Open data closed - Economics - Kommersant
The Ministry of Economy temporarily closed the open data portal - as Kommersant was explained in the department, this is necessary to restart the resource, taking into account market demands. The portal, which was one of the key elements of the Open Government, was launched in 2014 on behalf of the then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. It was assumed that on the basis of open data, services would be created for the convenience of citizens and to improve the quality of the living environment. However, a significant part of the departments approached the placement of data formally - the problem, according to the estimates of the Accounts Chamber and experts, will persist even now.
Open data portal data.gov.ru temporarily closed, Kommersant was told in the Ministry of Economy. He will have to take a data inventory, upgrade functionality and move to a single digital platform Gostekh.
“The portal will be rebuilt. The goal is to understand what market requests are for its device, what functions are needed, what it lacks, ”Vladimir Voloshin, director of the department’s digital economy development department, explained to Kommersant.
According to him, in its current form, the portal is “not entirely applicable” and it is not advisable to make changes to the existing architecture. In the near future, the Ministry of Economy plans to discuss the issue of the targeted content of the resource - for this, an expert working group is being created under the department. Estimated renewal will take less than four to six months.
The portal was launched in 2014 on behalf of Dmitry Medvedev, who at that time served as prime minister. Open data is government information hosted in a machine-readable format and free from copyright. Such data can be sets of statistical information, registries, government databases, on the basis of which a business can create mobile applications or electronic services for citizens. The portal was conceived as one of the key elements of the Open Government system. As Mikhail Abyzov, Minister for Open Government, explained (now he is a defendant in a criminal case, he is charged with organizing a criminal community and fraud on an especially large scale, arrested on March 26, 2019), based on open data, “convenient products that increase the quality of human life and the quality of the environment”.
However, according to the results of the 2018 self-examination authorities, the openness of "open data" of most federal ministries and departments left much to be desired. On average, authorities met the standards of maximum openness by 20–40% and did not fully represent the needs of their target audience, formally fulfilling the requirements for publishing data.
According to the report "Openness of the State in Russia" for 2022, which the Accounts Chamber is preparing jointly with ANO "Infokultura" and the Center for Advanced Management Solutions, problems with open data remain.
Almost all agencies have implemented most of the design requirements for their open data portals. However, in some cases, the approach to publishing information remains purely formal. For example, only administrative sets that are not of public interest, or sets that do not contain useful data, some of which consist of only one or a few lines, are hosted.
