Open Government Partnership

Context
Regarding the management and provision of open data, the lack of a clear licensing framework often leads to the enforcement of “terms of use”, attribution claims, limitations on dissemination, which act as barriers to public use of data. Opening up data includes the clear marking of public information as government property and its provision without restrictions.
Many public bodies own information systems with vast amounts of data, that have cost a lot of money, and information is kept locked because either they are not given access to the infrastructure by the Contractor, or there is lack of know-how on obtaining this information by systems operators. Thus a huge volume of data remains untapped.
Data quality is an important issue, since it is quite often that organizations choose to publish data in ways that do not contribute to further re-use of information, or render it excessively difficult, for instance reports, pdf files, excel files, scanned tables, etc. The publication of a guide written in plain and clear language will substantially improve the way government data is provided.
Commitment description
Implementation of regulatory amendments that will facilitate further provision of open data managed by public bodies. This commitment entails the following 3 interventions:
1. Publication of instructions (based on current legislation) requiring the inclusion of open data dissemination on designing publicly funded IT projects.
2. Publication of licensing framework for public data.
3. Publication of open data dissemination guide. Preparation and circulation to the central and local administration of a guide that will describe the obligations, procedures, methodology and technology for publishing open data. The guide will be written in clear and simple language. It will demonstrate the value of open data, the formats for publication and standard methodologies for optimal operational coordination of the process within each public body.
OGP values
Access to information
Implementing bodies
Implementation: Ministry of Administrative Reform and e-Governance (MAREG) in cooperation with the Information Society SA, Managing Authorities, Local Authorities Bodies.
Objectives
The main objective is to remove technical and legal barriers which prevent the publication of public sector data as open data.
Means for implementation
The commitment will be implemented internally by MAREG.
Milestones — Timescales
• Publication of open data provision guide (December 2014).
• Guidelines for including open data provision on the design of IT projects (June 2015).
• Disclosure of open data licensing framework (June 2015).