Open Data (RO0065)

Publication of open data
2018-2020 Lead implementing agency/actor Ministries, subordinated and/or under coordination authorities and agencies (according to the Annex) What is the public problem that the commitment will address? The publication of open data managed by public authorities and institutions is one of the modern means of increasing transparency and administrative efficiency, but the process is rather slow. On the one hand, the administration does not provide enough data and, on the other hand, the developers and CSOs does not re-use the datasets already published. Commitment description What is the commitment? The centralised publication on data.gov.ro of a minimum of 535 open datasets, as set out in the Annex. Datasets can be new or updates of older datasets. How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem? Increasing the quality and number of open data sets published by public institutions Increasing the reuse of open data Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values? Increasing transparency and efficiency in public administration, as well as encouraging the participation of all stakeholders in the re-use of the published open data. Milestone activity with a verifiable deliverable Responsible agency / partner Start Date: End Date: Publication of a minimum of 535 open datasets (as per Annex) as set out in the Annex 2018 2020 Encourage and support public institutions in organising competitions on the reuse of open data (data challenges), for the benefit of both citizens and administration. SGG 2019 2020 Identification, in consultation with civil society, and publication of relevant new datasets SGG 2019 2020

18. Publication of open data

Commitment Text: "The centralised publication on data.gov.ro of a minimum of 535 open datasets, as set out in the Annex. Datasets can be new or updates of older datasets."

Milestones:

18. • Publication of a minimum of 535 open datasets (as per Annex)
    • Encourage and support public institutions in organising competitions on the reuse of open data (data challenges), for the benefit of both citizens and administration.
    • Identification, in consultation with civil society, and publication of relevant new datasets

Start Date: 2018 ...............................................

End Date: 2020

Editorial Note: The commitment text is abridged. The full text can be found in the OGP 2018-2020 national action plan.

Context and Objectives

This commitment is continued from the third action plan (2016-2018). The publication of open data managed by public authorities and institutions is one of the modern means of increasing transparency and administrative efficiency, but the process is rather slow. On the one hand, the administration does not provide enough data, and on the other hand, citizens, developers, and civil society organizations do not reuse the datasets already published. This commitment aims to address both challenges, furthering access to information and civic participation. Some of the milestones are specific enough to be verifiable, with the first including an exact target number.

This is the fourth reiteration of this commitment, [160] which makes it a positive—but small—step forward. According to an interviewed government representative, in the absence of hard rulings that mandate the permanent opening of public interest datasets, this soft-law mechanism remains relevant and useful. [161] Still, the 535 target includes some already opened datasets that public administrations are committing to keeping open. [162] Also, the need-based hackathons [163] in Milestone 2, while possibly supporting a creative dialogue between users and providers of open data, do not provide clarity with respect to their operationalization. Consequently, the potential impact of this commitment as written is minor. However, the actual improvements to open data publication will depend on the content and publication of the collected suggestions for high value datasets (Milestone 3). [164]

Next steps

The IRM researcher recommends the following to help with the implementation of the commitment and with the design of a more ambitious commitment in the fifth action plan, if it is carried forward:

• The General Secretariat of the Government (SGG) could make an action plan with more clarity with respect to the organization of targeted hackathons. For example, SGG could first identify the public administration partners that have voiced needs for which they lacked the necessary technical skills resources (e.g., the citizen’s budget brochure, a system to ensure that different open research repositories are interoperable, projects that GovITHub was not able to start or to finish), and assess whether a problem suited for a hackathon can be formulated around this need.
• For a commitment with higher potential impact, the government could create a National Strategy on Open Data, to replace the fragmented vision [165] that guides the open data efforts in Romania. By doing so, the government would give the needed impetus to the open data efforts and comply with the requirements of the EU for an integrated vision on open data. [166]

[160] Interview with Larisa Panait, General Secretariat of the Government - Open Government Partnership point of contact (OGP contact, 15 April 2019.

[161] Interview with Larisa Panait, OGP contact, 15 April 2019.

[162] Annex is available [in Romanian] at http://bit.ly/2kLoktT.

[163] SGG will first ask the administration to formulate a specific application that would be used in day-to-day practice, and only then ask the crowds to design it through a hackathon.

[164] "Chestionar data.gov.ro", OGP, available [in Romanian] at http://bit.ly/2mplQSj.

[165] Law 109/2007 transposes the EU Public Sector Information Directive, OUG 41/2016 mandates the administration to publish their datasets on the open data portal, the Strategy for the Digital Agenda of Romania refers to the OGP and open data duties, and membership in OGP helps push for publication of open data.

[166] European Data Portal (2018) "Open Data Maturity in Europe", available at http://bit.ly/2kGyfAS.

18. Publish open data

Substantial

For details regarding the implementation and early results of this commitment, see Section 2.3.

Aim of the commitment

This commitment aimed to support the publication of open datasets by public authorities and institutions to support administrative transparency and efficiency. [101] This commitment also aimed to utilize civic participation to identify and open new public interest datasets by supporting public institutions in organizing hackathons to (re)use the opened datasets.

Did it open government?

Marginal

According to a General Secretariat of the Government (SGG) representative, the public administration and institutions published 700 new datasets of relevance to the public on Romania’s open data portal (data.gov.ro). [102] However, no activities to support public institutions to organize the planned competition on the (re)use of open data were organized. [103] At the same time, the Ministry of Labour and Social Justice (MMJS) lacked the expertise to organize a hackathon on its interactive social services maps and could have benefitted from the expertise of SGG. Thus, the commitment saw substantial, rather than full, completion.

Although this commitment represented a continuation of previous Romanian commitments on open data, its implementation led to positive changes. The 700 new public interest datasets published to data.gov.ro was a 41 percent increase in the overall number of datasets compared to before the start of the fourth action plan. This number also exceeded the 535, as originally envisaged in the action plan. While some reflect old commitments and updates, over the course of the action plan, the number of datasets published on the open data portal has continuously increased.

As a result of this commitment, datasets are no longer earmarked by the government as “high-value” in advance. Instead, the new rating functionalities of the open data portal allow users to collectively rate the quality of each dataset. The IRM researcher observed that many datasets shared on the portal during the implementation of the action plan have high ratings (higher than 3.5/5 stars). The “Data Requests” section now provides an efficient means for data users to identify relevant new datasets. As of 1 March 2021, citizens have placed 20 operational requests for new or updated datasets, and 10 requests received guidance or the requested dataset from the responsible authorities. ^[108]

Through the new functionalities listed above, this commitment has helped citizens directly request the opening of new datasets, directly rate the quality of the opened datasets (thereby earmarking those they consider “high-value”), and businesses and developers to (re)use the already opened data. However, an evaluation of the portal from April 2021 by SGG’s Directorate of Information Technology and Digitization and the Romanian Association for Quantitative Studies found several factors limiting the impact of the available data on the portal, despite the portal’s growing usage by citizens. [109] Namely, some datasets are not updated with an acceptable frequency and predictability, some essential datasets are not complete, and public institutions holding important datasets do not publish on the data portal. Furthermore, in the European Data Portal’s 2020 Open Data Maturity Report, Romania ranks as the 22^nd most data mature country among the EU27+ countries and continued to be classified as a “follower” on open data. [110] Consequently, this commitment has led to positive but marginal improvements in open data practices.