Open Justice Data (GR0073)

Commitment 9: Open access to data of the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights

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 Justice,
Transparency and Human Rights 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 Justice, Transparency and Human Rights
Cooperation with supervised entities.

Contact details: Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights, Secretary General

Objective
1) Anonymisation and creation of new datasets
2) Integration of new datasets
3) Mobilisation of entities of the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights 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 Until the end August 2021
2) Integration of new datasets
3) Mobilisation of entities of the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights 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

9. Open access to data of the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights

Main Objective

The published NAP mentions (p.30) 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 Justice, Transparency and Human Rights 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 Justice, Transparency and Human Rights 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.30-31) 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 Justice, Transparency and Human Rights 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.30-32.

Commitment analysis

This commitment aims to publish new information into the public domain on issues related to crime statistics, lawyer and notary competition results; presidential pardons; and some economic data. The commitment is considered verifiable but is unclear about the detail and format of these datasets.

The commitment is relevant to the Access to Information OGP value because, if implemented fully, it will lead the government to disclose more information (milestones 1, 2, 5 and 6) and improve the quality of the information disclosed to the public (milestone 4). [76]

The Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights has published more than 20 open datasets on Data.gov.gr as of May 2019, [77] such as the simplification of administrative procedures and the decrees establishing detention centres.

The milestones will not lead to changes in the way government operates or publishes data beyond what is already mandatory according to legislation.

To assess potential impact, MJ did not mention taking up relevant experience from implementation of the previous action plan in the design of this commitment or integrating feedback from the action plan co-design process into this commitment. Additionally, MJ noted that in the context of the fourth action plan co-creation process, the process lead agency had not granted the ministry sufficient information and time for formulating commitments, contrary to what the case was in the context of the third action plan co-creation process. Concerning the rationale behind choosing datasets to open, MJ did not provide specific information and did not mention relevant stakeholders outside the public sector to be involved in this process. In this respect, the potential impact of the commitment is coded as None. [78]

Any changes to planned implementation could consider selecting datasets to open according to citizens' priorities and could bring CSOs and other non-government stakeholders into the process of setting priorities. Civil society stakeholders during interviews did not provide any specific views on the value of these or other ministry datasets. Desktop research [79] revealed a number of topical issues for this ministry's domain of responsibility for which publishing open data could have value and help to improve policies and processes. An indicative example is information such as policies, incidents, decisions and appeals on detainment conditions or information around personnel recruitment such as calls for applications, deadlines and decisions.

Commitment 9. Open access to data of the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights

● Verifiable: Yes

● Relevant: Yes, access to information

● Potential impact: None

● Completion: No evidence available

● Did it open government? No evidence of early results yet

This commitment sought to publish justice-related datasets, including statistical data from the National Crime Register, statistical data on the results of competitions for lawyers and notaries, the number of grants of pardon awarded by the president of the Republic per year, and monthly/annual bulletins of economic interest. A public official from the Ministry of Justice stated that from 2019 to 2021, the Ministry of Justice’s previous open data team released approximately 39 datasets. [33] The datasets can be accessed through the Ministry’s official website [34] and in the old open data portal. [35] It is not clear whether the Ministry published the datasets outlined in the action plan as part of these 39 identified datasets.

Other data on the Ministry of Justice website (although not identified as datasets to be published in the action plan) is up to date, but datasets for 2020 onward are only available as non-reusable PDFs (except for statistical data on administrative courts). The central repository points to five searchable databases concerning civil case processes, civil procedure tables, criminal procedure exhibits, the integrated judicial management system, and the progress of court cases conducted in Athens’ First Instance Court. Greece’s new open data portal contained seven datasets under the “Crime and Justice” topic, of which the two published directly by the Ministry of Justice were published before the action plan was submitted. [36] As for the remainder of the commitment, the OpenGovMonitor states that the commitment mobilized entities of the Ministry for data publication, and its three other milestones were ongoing—improvement of datasets, upgrading digital applications and visualizations, and three data disposal decisions. It does not offer evidence of this progress. [37]