Open Rural Development Data (GR0066)

Commitment 2: Open access to data of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food

Current situation
The information is now covered by Law 4305/2014 on the «Open access and re-use of documents,
information and public sector data, amendment of Law 3448/2006 (Α΄ 57), adaptation of national
legislation to the provisions of Directive 2013/37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council,
further strengthening of the transparency, regulation of issues regarding the recruitment competition
of the National School of Public Administration and Local Government and other provisions» (Official
Gazette Α’ 237/31.10.2014), with the differentiations provided for under the Directive regarding
libraries, museums and archives, and a specific provisions regarding the protection of cultural
heritage.

Description of Commitment
A wealth of data falling within the scope of Law 4305/2014 is available to the Ministry of Rural
Development and Food and its supervised entities and will be made available for re-use in order to
contribute to the development and participation of citizens.

OGP Principles
Access to public information

Implementation entities, stakeholders

Implementation: Ministry of Rural Development and Food
Cooperation with supervised entities.

Contact details: Ministry of Rural Development and Food, Directorate for Administrative Organisation
and Supervision of Legal Entities

Objective
1) Anonymisation and creation of new datasets.
2) Integration of new datasets.
3) Mobilisation of entities of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food for data publication.
4) Improvement of the quality of datasets.
5) Open data release decisions
6) Upgrading of digital applications and provision of additional datasets

Key milestones - Timetable
Milestone Completion
1) Anonymisation and creation of new datasets.
2) Integration of new datasets.
3) Mobilisation of entities of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food for data publication.
4) Improvement of the quality of datasets.
5) Open data release decisions
6) Upgrading of digital applications and provision of additional datasets

2. Open access to data of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food

Main Objective

The published NAP mentions (p.9) the main objective for this commitment as follows:

"Description of Commitment: A wealth of data falling within the scope of Law 4305/2014 is available to the Ministry of Rural Development and Food and its supervised entities and will be made available for re-use in order to contribute to the development and participation of citizens."

"Objectives: 1) Anonymisation and creation of new datasets.

2) Integration of new datasets.

3) Mobilisation of entities of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food for data publication.

4) Improvement of the quality of datasets.

5) Open data release decisions.

6) Upgrading of digital applications and provision of additional datasets."

Milestones

The published NAP mentions (p.9-10) the milestones for this commitment as follows:

"1) Anonymisation and creation of new datasets.

2) Integration of new datasets.

3) Mobilisation of entities of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food for data publication.

4) Improvement of the quality of datasets.

5) Open data release decisions

6) Upgrading of digital applications and provision of additional datasets."

Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see Greece's action plan at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Greece_Action-Plan_2019-2021_EN.pdf, p.9-17.

Commitment analysis

This commitment aims to publish data held by the Ministry of Rural Development and Food (MRDF), which includes datasets related to budget and fiscal reporting, awarding of tenders, operational approval decisions, livestock and plant data, veterinary information, and food and agricultural data.

The commitment is verifiable, as it clearly states that 49 datasets will be published in 2019. It is unclear however what datasets will be released in 2020, and is not clear about the process to be used to identify these datasets. According to the information collected from interviews with lead contacts, a part of these datasets was already published in previous release decisions and periodically updated. The commitment has sufficient relevance to the Access to Information OGP value, as it could lead the government to disclose more data (milestones 1, 2 and 5) and improve the quality of the information disclosed to the public (milestone 4). [10]

Published data from the MRDF are spread across data.gov.gr (containing more than 130 open datasets published by MRDF as of May 2019) [11] and MRDF's own institutional website (where more than 80 open datasets have been made available as of May 2019) [12]. Much of the published information includes legislation, guidelines and forms, and lists of agricultural machinery and animals along with fishing vessels.

The official website of the MRDF [13] contains one published report on the lead agency's open data policy and practice [14] and a section on published data policies. [15] The European Data Portal Open Data Maturity in Europe Report 2018 [16] lists open data practice of MRDF as "a best practice given the good quality of datasets and robust implementation of open data policy". [17] The ministry's open data policy refers to procedures for ensuring the quality of the data published, whereas the published data policies section contains two additional guides on (a) confidentiality and personal data protection rules [18] and (b) procedures for published data updates. [19] The latter report sets definitions and rules for annual/multi-annual revisions and updates of published statistical data.

MRDF identified 180 data sets by MRDF and some 150 data sets by supervised entities related to agriculture, veterinarians, fishery and food as needing work done on anonymization before publishing. These datasets are apart from the ones identified in the action plan, which are anonymized already. Concerning milestone 3, supervised entities of the ministry already (prior to the action plan) started documenting and evaluating data for opening and so are expected to continue this on a yearly basis. MRDF clarified that the process for updating and improving the quality of the datasets (milestone 4) was already put in place prior to release of the action plan. MRDF clarified that it had made four open data release decisions before the action plan was adopted, and there had been 16 open data release decisions by MRDF-supervised entities. There were also around 30 e-services already made available by MRDF (milestone 6).

Concerning the rationale behind choosing datasets to open, MRDF mentioned that these choices are based on reasoning about how many stakeholders would benefit from opening each dataset but still stated that no relevant stakeholders outside the public sector have been involved in this process. MRDF mentioned, however, that there are some plans to include other stakeholders but mostly in the context of consultations for new regulations. Non-governmental stakeholder interviews [20] revealed that datasets like the ones included in this commitment on types of sheep or authorised agricultural products and producers may be far from the needs of policy areas and citizens and in fact seem to emanate instead from the internal bureaucratic organisation of data processes and files rather than from identified added-value needs of external stakeholders.

The potential impact of the commitment's milestones and of the commitment as a whole is difficult to assess and thus, despite the large amount of data to be released, it is coded as None. It is unclear how the commitment will respond to the needs of citizens and the agricultural sector as per this commitment's objective. It should be noted, in this respect, that the open data demand side of the agricultural sector in Greece remains at its infancy. The Panhellenic Confederation of Unions of Agricultural Cooperatives website [21] lists no documents on open data and only a handful of documents on statistics; the website of the Greek Open Technologies alliance lists a few announcements for open data infrastructures for the agricultural sector, [22] whereas the data.gov.gr space of MRDF lists only two followers. [23] This, in the IRM researcher's view, is also an indication of a shortcoming, on behalf of MRDF, to make known its open data offerings to the agricultural sector and thus spur demand. It is noted, in this respect, that in an interview question about eventual dissemination plans, MRDF responded for internal (within the ministry) dissemination only. It is unclear how the activities of this commitment could improve or change current open data practices in the ministry or its agencies. At the same time, the milestones do not constitute any step forward beyond what is already mandatory according to legislation. The commitment could strive for some more important impact if it were to address publishing data on issues which clearly address problematic areas. For example, desktop research [24] revealed a number of topical issues for this ministry's domain of responsibility, for which publishing open data could have value and could help to improve policies and processes. An indicative example is information relating to the policies, calls for applications and decisions on agricultural investment plans.

Commitment 2. Open access to data of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food

● Verifiable: Yes

● Relevant: Yes, access to information

● Potential impact: None

● Completion: Substantial

● Did it open government? Marginal

During the implementation period, over 120 datasets from the Ministry of Rural Development and Food were updated or uploaded to the old open data portal, increasing from approximately 130 [6] to 224 total datasets. [7] Many relate to the datasets outlined by this commitment, but it is unclear whether they are exactly the datasets that were expected to be published. Most datasets are available as Excel files. Open datasets are also scattered throughout the Ministry’s website. [8] The Ministry’s data is not available on the data.gov.gr open data portal. In terms of the remainder of the commitment, OpenGovMonitor states that all the milestones were achieved. However, it does not provide links to the open data release decisions or the new digital applications. While recognizing the large jump in the number of datasets made available by the Ministry, the IRM researcher was unable to gather further evidence of change of practice in the public administration related to this commitment or on reuse of released datasets.