University of Nis, Faculty of Electronic Engineering, {natasa.veljkovic, sanja.bogdanovic.dinic, leonid.stoimenov}@elfak.ni.ac.rs
Abstract: In this paper we will provide a proposal for municipal open data catalogue model. Local governments have a vast amount of data, but not all data is publicly available. Local government policies define the data set that is publicly available. This dataset can change over time, and make data publishing more complex. Municipal data catalogues should ease the process of publishing, discovering and tracking the usage of public government data. Data sets that are being published differ among municipalities. This makes the process of better understanding and measuring e-gov 2.0 on the local level non-uniform. In this paper we propose basic data set categories for open public data. This basic data set can be extendable and should provide a better way for measuring and comparing e-gov 2.0 progress at the municipality level.
Keywords: open public data, local government, data catalogues, basic data set
Acknowledgement: Research presented in this paper was partially funded by the Ministry of Science of the Republic of Serbia, within the project "Infrastructure for Technology Enhanced Learning in Serbia (INTELIS)", ev. No. III47003.
pening public government towards citizens is one of the major goals recognized all over the world. Starting with 2009, the Obama Administration commenced establishing an unprecedented level of openness of the Government as a primary goal (Obama, 2009). This goal will be achieved when the government becomes transformed into a transparent, participatory and collaborative entity. Following the USA government steps, European countries are starting their own initiatives for government openness. The Belgian Presidency hosted a Conference in Brussels in December 2010 named “Lift-off towards Open Government”1. The main theme of the conference was Open Government and the implementation of the cross-border interoperability.
During the conference, the Malmö declaration was translated into a concrete 2015 Action Plan that will set out the e‐Government path for the following four years.
Volumes of government data are constantly increasing which makes publishing and managing governmental data a very tricky and demanding task. Governments on all levels have vast amounts of data, but not all data is available to the public sector. Data availability can vary greatly over time. It can be available for only a short period of time, considering public interest in data or its
"expiration" date, or for a very long time, in case of static information regarding some important procedures. However, it is not only necessary to publish data, but also to allow searching,
1 Lift off towards Open government, http://www.opengov2010.be
querying, filtering and downloading it, as well as reusing it for other purposes. This further leads to problems of data categorization and organization. The concept of open data has truly defined an open government but has also directed its growth towards data, rather than services, as it was the case in E-Gov 1.0. Data is a core feature of E-Gov 2.0, while free access to data is a core service of open government.
One very important product of government openness initiatives are open government data catalogues. Data catalogues offer users all available governmental data in one place. Each government department is responsible for defining its data categories, named datasets, and for publishing them through government data catalogue. No matter whether their scope is national, regional or local, they serve as a one stop shop data portals which provide available government datasets (Maali & Cyganiak & Peristeras, 2010) along with necessary metadata. Data.gov.us2 is contributing to the government openness by enabling people and organizations outside the government to find, analyze, compare and combine published data sets with other relevant information and is setting an example for other governments all around the world. Besides US open data portal, many other European portals are in development, both on local and state level.
The UK has launched a data portal3 for publishing government information and the Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia has an open data web site4 launched as a part of Reusing Public Sector Information Initiative.
Serbia has only just started to adopt open government concepts, and as a beginner in this area have a lot to achieve, learn and apply in order to accomplish the high goals set by neighboring countries. In order to facilitate the introduction of these newly defined concepts, we performed research on the current state of Serbian local governments and proposed a model for introducing open datasets and developing open data catalogues which would embrace all open government concepts. The model is being developed taking into account the current situation in Serbian cities and municipalities which have no data catalogue portals, and is based on the already existing best practices.
1. Open public data
Opening up the government towards citizens and businesses is one of the major goals recognized all around the world. The essence of this goal is data openness, data availability and data formats that enable its understandability and reusability. Open data is governmental data of public interest that is available without any restrictions and can be easily found and accessed. Opening up the government, however, needs to be pursued by enacting necessary legislative frameworks and directives related to free access to and publishing of governmental information.
On his first day in office, the President of the USA, Barak Obama, issued two memorandums.
One focused on the Freedom of Information Act5 and the other focused on transparency and an open government6. As the result of Obama’s Open Government Memorandum2, in which he intends to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and
2 US Government portal, http://data.gov.us
3 UK Government portal, http://data.gov.uk
4 The Autonomous community of Catalonia open data portal, http://opendata.gencat.cat
5 Executive Office of the President, “Freedom of Information Act,” 74 Federal Register 4693, January 26, 2009.
6 The White House, Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Transparency and Open
Government, Office of the Press Secretary, Washington, DC, January 21, 2009
Open Government & Open Data 197 collaboration (Obama, 2009), the Open Government Directive7 was issued later on the same year.
This directive requires executive departments and agencies to take the following steps toward the goal of creating a more open government: publish government information online, improve the quality of government information, create and institutionalize a culture of open government and create an enabling policy framework for open government (Orszag, 2009).
When it comes to the European Union, most of work in the area of open government is done by the UK. The UK Centre for Technology Policy Research published a report titled "Open Government some next steps for the UK" giving steps for implementation of open government in the UK (Centre for Technology Policy Research, 2010). The UK Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF)8 provides a policy and legal overview for licensing the re-use of public sector information both in central government and throughout the wider public sector. It sets out best practices, standardizes the licensing principles for government information and recommends the use of the UK Open Government License (OGL)9 for public sector information. The UK has also launched the open data web site data.gov.uk that offers free access to a huge amounts of public-sector data for private or commercial reuse under the OGL.
In Serbia, where an open government is concerned, initiatives are being raised but in a very shy manner. Government agencies and organizations are publishing varied data, some of them are of great importance for the public but a lot of data remains stored in internal databases without the ability to be openly accessed. At the state level different data of public interest is published but not at a centralized web portal. For example, we can take the example of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia. Statistical data, published by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, are currently only available in a non-reusable format. It would be of great importance for those who use this data for different analyses to have statistical data available in a machine-readable or reusable format. The situation at the local (city, municipality) level calls for even greater concern. Among Serbian municipalities there is not a well defined set of public data and there is no policy at any government level defining information of public interest to be made available to the public in a reusable and machine readable form. Because of this, data is often available in a non reusable format, and therefore is unsearchable and is not being integrated in the online data catalogue at any level (state, local or regional).
Being aware that local and state government data exists but that it is not consistent and there are no such acts that provide the publishing of data on Web portals, we will propose a basic open data set and a model for publishing government data on a municipal level.
2. Basic open data set
Open data portals around the world offer a vast amount of data to companies and citizens. This data often includes geographical information, transportation data, environmental data, statistics, demographics data, health data, etc. Each portal offers different data sets that directly reflect data availability to public disclosure.
Local governments in Serbia have in their internal databases miscellaneous data generated in an everyday government work environment. However, this data is in most cases poorly available
7 The White House, Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Open Government Directive,
Washington, DC, December 8, 2009
8 The UK Government Licensing Framework, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/uk-government-licensing-framework.pdf
9 The National Archive, Open Government Licence, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/
through Web portals to the public sector. The available data is mostly present in a non-reusable format. The most common information available through local government Web sites include:
budget plans, local statistics, city demographics, events and news, city acts, and overviews of constructed, planned and buildings under construction. Besides existing in a non-reusable format, local government data lacks consistency. In publishing government information, larger cities have much more data to offer than smaller or undeveloped municipalities. Data set categories are not defined, and every local government publishes information according to their own criteria. The third problem that arises is that local government data is published on local government Web sites along with other government information. It is especially notable that not a single city has a portal dedicated exclusively to publishing data of public importance. Because of differences in data sets, inconsistent categories and having no guidance for publishing governmental data, our idea is to propose basic data set categories as well as an open data catalogue model for local governments.
This will enable local governments to publish and easily manage data sets that will be available for reuse through open data portals. In order to define the basic data set that will be most suitable for Serbian local governments, we will pursue the research through four steps: considering best practices around the world, analyzing Serbian local government policies, reviewing internal databases and analyzing public sector interest in government data.
Step 1: The analyses of best practices around the world
Table 1 gives an overview of open data sets belonging to different data portals around the world.
As shown in Table 1, data.gov portal has a wide range of categories covering all issues at the state level. Other data portals with regional or local character have fewer data set categories. Most common data set categories are highlighted in the table and they include Health, Education, Environment, Employment, Transportation, Infrastructure, Government operations, etc.
Table 1: Open data sets in different countries
State / City / Region Data set categories
Edmond CA,
Open Government & Open Data 199
National Security and Veterans Affairs Wholesale and Retail Trade Business Enterprise Natural Resources
Foreign Commerce and Aid Information and Communications Labor Force, Employment, and Earnings Prices governments and they depend on many factors. For instance, the geographic position of the city
can define the data set. A city on the sea-shore will have a specific data set related to the sea, which is opposite to city located inland. Population and infrastructure of the city itself also affect available data sets. Cities with a developed infrastructure and transportation system will have much more data available for display as opposed to rural cities or municipalities.
On the municipality level differences in data sets exist among countries but also within the municipalities in the same country. This comes from the differences in location, infrastructure, municipality leadership and many other factors. For example, some cities offer public data sets organized by categories such as: city administration, transportation, demographics, education, events, etc. Other cities organize a vast amount of different public data in alphabetical order or by keywords, covering water issues, sanitary issues, street lighting, street cameras, schools, parking, biking lines, web map services data, parks, etc.
Step 2: The analyses of Serbian local governments
During 2009, the Faculty of Electronic Engineering in Niš, implemented the project of selecting the best ICT practices in Serbian cities and municipalities, with the support of the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities and USAID’s Municipal Economic Growth Program. The project involved 24 towns and municipalities that had voluntarily signed up in the best practices competition for one (or more) of the following categories: public services for citizens, public services for businesses, internal services. The results of the project are published as a case study entitled "Best ICT Practices of Serbian Cities and Municipalities" (Stoimenov & Markovic &
Stanimirovic & Bogdanovic & Antolovic, 2009). Here we would like to present partial results, concerning the existing electronic services in Serbian local governments. Table 2 gives an overview of the most common e-services provided by local governments.
Table 2. The most common e-services in local governments in Serbia
E-services for citizens E-services for businesses Internal e-services Virtual registry office Environmental permits E-notary
Voter’s list Building permits E-sessions
E-Notary GIS E-document management
As can be seen from the table, these are services oriented towards citizens and businesses as well as internal governmental services. They all can be classified according to the nature of problems they are addressing. For example, Environmental permits could be placed within the Environment category, Building permits within the Infrastructure category, internal governmental services could all be placed within the Government Operations category, and so on. There we can see the connection between the open data sets analyzed within step 1 of the research and the analyses of Serbian local e-services.