Increase amount of open data (RO0077)

Which public issue will be addressed by this obligation? The publication of open data managed by public authorities and institutions is one of the modern means of increasing transparency and efficiency in the administrative field, but this process is difficult. On the one hand, the administration does not provide open data in appreciable quantities, and on the other hand the civil society does not use / reuse the alreadyexisting ones.

Description of the commitment What is the obligation? Centralized publication on data.gov.ro of open data sets, according to the Annex (TBD). Datasets can be new or updates to older datasets.

How will the fulfillment of the obligation contribute to the solving of the public problem? Increasing the quality and number of open data sets published by public institutions Increasing the degree of reuse of the open data

What is the main objective? Increasing transparency and efficiency in the administrative field, as well as stimulating the degree of participation of all actors of society in the reuse of data published in open format.

Goals/activities Responsible (institution / partner) Start date End date 38 1. Publishing open data sets (according to Annex -TBD) In accordance with the ANNEX 2021 2022 2. Analysing the current legislative framework in order to standardize and clarify the coordination tasks and the procedures for data collection, publication and updating of the data sets. Proposed result: Directive transposition law and necessary related regulations (Government Decision, Open Data Strategy) GSG/ADR/civil society 2021 2021 3. Organizing bimonthly working groups, including with the participation of the community, to identify high value data sets, progress in the field, needs at the level of institutions, but also the community, supporting the reuse of open data Proposed result: organizing at least 6 working groups annually GSG/ Ministries, subordinates and / or coordinating authorities / civil society 2021 August 2022 4. The implementation in the national open data portal of a mechanism for publishing derived data sets, as processed by re-users GSG 2021 August 2022 5. Organizing an annual open data reuse competition - RO Datathon Proposed result: 1 edition - 2022 GSG / civil society / business environment / academia 2022 July 2022 6. Identifying and centralizing the data sets published on the portals of the institutions, which should also be accessible from the national portal in order to ensure interoperability at a European level GSG / civil society permanent permanent

Action Plan Review

Commitment 12: Open data

Lead institution: General Secretariat of the Government (SGG)—Directorate for Information Technology and Digitization, Authority for the Digitization of Romania

For a complete description of the commitment, see Commitment 12 in Romania’s 2020–2022 action plan here.

Context and objectives

Open data has been a reoccurring topic across Romania’s OGP action plans. During the previous action plan (2018–2020), Romania published 700 new datasets to its open data portal, data.gov.ro, and created functions that allow users to more easily rate the quality of data and to request new datasets. [28] However, there remains room for improvement. In the European Data Portal’s 2020 Open Data Maturity Report, Romania ranked as the 22^nd most data mature country among the EU+ countries and continued to be classified as a “follower” on open data. [29] In addition, 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. 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. [30] These issues have limited the utility of the portal for Romania’s open data community.

This new commitment will further advance open data in Romania. According to the action plan’s annex, public institutions will publish approximately 400 new datasets. [31] The SGG and the Authority for the Digitization of Romania (ADR) will create a mechanism on the portal for publishing derived datasets created by portal users. SGG and ADR will also identify and centralize the datasets published on public institutions’ websites which will also be accessible from the national portal in order to ensure interoperability at a European level. The commitment entails consulting Romania’s open data community in order to support the reusability of the portal. This involves a bimonthly working group with community and public institutions to identify high value datasets for publication. There will also be annual open data reuse competitions (“RO Datathons”), an unfulfilled activity from the previous action plan. As such, in addition to the emphasis on transparency, this commitment is relevant to the OGP value of civic participation.

Finally, the commitment involves transposing the EU’s 2019 Open Data Directive into national law. [32] The directive obliges EU member states to publish all suitable data and documents as open data, subject to exceptions set out in the directive. SGG, ADR, and civil society organizations will analyze current legislation to standardize the coordination and procedures for data collection, publication, and updating.

According to Romania's OGP public repository, Expert Forum (one of the main CSOs in Romania working on open data) proposed a commitment analyzing the legislative framework of public allocations and procurement, and increasing this data’s availability on the national portal and the website of the Ministry of Public Works, Development and Administration (MLPDA). [33] In their proposal, they stated they would like to “increase the degree of interaction between the MLPDA and the public.” According to SGG, this proposal was taken into consideration while drafting this commitment. [34]

Potential for results: Substantial

Transposing the Open Data Directive into national legislation and related regulations give this commitment substantial potential for changing Romania’s open data practices. Romania has lacked compulsory rules around open data publication for public institutions, and irregular, non-standardized publication hinders open data re-use. [35] For the first time, Romanian public institutions will have binding rules on which high-value datasets they must publish, publication regularity, and data interoperability. The directive calls for making high-value datasets available free of charge, machine readable, available via application programming interfaces and, where relevant, available via a bulk download. [36] If the transposition exceeds the anticipated provisions in the EU directive, this commitment could result in the publication of a larger number of high-value datasets compared to what was available before the action plan. This could also help fill existing gaps in the data.gov.ro portal, where many key datasets are missing or incomplete, and many of those published are not updated regularly.

According to the point of contact at SGG, Romania’s transposition will go beyond the provisions of the directive by providing a larger number of high-value datasets beyond the categories identified in the EU directive [37] and by instituting sanctions for noncompliance. The government will implement the norms of this law, and the point of contact at SGG will develop a complementary national strategy. The exact details of these provisions and sanctions are unknown, but these could be important steps for ensuring greater ambition of the commitment as well as ensuring compliance across public institutions.

According to two major Romanian CSOs working on open data, implementing the new EU directive is of particular interest; it could change the status quo as it is binding and embeds EU monitoring. [38] The other activities in the commitment are either ongoing initiatives or will likely be more modest changes. As of July 2021, the data.gov.ro portal has over 2,300 datasets from 108 institutions; this commitment will add 400 datasets and the previous action plan exceeded its anticipated number of new datasets published. [39] The bimonthly working group could be valuable in gathering Romania’s open data community to strengthen open data practices. However, interviewed civil society representatives were unsure of which civil society actors the government plans to target for inclusion or the potential influence the working group will have on the process. [40] In addition, centralizing data from public institutions’ portals could positively impact accessibility, but there is little information in the action plan on the steps in this process.

Opportunities, challenges, and recommendations during implementation

According to a civil society representative on the multi-stakeholder forum, Romania possesses a vibrant open data community, including civic tech NGOs, investigative journalists, think tanks, and data enthusiasts. [41] While previous OGP commitments have improved open data, harnessing the opportunities of this community remains a challenge. This current commitment includes several initiatives that, if successfully implemented, could improve Romania’s publication practices as well as how the government collaborates with civil society in this process. However, its long-term results will largely depend on the level of buy-in by civil society stakeholders into the open data process.

The deadline for Romania and EU member states to transpose the Open Data Directive was 16 July 2021. [42] Although Romania held public consultations and a workshop on the draft law, [43] OGP civil society stakeholders expressed to the IRM that they were only marginally involved in the debate around Romania’s draft law. [44] Therefore, it is particularly important to ensure that stakeholders are actively engaged in implementing the directive and in the other activities of this commitment so that their priorities are heard and pursued. To this end, the IRM recommends the following:

• Provide opportunities for regular consultations with civil society and open data experts to oversee implementation of the open data directive in Romania. Data users should be afforded opportunities to participate in and provide feedback on implementation of the open data directive. For example, while developing the national strategy for implementing the directive, SGG can consult with data users to better identify gaps in high-value datasets and which public institutions are not fulfilling their open data requirements. Preferably, the bimonthly working group could serve this purpose, depending on its mandate and influence.
• Ensure that the bimonthly working group has robust and representative participation and clearly articulate its rules and procedures. The working group under this commitment should include as wide a range of stakeholders as possible. It may be helpful for SGG to actively target and invite open data users to join the groups, including those who have not been involved in past OGP initiatives. In addition, the mandate and rules of this group should be clearly articulated, and it should be afforded the highest level of influence over Romania’s open data policies.
• Provide clarity for the hackathons (“RO Datathons”). The IRM reiterates its recommendation from the 2018–2020 design report with respect to the hackathons (the first being planned for 2022). [45] Specifically, SGG could identify public administration partners who have voiced needs for which they lacked the technical resources and assess whether a problem suited for a hackathon can be formulated around this need.
• Publish more data on COVID-19 and healthcare procurement to the nationalportal. According to a representative from Expert Forum, additional data on procurement, particularly in healthcare, would be useful for their work. Commitment 9 in the current action plan already aims to publish data on COVID-19 infections, but Commitment 12 could go further by adding healthcare procurement directly into the gov.ro portal, in line with OGP guidance. [46] Expert Forum has already produced several reports and materials on this topic [47] and in September 2021, the Ministry of Health begun publishing data on public procurement for healthcare to the portal. [48]
• Include data from municipality portals in the national portal. The commitment calls for centralizing the data published on the portals of public institutions, but it may also be important to centralize data from municipalities as well. For example, Timisoara City Hall launched the city’s first open data portal in May 2020 which will contain data on environmental quality, the impact of COVID-19 and vaccinations, demographic data, and data on education, culture, and health. [49]