Open data in Ukraine. Who wins?

“Imagine: you have a car with a steering, wheels, and all other vital parts. But at the same time, you do not have the equipment that would show you speed, mileage, fuel level or temperature in the passenger compartment. Every time you want to get the information, you have to request a service station for it. Closed data is the same,” says Mykhailo Shmieliov, Microsoft’s Director for Technological Policy.

As Shmieliov explains, with the adoption of the Law “On Access to Public Information” Ukrainians now are able to get such data. However, every time they must submit an official request, formulating precisely the piece of information they need. “This is simply wrong. You would not use the car that needs a service call every time. There is an opportunity for rapid growth of socially useful technological projects, which would use IT as a tool to convey a variety of information about the state and its officials.”

Recall the course for democratic reform announced by the government past year – and the EU Association Agreement in particular. The public administration reform in order to ensure transparency and efficiency of government was written down in many documents. Among such documents are the Parliament Coalition Agreement and the Strategy for Ukraine Development in 2015. The crucial part of such reform is the opening of government data.

Additionally, in early March, Parliament adopted the draft law “On Amending Certain Laws of Ukraine regarding the access to public information in the form of open data.” As soon as the law comes in effect, every government agency will be obliged to submit all the information, accumulated over the years, into one comprehensive and computable database – data.gov.ua, which was created by volunteers a year ago.

The world, and Europe in particular, began opening the data long ago. For the first time in Ukraine, the discussion on how this process would take place in Ukraine, what mistakes were to be avoided and, after all, what would be the benefits for Ukrainians in adopting open data, took place at International Open Data Conference, attended by Ukrainian and foreign experts.

Generally, the benefits fall under one of the two categories: social and economic.

The former is that the access to public data will hand Ukrainians more tools to control the government – both central and local. The government handles huge amounts of money – in particular, the income of state enterprises, the taxes, and the international financial aid. Public information on government income and expenditures will help each citizen to know where their money went.

For example, IT experts in the UK created the portal “Where does my money go?” in 2010. The initiative aims for transparency and public participation in government expenses by providing analysis and visualization of the relevant information.

Another thing is that open data is one of the most important tools to combat corruption. Everything will be revealed concerning what property the particular official has, what income and from which sources they receive. In February, the Parliament adopted the Law “On the open use of public funds,” which also requires a single data portal to be created, in order to publish the information on public procurement, provide the register of legal entities, entrepreneurs, higher education institutions, cities’ Master Plans, budgets etc. Over time, experts promise, this portal will also include the information from the treasury bills.

However, the laws adopted are only the first step. Currently, government employees, in cooperation with NGOs, must develop a list of priority information sets and design a general standard for publication.

The second advantage of open data is the new business opportunities. By the way, demosEUROPA agency and Warsaw Institute for Economic Studies estimate that the overall effect of embracing open data for EU member states by 2020 might amount up to 1.9 percent of their annual GDP.

CityTransport is one of such business projects. This is a mobile application that provides a kind of interactive map of Kyiv electric transport. “Of all the means of public transportation, we use subway, high-speed city train, and tram the most. Busses, trolleys, and marshrutkas (fixed-route taxis) are also a good form of transport, but their schedule is hard to predict at this moment. And the approximate schedule for electric high-speed transport might be devised. Therefore, we created this application to ensure that people at least to some extent would have the opportunity to plan their time in an urban environment as well as their movements in the city,” says Anton Moyseienko, one of the project initiators.

The project started back in 2012. Now more than 1,500 people use it daily and the total downloads of the application exceed 12,000. When the project was only starting, Google applications, widely known today, did not exist, and Yandex offered information on subway movement only.

“But today the project is not working. We are unable to keep up with Google and Yandex. However, I have assembled a team of three people and we are improving the old application, turning it into the travel companion search engine – as joint commuting is very popular today. Our services evolve over time, but they still continue to benefit the people,” Moyseienko says.

In the end, the most important question regarding open data remain – will the data be used by Ukrainians themselves? After all, it requires a bit of effort to use the public information properly. And that’s the time for the public to develop a new tool of effective government control, and for the business – a range of new and exciting startup ideas.