Macedonia: Start of Open Data Initiative through the Open Government Partnership

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Macedonia: Start of Open Data Initiative through the Open Government Partnership

Thursday, 09 February 2012 10:12

The agenda for creation of Open Government Partnership Action Plan for Macedonia has been revealed at a multi-stakeholder meeting held in Skopje on January 30, 2012.

Open Data is important part of this concept, as the Macedonian authorites designated creation of Open e-Services a priority in e-Government development.

In 2011, 50 countries made public commitments to the principles of Open Government: transparency, accountability, and citizen participation as part of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) -- a new global initiative for better governance. 41 OGP countries, including many World Bank clients, are in the process of defining the scope of their commitments and Open Data is expected to be key part of these country action plans.

Macedonia started the process of joining the OGP in August 2011. In December, Government representatives lead by Minister for Information Society and Administration Ivo Ivanovski, alongside representatives of the civil and business sectors, as well as the academic community, took part in the Global Dialogue on the role of Open Data in opening and transforming governance conducted through video-conference, with discussions also spreading via Twitter hashtag #openDTA.

As part of its efforts to join the Open Data Partnership, Macedonia is in the process of adopting an OGP Action Plan, and World Bank office in Skopje hosted another meeting between varios stakeholders on January 30, 2011. According to the Goverment representatives, the process of adoption of the Action Plan will continue with the following activities:

Formal approval by the Cabinet (during this week)
Forming of Working Group in charge of drafting the Action Plan
Open consultations organized by the Government to enable participation of civil society, business sector, academia and all other relevant stakeholders in the activities of the Working Group
Workshop for the Working Group to finish the final draft of the Action Plan
Presentation of the Action Plan to decision makers through high level workshop

The above process will take place during February and March, and the final version of the Macedonian OGP Action Plan will be officially presented on April 15 at the Annual OGP Conference in Brasilia.

The government representatives stressed that the process of creation of the Action Plan will welcome participation and input by civil society organizations, the business sector and the academic community. The input of the non-governmental stakeholders could prove invaluable, especially in the area of setting up priority topical areas to be covered within the Action Plan, and also in helping the Government identify which of its datasets should be opened first, thus enabling quick results through benefits to organizations that would use, analyze and visualize the data for the benefit of the citizens and consumers.

The World Bank representatives indicated that WB intends to continue to support Macedonia's OGP partneship by enabling knowledge sharing and networking. One aspect of this process will be creation of a Community of Practice that would enable different stakeholders to continue working on the opening of data after the adoption of the Action Plan, which would reflect during the process of evaluation of the progress of Macedonia within the Partnership by the end of the year.

Metamorphosis Foundation serves as a global partner for Macedonia within the Open Data Initiative founded by the World Bank.

Tags: open data , open government partnership , open e-services , open data initiative