrations

The commitment refers to the online publication of the annual report of the Open Data Index for cities and aims to motivate citizens, business and other stakeholders to contribute and evaluate their municipalities open data.

Key benefits of annual Open Data index for cities reports, are the comparison among the different municipalities acting as an important input on their functions; a process - report that accommodate citizens with the open data (monitoring the state of the municipality according to the dataset and how they can use or improve the results); time-based analysis with a comparison of actions that have implemented by different cities.

Milestones: 30.1 Customization of the Open Data Index Platform http://gr-city.census.okfn.org/. 30.2 Open Data Census 2016 –use of platform, promotion to inform citizens, hackathon of census, publishing online book with the results with ISSN (example http://online.fliphtml5.com/qzqt/qfsh/#p=1 ). 30.3 Open Data census 2017 (12/2017) –use of platform, promotion to inform citizens, hackathon of census, publishing online book with the results with ISSN (example http://online.fliphtml5.com/qzqt/qfsh/#p=1).

Responsible Institution(s): Open Knowledge Greece

Supporting Institution(s): none

Start Date:  July 2016 End Date: December 2017

Commitment 31. Linked, Open and Participatory Budgets

Open Knowledge Greece in the context of OpenBudgets.eu -a Horizon 2020 funded projects developing together with the project partners an open ecosystem that aims to solve the problem of standardization of open spending and budget data and the problem of interoperability of the applications by developing an open technical specification for public sector budget and spending data: the Fiscal Data Package based on OpenSpending Ecosystem and the Fiscal RDF Data Model based on DataCube Vocabulary.

In OpenBudgets.eu an open participatory platform for budgets is developed that will be easy to use, flexible and capable of interpreting previously incompatible forms of budget and spending data, provide advanced capabilities such as calculations of economic indicators (KPIs), statistical analysis and data mining techniques with the appropriate visualizations. At a glance, Openbudgets.eu will offer:

• A semantic data model;
• A library of visualization tools;
• A library of data mining and comparative analysis tools;
• A feedback and citizen engagement interface.

All these features will be integrated into a comprehensive portal, deployed as a software-as-a service (SaaS). This commitment concerns the use and the adaptation of the openbudgets.eu results at national, regional and municipality level; and the structural linkage of all open budget data of Greek regions and municipalities that will be interested of using it.

Responsible Institution(s): Open Knowledge Greece

Supporting Institution(s): none

Start Date:  July 2016 End Date: October 2017

Commitment 32. School of data for public servants

The goal of this commitment is to educate members of pilot selected organizations and services of the Greek government how to create open datasets, publish them to the platform Open Data CKAN of the Greek government data.gov.gr and properly license them with Open Data License.

Responsible Institution(s): Open Knowledge Greece

Supporting Institution(s): none

Start Date:  July 2016 End Date: December 2017

Commitment 33. The collaborative wikification of public services procedures

The commitment entails the maintenance of the platform and a series of training workshops to government officials from various public bodies in order to use wiki.ellak.gr and also from a technical aspect to implement a solution of the Core Public Service Vocabulary (CPSV https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/cpsv-ap/description) in Greece in order to represent the Greek Public Services Catalogue in a machine-readable format. Up to now, the information is published in html pages which hampers its reuse

Responsible Institution(s): Open Technologies Alliance/GFOSS

Supporting Institution(s): none

Start Date:  July 2016 End Date: June 2018

Editorial Note: The action plan text has been abridged by the IRM. For the full version, please see https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/greece-national-action-plan-2016-2018/

Commitment Aim:

Commitment 30. Open Data Index for cities and local administrations

This commitment aimed to provide citizens with the information and knowledge to evaluate and use open data at the local level. The CSO Open Knowledge Greece committed to create a version of the international Open Data Index adapted to the local level. The index will help those who make use of open data to evaluate the availability and accessibility of datasets already published on the central data.gov.gr website.^{[Note 247: OGP, “Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) Progress Report 2016–2018: Greece”, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/greece-mid-term-report-2016-2018-public-comment]}

Commitment 31. Linked, open, and participatory budgets

This commitment attempted to decrease the transparency and participation deficits in local budgeting processes. Open Knowledge Greece created a commitment with a dual aim. First, it would publish semantic descriptions of income, expenses and fiscal information for local public authorities such as regions and municipalities. Secondly, Open Knowledge would provide an open source participatory budgeting platform to be used by local public authorities who wish to open their budgeting process to public oversight and participation.^{[Note 248: Ibid.]}

Commitment 32. School of data for public servants

This commitment aimed to fill the knowledge gap in the field of producing open data in the public sector. Open Knowledge Greece would introduce data schools for public sector employees. These schools would aim to build technical capacity and provide participants with the necessary special knowledge and skills to create open datasets.^{[Note 249: Ibid.]}

Commitment 33. The collaborative wikification of public service procedures

The overall goal of this commitment was to establish standards and good practices to make the provision of public services simpler and more effective. The CSO Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS) is expanding its system for cataloging public services, wiki.ellak.gr, by implementing the Core Public Service Vocabulary (CPSV). In addition, Open Technologies Alliance would provide training for public agencies in cataloging their services using the CPSV model.^{[Note 250: Ibid.]}

Status

Commitment 30. Open Data Index for cities and local administrations

Midterm: Substantial

The international Open Data Index is published by Open Knowledge Greece and displays an interactive list that presents how 10 Greek cities perform according to the openness of their published datasets for the year 2016. Open Knowledge Greece co-hosted a workshop with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki aimed at informing the local community about the scores of Greek cities in the International Open Data Index. Furthermore, 13 citizens volunteered to produce the open data census 2016 for Greek cities. Finally, Open Knowledge Greece also published an in-depth analysis of the extent to which public data are open and readable by machine and humans.^{[Note 251: Ibid. ]} The commitment will be fully implemented upon evidence of executing the planned hackathons and publishing the relevant book. For more information, please see the 2016-2018 midterm IRM report on the Greek action plan.^{[Note 252: Ibid.]}

End of term: Complete

Open Knowledge Greece organized a series of actions to complete this commitment. According to the OK Greece Director, instead of the hackathons OK Greece organized a research project to uncover the ways in which Greek municipalities implement the open-by-default policy mandated by Law 4305/2015 to release datasets in open formats. The research focused on open budget data and its methodology was made public.^{[Note 253: Open Knowledge Greece – Open Budgets (in Greek), https://openbudgets.gr/about?lang=el]} To increase awareness on the potential of open data OK Greece organized an event entitled “Open data as an infrastructure for Innovation”.^{[Note 254: Open Knowledge Greece, “Workshop: Data as an innovation infrastructure: science, governance, transparency, transport - ODD 2018”, https://okfn.gr/ημερίδα-τα-δεδομένα-ως-υποδομή-καινοτ/ ]} The event took place in the context of World Open Data Day and focused on issues of open data best practices, training on open science, and practical examples from the transportation sector.^{[Note 255: Open Knowledge Greece, “Open Data Day 2018 - Data as an innovation infrastructure: science, governance, transparency, transport” (in Greek), https://okfn.gr/open-data-day-2018-τα-δεδομένα-ως-υποδομή-καινοτομία/ ]} OK Greece also created an online platform that documented the results of the research project in the form of an interactive map allowing citizens to explore available fiscal evidence across different municipalities in Greece.^{[Note 256: Open Knowledge Greece – Open Budgets, (in Greek), https://openbudgets.gr/indices?lang=el# ]}

Did It Open Government?

Commitment 30. Open Data Index for cities and local administrations

Access to Information: Major

This commitment reflects ongoing efforts to increase the availability of information that advances knowledge and tools to evaluate open data. Prior to this commitment information about the availability, degree of openness and accessibility of open data was scattered, and citizens had to perform a lot of manual work to locate it. To fill this gap OK Greece created an adapted localized version of the international Open Data Index to help citizens, public employees and interested parties to evaluate certain aspects of open data availability and accessibility. The publishing of the platform with the interactive map provides citizens with aggregate information for open budget data availability and accessibility in Greek municipalities. With a few clicks on a map, citizens can get enough evidence to know if a municipality publishes open budget data, with access to concrete data sources, formats, etc. Compared to the status quo prior to this commitment, citizens can now monitor how their municipalities perform on issues of open budget data quality and suggest concrete changes to improve available formats, license for further use and performance indicators. However, since this commitment comes from a CSO, there is no formal mechanism to link the monitoring tools of the Open Data Index to the operational processes of the municipal departments that produce and publish open budget data.

Commitment 31. Linked, open, and participatory budgets

Midterm: Substantial

This commitment had been substantially implemented at the midterm evaluation. Open Knowledge Greece published a series of semantically described data about budgets regarding the European Strategic Reference Framework.^{[Note 257: OGP, “Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) Progress Report 2016–2018: Greece”, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/greece-mid-term-report-2016-2018-public-comment]} The open-source participatory budget platform has been made available online and presents a dashboard in which citizens may explore yearly budget statistics for the cities of Athens and Thessaloniki. The commitment will be considered complete when the feedback and citizen engagement interface becomes available on the platform.

End of term: Complete

Open Knowledge Greece developed a new functionality on the participatory budget platform that fulfills the citizen engagement interface therefore completing the implementation of this commitment. The website http://redflags.okfn.gr uses the data from the official website of the Greek Ministry for Development and Competitiveness, anaptyxi.gov.gr, that provides analytical information related to implementation processes for the projects of National Strategic Reference Framework and analyzes it to identify possible red flags.^{[Note 258:  Wayback Machine archived webpage of Red Flags project, https://web.archive.org/web/20180316144937/http://redflags.okfn.gr]} However, at the time of writing this report the site was still unavailable.^{[Note 259: Archived version of offline Redflags project webpage, https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1jyOp9z4kUx6GZOnSDkPgU2w0CB47Enz4g-_81M47PxQ/edit?usp=sharing]} According to OK Greece Director, this is a temporary technical problem.^{[Note 260: Charalampos Bratsas, Director of Open Knowledge Greece, telephone interview with IRM researcher, September 2018.]}

Did It Open Government?

Commitment 31. Linked, open, and participatory budgets

Access to Information: Major

In Greece available information on budgets at the national and local level remains limited in terms of detail. This is also the case with participatory budgeting in which citizens contribute their suggestions and may influence decision making on budget allocation about publicly-funded projects. With this commitment Open Knowledge Greece attempts to provide standardized information about budgets so that citizens can interpret budget and spending data. In implementing the commitment OK Greece provided semantically structured information about public spending in European Strategic Reference Framework projects. This information is essential for citizens and organizations who wish to make sense of public spending allocation and effectiveness. OK Greece organized an investigative journalism workshop to present the Red Flags website and test its potential uses with data journalists.^{[Note 261: Information on the Red Flags workshop (in Greek), https://okfn.gr/ολοκληρώθηκε-η-πρώτη-μέρα-του-εργαστη/ ]} Journalists were asked to search for red-flagged projects and see whether the data the site provides can lead them to further investigate a project and produce a potential news story. OK Greece reports that two of the journalists were able to document a story from research with Red Flags data.^{[Note 262: Charalampos Bratsas, Director of Open Knowledge Foundation Greece, telephone interview with IRM researcher, September 2018.]} OK Greece also reports that the projects that the Ministry of Finance had ceased funding coincide with the red flagged ones. For these reasons the impact of this commitment on opening government is major. It provides an informational tool that may assist journalists and the public administration in exploring potentially problematic publicly-funded projects. 

Commitment 32. School of data for public servants

Midterm: Limited

Open Knowledge Greece created many of the educational materials for the pilot courses. These were then sent to specialists for review. However, the open data schools for public employees had been postponed until December 2017 and thus the implementation of the commitment remained limited. For more information, please see the 2016-2018 midterm IRM report on the Greek action plan.^{[Note 263: OGP, “Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) Progress Report 2016–2018: Greece”, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/greece-mid-term-report-2016-2018-public-comment]}

End of term: Substantial

Open Knowledge Greece has substantially implemented this commitment. It co-organized, along with the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications of the University of Western Macedonia and the Alexandria Innovation Zone, the first data school (seminar) in the Region of Western Macedonia.^{[Note 264: Open Knowledge Greece, “Completion of the 1st Data School in the Region of Western Macedonia for eGovernment executives of Local Authorities” (in Greek), https://okfn.gr/ολοκλήρωση-του-1ου-σχολείου-δεδομένων/]} This first school was addressed to employees of local authorities responsible for e-Government. The school focused on issues of open data, open licenses and the appropriate formats to release open data in the central portal data.gov.gr. It also stressed the differences between the flagship Transparency program called Clarity with the open-by-default policy mandated by Law 4305/2014. Finally, the school presented examples and useful applications with an emphasis on open budgets.^{[Note 265: Ibid.]}

Did It Open Government?

Commitment 32. School of data for public servants

Access to Information: Marginal

This commitment attempted to contribute a solution to perceived open data literacy rates in the Greek public sector by organizing open data schools for public employees. The Open Knowledge Foundation organized the first open data school for public employees in the Region of Western Macedonia. Public sector employees who participated in the open data school evaluated the seminar by completing an e-questionnaire. Evaluation results suggest that the school increased general knowledge of open data issues such as specifics of the regulatory framework mandated by law 4305/2014,^{[Note 266: Open Data Law 4305/2014 (in Greek), http://www.minadmin.gov.gr/?p=11238]} types of machine-readable open data formats, and open and participatory budgeting. Overall, more than half of public sector employees mentioned that the school provided them with knowledge that could have practical use for their day-to-day job.^{[Note 267: Open Knowledge Greece, “Evaluating the school of open data” (in Greek), https://okfn.gr/αξιολόγηση-1ου-σχολείου-δεδομένων/]}

Asked to review the effect the three OKF commitments had on increasing overall openness, Dr. Ioanna Kostarela, an expert on informational transparency issues, noted that these efforts contribute mainly to the change of governmental culture and practice. Data availability means more transparency and helps convince the public of accountability and access to information.^{[Note 268: Dr. Ioanna Kostarella, Assistant Professor of Journalism, Research and New Media at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, interview with IRM researchers, 20 October 2018.]}

Commitment 33. The collaborative wikification of public service procedures

Midterm: Substantial

This commitment was substantially implemented by the midterm evaluation. Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS) developed the technical requirements of the commitment by extending wiki.ellak.gr with a new infrastructure that supports the Core Public Service Vocabulary model. This infrastructure has been tested via an input system that allows for the automatic adaptation of the data input into the CPSV standard. GFOSS also provided hands-on training to a number of public employees in the Ministry of Education, Research, and Religious Affairs (102), the University of Macedonia (65), the Aristotle University (91), and the organization Culture, Sport and Youth of the Municipality of Athens (8). The commitment would be considered completed upon evidence of continuing the training efforts during the first half of 2018. For more information, please see the 2016-2018 midterm IRM report on the Greek action plan.^{[Note 269: OGP, “Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) Progress Report 2016–2018: Greece”, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/greece-mid-term-report-2016-2018-public-comment]}

End of term: Complete

The Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS) continued to organize training seminars for the collaborative wikification of public services throughout 2018 and completed this commitment. At the time of writing this report the website wiki.ellak.gr lists 205 new public services compared to the midterm period (2,186 in September 2018 and 1,981 in September 2017).^{[Note 270: New public services listed, https://el.diadikasies.gr/Αρχική_σελίδα]} According to the General Director of GFOSS, training activities took place in Athens (OPANDA) and Thessaloniki (University of Macedonia).^{[Note 271: Despina Mitropoulou, General Director of Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS), telephone interview with IRM researcher, September 2018.]}

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Major

The provision of public services in Greece is not uniform across agencies. Often, similar agencies provide the same service following a different process. The Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS) committed to initiate a collaborative solution and launched a wiki-based platform, wiki.ellak.gr. In it Wikipedia specialists assist public sector employees to document in an open public repository every step of the processes by which a service is being provided. Throughout the action plan duration GFOSS organized training sessions with public agencies, specialists and public sector employees. The results are available online and 2,186 services have been cataloged.^{[Note 272: Administrative Procedures Wiki – Statistics (in Greek), https://goo.gl/xd9KV4 ]}

This commitment as implemented has a major effect in improving access to information. GFOSS partnered with public administration bodies and the initial wiki.ellak.gr website transformed to diadikasies.gr. On this website citizens can access knowledge about the procedures with which services are provided. Public sector agencies can find help in their efforts to standardize the delivery of their services. According to Dr. Ioanna Kostarella, diadikasies.gr is a first-class tool for recording and classifying existing government procedures. Its operation contributes decisively to the change of attitude, as the service providers feel the need to respond to their responsibilities in the described way, and citizens know in advance the analytical steps of a given process. This increases the sense of security and trust in the institutions involved in the project.^{[Note 273: Dr. Ioanna Kostarella, Assistant Professor of Journalism, Research and New Media at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, interview with IRM researchers, 20 October 2018.]}

Carried Forward?

IRM researchers recommend that the next action plan focuses on commitments where government ministries take ultimate responsibility for implementing initiatives co-created with CSOs. Results achieved through the commitments carried out by OK Greece and GFOSS demonstrate the valuable contribution CSOs can make, not only in design but also implementation of important open data initiatives. However, the long-term effect is likely to be more sustainable if government agencies have clear ownership of the initiatives and institutionalize relevant practices in their ongoing work.

Open Technologies Alliance and Open Knowledge Greece have stated^{[Note 274: Despina Mitropoulou, General Director of Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS), telephone interview with IRM researcher, September 2018, and Charalampos Bratsas, Director of Open Knowledge Foundation Greece, telephone interview with IRM researcher, September 2018.]} their willingness to continue to collaborate with the relevant Ministries to create commitments for increasing open data literacy in the public sector. Specific public agencies could prioritize new initiatives for the open data schools with concrete learning activities aiming to release open data for specific uses and projects.

As far as Commitment 33 is concerned, the volume of cataloged public services in the diadikasies.gr wiki-based platform provides the appropriate backbone for launching a new commitment for the simplification and redesign of specific public services delivery.^{[Note 275: Ibid.}

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