Publish Government-Held Open Data (MD0065)

3.5. Publication of geospatial data according to Open Catalogue of the Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre, with possibility of visualization and / or open format:
3.6. Publishing, on the data.gov.md portal, the following datasets: - The public register of suppliers authorized by the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology to provide electronic communications networks and / or services; - The list of license holders issued by the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology for the activity in the field of information technology
3.7. Publication of open data on the process of fulfilling the commitments assumed by the MoldovaEU Association Agreement on the date.gov.md
3.8. Publication of open data on the cultural sector
3.9. Improving the court portal according to relevant user and legal propositions and providing automated access to information through the Application Programming Interface (API)
3.10. Organization of public consultations with data users to identify their needs regarding the availability of open data
3.11. Continuous opening of additional data sets and updating existing data sets on date.gov.md
3.12. Publication of data on the progress of the implementation of national action plans from the PlanPro monitoring tool, used by the State Chancellery, in a data format opened on the data.gov.md portal
Responsible institution: State Chancellery (according to the Moldovan open data legislation1)
Supporting institution(s): Ministry of Education, Culture and Research, Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre, National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Integration State Chancellery, E-Government Center, MiLab
Start date: 1st quarter 2017 End date: 2nd quarter 2018

3b. Publish government-held open data

Commitment Text:

Title: Publishing Government Open Data and Ensuring Access to Public Information

3.5. Publication of geospatial data according to Open Catalogue of the Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre, with possibility of visualization and / or open format:

3.6. Publishing, on the data.gov.md portal, the following datasets:

- The public register of suppliers authorized by the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology to provide electronic communications networks and / or services;

- The list of license holders issued by the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology for the activity in the field of information technology

3.7. Publication of open data on the process of fulfilling the commitments assumed by the Moldova-EU Association Agreement on the date.gov.md

3.8. Publication of open data on the cultural sector

3.9. Improving the court portal according to relevant user and legal propositions and providing automated access to information through the Application Programming Interface (API)

3.10. Organization of public consultations with data users to identify their needs regarding the availability of open data

3.11. Continuous opening of additional data sets and updating existing data sets on date.gov.md

3.12. Publication of data on the progress of the implementation of national action plans from the PlanPro monitoring tool, used by the State Chancellery, in a data format opened on the data.gov.md portal

Responsible institution: State Chancellery (according to the Moldovan open data legislation[Note146: Expert Grup NGO, Ziarul de Garda, CPR Moldova])

Supporting institution(s): Ministry of Education, Culture and Research, Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre, National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Integration State Chancellery, E-Government Center, MiLab

Start date: 1st quarter 2017 End date: 2nd quarter 2018

Editorial Note: For the purpose of the IRM report, commitment three was broken up into two separate commitments (see details in the General Overview of Commitments section). This is a truncated version of the action plan. For full action plan text, please refer to https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2001/01/Moldova_NAP_2016-2018_EN.doc.

Context and Objectives

The Republic of Moldova launched the Open Data Portal (data.gov.md) in April 2011 as one component of technological modernization through the national e-transformation strategy.[Note147: T. Savva, Expert-Grup, personal communication, 22 December 2017.

] According to a government decision[Note148: Government Decision no. 700 of 25.08.2014.], data must be released in disaggregated, open, machine-readable formats and be licensed for legal re-use. Open data must be non-personal, unrestricted and available for users. However, public central authorities (governmental authorities) do not always publish data following the open data principles. In 2016, Moldova scored poorly on the Open Data Barometer[Note149: Open Data Barometer: Moldova, http://opendatabarometer.org/4thedition/detail-country/?_year=2016&indicator=ODB&detail=MDA]: of the 15 kinds of data assessed, only crime and statistics data was fully open and available.

This commitment aims to use technologies to improve datasets and portals, open various datasets across the government, including geospatial data, data on the Moldova-EU Association Agreement, and cultural sector data, and organize public consultations with data users and updating existing datasets. As such, this commitment meets the criteria for the OGP values of technology and innovation, access to information and civic participation.

Overall, the specificity of this commitment is medium: most activities, other than activities 3.5 and 3.6 (which clearly indicate which datasets will be published, in what format, and where), do not always identify the specific data to be published.

If implemented as written, this commitment would have a minor potential impact. Though opening more datasets will improve access to public data, especially impactful for data regarding the Association Agreement, activities covered in this commitment do not sufficiently tackle the list of problems data users have identified with the current system. This commitment does not address the availability or quality of datasets, and does not include measures to improve government practices around information requests, both of which have been reflected in this commitment’s potential impact assessment. A more transformative commitment would be to adopt the Open Data Charter principles[Note150: Open Data Charter, https://opendatacharter.net/] to improve existing open data policy and management and create opportunities for civic participation in the development and implementation of open data policy.

Completion

Between December 2016 and December 2017 it was uncertain who the coordinator of the Open Data Portal was, and a decision on this is still pending. The State Chancellery became the main coordinator of OGP activities in December 2016, however, the E-Government Center remained responsible for the management and maintenance of the portal. At the time of writing, no institution is monitoring the open data published on the Open Data Portal. Additionally, the list of government authorities responsible for posting data on the portal was not updated after the government reorganization in 2017, possibly hindering implementation. Overall, completion is limited.

The publication of geospatial data on geoportal.md is limited (3.5). The Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre is currently developing the catalog of geospatial open data, with plans to launch in mid-2018, and is transferring the current geospatial data platform, geoportal.md, to a new platform, developed according to the EU’s Inspire standards.[Note151: European Commission, Inspire Knowledge Base, https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/] Once launched, all public institutions[Note152: According to the Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre, civil society and private institutions will also create geospatial data in the future.] in charge of developing geospatial data will continuously update data in this catalog in order to avoid duplicate information and promote effective access to information. However, in 2017 several Government Decisions were adopted to support the implementation of the national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI) law no. 254 of 17 November 2016.[Note153: Government Decision no. 737 of 15 September 2017 on approving the Regulations of norms for creation spatial data services and terms of implementation; Government Decision Nr. 738 of 15 September 2017 on approving the Regulations of norms for creating and updating the metadata for spatial data sets and services; Government Decision Nr. 458 of 22 June 2017 on responsibilities of public entities on spatial data sets; Government Decision Nr. 459 of 22 June 2017 on Council of national spatial data infrastructure] This legislative framework will allow the development and implementation of NSDI in the Republic of Moldova.

The IRM researcher has verified that the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology has fully published and updated the four datasets (as indicated in the action plan) on data.gov.md (3.6).

The Ministry of Economy (MoE) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration (MFA) have not started the implementation of this commitment activity (3.7). Although MFA published implementation reports on the Association Agreement[Note154: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, http://www.mfa.gov.md/rapoarte-aa/], the ministries have not posted any relevant data in open format on data.gov.md.

The Ministry of Culture was responsible for publishing 10 open datasets on the culture sector on data.gov.md (3.8); however, the IRM researcher was unable to track the activity of the institution after it was integrated with the Ministry of Education and Research in the summer of 2017. Furthermore, the datasets are not currently available on the open data portal.

The Agency for the Law Courts Management[Note155: The Ministry of Justice is indicated in the action plan as the implementing agency for this sub-commitment, however the Agency for the Law Courts Management was indicated by the Ministry as the responsible entity. This has been indicated to the IRM researcher through personal communication with D.Pocitar-Poparcea (Ministry of Justice) on 15 January 2018.] has made progress to improve the National Portal of Law Courts (3.9). The portal is now aligned with the Law no.76 on the reorganization of the law courts, thereby reducing the number of law courts portals from 44 to 15 webpages.[Note156: Action plan implementation report, provided by email from the Ministry of Justice, 13 December 2017.] According to the Government, in 2017 the National Portal of Law Courts was also adjusted to the provisions of art. 56.2 par. (3) of the Law no. 514 of 6 July 1995 on judicial organization and legislation on the protection of personal data. In this respect, the search criteria for court judgments placed on the web pages of the courts of law and courts of appeal were updated, adding five basic filters (case number, date of issuance, case name, case topic, and type [criminal, civil, administrative]). Also, a separate search function for court sentences was added by aligning the court portal to the provisions of the regulation on the way in which judgments are published on the single portal of courts, approved by the Decision of the Superior Council of Magistracy no. 432/19 of 21 June 2016. However, due to the vague formulation of this commitment activity, it is unclear what is meant by 'relevant user and legal propositions'[Note157: Moldova National Action Plan 2016-2018, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/moldova-national-action-plan-2016-2018] and IRM cannot assess the level of progress due to the lack of a baseline in the action plan.

The self-assessment states that between 13 and 17 September 2017 MiLab organized an Open Data School and consulted a community of journalists and civic activists to identify their open data needs (3.10).[Note158: Government of the Republic of Moldova, Self-Assessment report, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2001/01/Moldova_Mid-Term-Self-Assessment_2016-2018_EN.pdf] However, the relevance of the resulting published articles to the activity’s objective is unclear. The MiLab representatives were not aware of any other planned consultations on this topic, besides the Open Data School, and described it not as a consultation exercise per se but a capacity building one.[Note159: MiLab team (I. Frunza, M.Gurghis, D.Belan), group interview, 19 December 2017.] Without more information on the planned public consultations, the IRM researcher is unable to assess this activity’s completion higher than limited. The Government has however organized several events relevant for this commitment in 2018, which will be reflected in the end-of-term report.

In 2017, according to the self-assessment, 978 datasets were published by 48 public authorities (3.11). The number of datasets referenced is likely the cumulative number of datasets published at the time of writing, and not the specific number published within the timeframe of this commitment. According to the Open Data Portal, 28 new datasets were published and 198 datasets were updated in 2017. Since the action plan did not indicate specific datasets, or a target number of datasets to open and update, the IRM researcher was unable to assess if any progress has been made.

At the time of writing, the State Chancellery has not begun implementing this commitment activity (3.12). According to the date.gov.md statistics, the State Chancellery did not post any datasets in 2017 using the PlanPro[Note160: The PlanPro monitoring tool, http://www.monitorizare.gov.md] monitoring tool. The government has however published a report on its 2016 activity on the official webpage of the Government of the Republic of Moldova. The report contains general information on the national action plans.[Note161: https://gov.md/ro/content/premierul-pavel-filip-avand-o-directie-clara-si-lucrand-cu-seriozitate-republica-moldova?status=2]

Next Steps

This commitment’s implementation should be continued in the remaining period of the action plan cycle. If carried forward into the next action plan, however, the IRM researcher suggests the government modify this commitment based on the following recommendations:

· Open datasets based on user demand and not only on the priorities of the governmental agencies. To ensure users’ open data and information needs are being identified, the government should consider organizing consultations and communication mechanisms with data users.

· Establish a point of contact at the State Chancellery with the specific role of providing support for data users, allowing them to report central public authorities that refuse to disclose government-held public information without justification or with false justification. Additionally, the government should establish a mechanism through which these cases can be resolved.

· Improve the efficiency of processing public information requests by eliminating the requirement for written requests for public information (versus requests by phone or email).

· Consider releasing all data 'free of charge'[Note162: Open Data Charter Principles, https://opendatacharter.net/principles/] in accordance with the Open Data Charter principle.

· Clarify the exact responsibilities of each entity involved in the coordination of open data policy. Ensuring a de facto monitoring of the open data initiative would hold central public authorities accountable. The government institutions responsible for the publishing of specific open datasets should provide a detailed timeline.

· Include civil society engagement and public debate before and during the drafting of laws and policies to implement the Association Agreement, and encourage civil society and independent experts to utilize open data to monitor implementation.

3.b Public government-held open data

Commitment Text:

Title: Publishing Government Open Data and Ensuring Access to Public Information

3.5. Publication of geospatial data according to Open Catalogue of the Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre, with possibility of visualization and / or open format

3.6. Publishing, on the date.gov.md portal, the following datasets:

• The public register of suppliers authorized by the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology to provide electronic communications networks and / or services;
• The list of license holders issued by the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology for the activity in the field of information technology
• The list of suppliers to whom the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology has issued licenses for the use of numbering resources;
• The list of suppliers to which the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology has issued licenses for the use of radio frequencies or channels for the purpose of providing public electronic communications networks and services

3.7. Publication of open data on the process of fulfilling the commitments assumed by the Moldova-EU Association Agreement on the date.gov.md

3.8. Publication of open data on the cultural sector

3.9. Improving the court portal according to relevant user and legal propositions and providing automated access to information through the Application Programming Interface (API)

3.10. Organization of public consultations with data users to identify their needs regarding the availability of open data

3.11. Continuous opening of additional data sets and updating existing data sets on date.gov.md

3.12. Publication of data on the progress of the implementation of national action plans from the PlanPro monitoring tool, used by the State Chancellery, in a data format opened on the data.gov.md portal

Responsible Institution: State Chancellery (according to the Moldovan open data legislation [104])

Supporting Institutions: Ministry of Education, Culture and Research, Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre, National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology, Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Integration State Chancellery, E-Government Agency, MiLab

Start Date: 1st quarter 2017

End Date: 2nd quarter 2018

Editorial Note: For the purpose of the IRM report, Commitment 3 was broken up into two separate commitments (see details in the General Overview of Commitments section). This is a truncated version of the action plan. For full action plan text, please refer to https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Moldova_NAP_2016-2018_EN.doc.

Commitment Aim:

This commitment called for opening up various data across the government, including geospatial data, data on the implementation of the Moldova-European Union (EU) Association Agreement, and cultural sector data, as well as organizing public consultations with data users and updating existing datasets. The commitment did not include actions on verifying the quality of datasets or measures to improve the practice of providing information in due time, as some civil society stakeholders interviewed by the IRM researcher for the midterm report mentioned.

Status

Midterm: Limited

Overall, the completion of the commitment was limited after one year of implementation. The geospatial data were published on the geoportal.md as planned. Additionally, though not part of the OGP plan, the update of the portal to comply with the EU’s Inspire standards was ongoing. [105] Additionally, national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI) legal acts were adopted in 2017, which ensure implementation of NSDI in the country. Update of datasets by the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications (3.6), was fully completed. While the Ministry of Economy (MoE) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration (MFAEI) had not started the implementation of this commitment activity (3.7) as formulated in the plan, reports on the Association Agreement action plan implementation were published on the MFAEI website, [106] though not on date.gov.md (3.7). The 10 datasets the Ministry of Culture set out to publish were not online at the end of the first year of action plan implementation (3.8). The Agency for the Law Courts Management [107] improved the National Portal of Law Courts (3.9), reducing the number of law courts portals from 44 to 15 webpages. [108] Also, the search criteria for court judgments were updated by adding five basic filters (case number, date of issuance, case name, case topic, and type [criminal, civil, administrative]).

MiLab organized an Open Data Camp in 2017 and consulted with open data users to identify their needs on the availability of data (3.10), though due to the lack of information this activity’s completion could not be assessed as higher than limited. Also, due to the vague formulation of activity 3.11, which refers to the general activity of opening data by all central public authorities, and the lack of a target number of datasets or specific datasets to be opened, the assessment of progress was not possible. Finally, though the government published on its website a report covering its 2016 activity, the State Chancellery did not publish the implementation data in open data format on date.gov.md.

End of term: Limited

At the end of term, implementation continued with several actions taken throughout 2018 to both determine open data needs (3.10) and identify specific topics which authorities should release in open data formats (3.11). In March 2018, the State Chancellery, the E-Government Agency, and the Youth Development for Innovation Foundation launched a survey, [109]^{, [110]} which was ongoing [111] until 31 December 2018; the survey questions were addressed to citizens, mass media, private sector and aimed at identifying specific needs of open data. The results of the survey were meant to be compiled in different areas of focus and sent to relevant authorities, responsible for opening specific datasets. [112] The preliminary results of the survey were used during the working sessions on open data organized with the central public authorities. In April 2018, the State Chancellery and the E-Government Agency jointly conducted working sessions with representatives of six ministries, [113]^{, [114]} including the subordinated agencies of these institutions. The aim of the meetings was to discuss open data content in the context of the central public administration reform and the need to update the datasets published on the government’s open data portal (date.gov.md), based on the suggestions of the survey respondents.

The government organized additional events to promote and discuss open data, contributing to activity 3.10, including:

• A three-month National Information Campaign called “Do you know what your Government does?” implemented by the State Chancellery, E-Government Agency and the “Youth Development for Innovation” Foundation (a Moldovan NGO) to promote open data. Working sessions with the central public authorities were organized within the framework of this campaign. [115] According to the government’s End-of-Term Self-Assessment Report, during this period of time the State Chancellery and the E-Governance Agency organized visits to the authorities responsible for publishing and ensuring access to open data, as well as information sessions in universities. [116]
• The NGO Open Government Institute, the State Chancellery and the E-Government Agency conducted a half-day workshop on open data in May 2018. The event was organized for public central authorities, mass media, and the general public. [117]
• Public Dialogue “Sharing data - a Need Turned into Reality” was organized on 3 October by the Government of the Republic of Moldova and the E-Government Agency. [118]

According to the end-of-term self-assessment report, geospatial data, as written in the action plan (3.5), were published on the geoportal.md, on https://www.cadastru.md/ecadastru, and on the http://geoportalinds.gov.md.

Though not part of the action plan, it is worth mentioning that the launch of a new/modernized national geoportal was postponed due to the failure of signing a support agreement with the donor counterpart from Norway. In this context, this activity was included in a new World Bank project, planned to launch in February 2019; [119] the work on the national geospatial portal represents the third component of the project. [120] The project will be implemented by the Public Services Agency in cooperation with the Agency for Land Relations and Cadastre. [121] The geospatial metadata catalogue, which was initially developed in 2016, was maintained throughout 2018 and will be further updated throughout the project.

For publication of open data on the Moldova-EU Accession Agreement (3.7) and on the cultural sector (3.8), datasets were published on date.gov.md by the institutions responsible for these actions (the MFAEI and the Ministry of Culture [currently Ministry of Education, Culture and Research]) in 2018. Related to Milestone 3.7, the submission of data on the implementation of the Association Agreement Moldova - EU on date.gov.md, a report was published by the MFAEI on 22 May 2018, [122] which contains updates for 2017. The government’s End-of-Term Self-Assessment Report [123] indicated that the MFAEI published reports on the implementation of the EU-Moldovan Association Agreement commitments on date.gov.md, however, the provided link is broken. [124]

Open data from the cultural sector (Milestone 3.8) for 2017 were posted in 2018 on date.gov.md, with more than 10 datasets posted, covering various aspects such as the activity of cultural houses (local clubs), the number of employees in the cultural sector, and registry of museums. [125]^{, [126], [127]} However, since there is no specific list attached to the action plan, it is hard to assess if either activity was completed as intended, as it is not known what type of data had to be published in 2017. The IRM researcher contacted the responsible person from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research, and though an explanation for the delay as well as additional information was promised, it was not received in due time to include in the report. Therefore, the IRM researcher cannot assess the completion higher than limited.

The Agency for the Courts of Law Management [128] progressed with improving the National Portal of Courts of Law in 2017 (3.9). Since the midterm assessment, the portal has integrated a zoom text magnifying function tailored for low-vision users. At the same time, the Agency [129] stated that they have also developed a more complex mechanism for access to portal information for the visually impaired. The UNHCR country office supported the development of the respective mechanism, which will be launched soon. However, there was no public information available for this during the research, and when the IRM researcher contacted the Association for Blind and Visually Impaired [130] from Moldova, it was not aware of these improvements and was not contacted by the public institution in charge. Additionally, a new version of the File Management Integrated Program, [131] a system in place since 2009 which secures the e-management of court files, was developed in 2018, as stated in the End-of-Term Self-Assessment Report, while piloting and the launch were planned for 2019. [132]

As concluded in the midterm report, the action plan did not indicate specific datasets or a target number of datasets to open and update (3.11) within a specific timeline. Statistical data on the date.go.md show that by the end of November 2018 there were 146 new datasets published and 333 datasets updated in 2018. [133]

For activity 3.12, the State Chancellery [134] stated that one dataset on the implementation of the Moldova-EU Association Agreement Action Plan was submitted by the MFAEI through the internal governmental PlanPro monitoring platform. [135] However, as indicated above, this link on date.gov.md is not functional and cannot be accessed. The report can be also accessed on the website of the MFAEI. [136] In 2018, the State Chancellery did not submit any dataset/file to date.gov.md. The activity foresaw publishing through the PlanPro monitoring and reporting tool implementation reports on all national action plans. In the End-of-Term Self-Assessment it is stated that “the monitoring and reporting platform “PlanPro” does not contain administrative/statistical data that could be placed in open format on the government portal http://www.date.gov.md)” and that the “State Chancellery published the activity reports, according to the domains of competence, [under] official website, in the “Transparency Decision-Making” module, Reports.” [137]^{, [138]}

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Marginal

Civic Participation: Marginal

Though opening more datasets improves access to public data, activities covered by this commitment do not sufficiently address problems related to availability or quality of datasets. The lack of clarity about what data will be opened by the government makes it difficult to assess progress, but also to understand the relevance of the opened data to the public. Some of the improvements of the National Portal of Courts of Law have created opportunities for civic participation (e.g., reporting on nonpublished rulings), but these are still limited.

A consultant from a Moldovan non-profit working in the justice sector, interviewed by the IRM researcher [139], shared that the filters added to the portal are not very helpful or do not function very well, as often court rulings cannot be easily found, and some cannot be found at all. The consultant concluded that access to court rulings had not improved much. [140] Prior to these amendments, information on court rulings was not centralized, as it is now. To make the search more effective, a single interface of all courts of law was created for all the webpages of the courts, facilitating access to the webpages of different courts. At the same time, the Agency has ensured that this can be tackled by launching an online reporting mechanism [141] (available on the Agency’s webpage), regarding court rulings that were not made public. However, in order to submit a notification regarding rulings which were not published online, one needs to know the number of the case and the exact court of law that issued it, [142] which the representative of the Legal Resources Center believes is counterproductive, as the number of the case is not always known, especially for rulings of public interest (i.e., high-profile cases). Also, one of the drawbacks of the portal is that there is no user’s guide to explain in accessible language how to search for the rulings, where the users should go to find different types of information and making the use of the portal more relevant for professionals in the field, rather than the general public (status as of November 2018).

One aspect which might have impacted the opening of data (at the time of writing this report) was the uncertainty of which organization is in charge of monitoring the quality and type of data to be published on the government’s Open Data Portal. Maintenance and upon-request support to ministries was provided by the E-Government Agency, a body founded and monitored by the State Chancellery. [143] Therefore, the unclear frequency of publishing data by different government authorities and the type of data planned to be published diminishes the usefulness of the date.gov.md for the public.

Carried Forward?

The commitment is carried forward in the new action plan as an umbrella commitment that comprises 10 different actions around the promotion of open data and access to government-held information, with more specific indicators of progress included.

. . .
Report content truncated. For remainder, please see the documents at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/moldova-end-of-term-report-2016-2018/