[open-government] open data projects from Slovakia

[Zuzana Wienk]

Hello everybody!

Im new to these lists so Im writing to introduce us - a Slovak watchdog
organisation Fair-Play Alliance (We are a long term watchdog of public money
and political representation mainly investigating cases involving public
tenders, misuse of power or political elite and publishing results of these
investigations or run campaigns or try to prepare systemic solutions to
problems we identify).

Together with other IT people and activists we created a coalition in
Slovakia to push through open data as a standard in public service in our
country. We are currently working on a draft document for our government so
it would helpful for us to share experience and solutions.Our new government
seems to be open to these ideas. Recently our parliament just passed a law
oblidging all state public bodies to publish their contracts - is not
published they will be not valid. Anyone has 10 days to object against the
contract and it can be cancelled during this period without legal
consequences.



As for our organisation, we run couple of projects from this area. Im
sending basic information about them:



   1. Datanest – www.datanest.sk is a searchable list of catalogues of
   public data we have been collecting since 2002 thanks to freedom of
   information legislation in Slovakia from public bodies. We publish
   information on all possible flows of public money to private sphere (public
   tenders, subsidies, EU funding, tax pardons, grants etc.) and personal
   background in politics or public service (e.g. candidates in elections,
   ellected officials both on national or municipal levels, management of
   public institutions, donors in politics, registered NGOs, lawyers, auditors,
   prosecutors etc.). The application offers possibility to download raw data
   through basic API or to comment data. The code is open source and link to it
   is available and further developed here together with basic info on the
   project: http://datanest.fair-play.sk/pages/about_service . The idea
   originated in our organisation and the actual solution has been and still is
   developed by a group of programmers. If you want more info or get in touch,
   contact the project leader Eva Vozarova: eva at fair-play.sk.

      2. We initiated creation of an application or mash-up working with
data from our Datanest and visual register of businesses
          (www.vorsr.sk) that allows to type in a name of person and see all
public tenders where companies of that person became
          winning bidders. A prototype is available hete:
http://vorsr.fair-play.sk unfortunately only in Slovak language.

       3. We run a service www.politikaopen.sk It is a catalogue of
voluntary declarations of assets and interests of Slovak politicians
           and candidates in elections. The declarations are in much higher
standard than Slovak law requires and can be joined by
           any politician or candidate in elections voluntarily simply by
registering online and submitting a signed form giving us
           permission to publish registered personal data. The reason of
launching this project was a long-term frustration of civil
           society who could not convince Slovak parliament to make
standards on conflict of interest higher so we decided to create
           a positive example. The project is currently used by Speaker of
the parliament, Slovak prime minister and other government
           members and MPs. It became an important benchmark in any type of
elections, it is used by media who ask politicians
           pro-actively if they would join the project. It is only available
in Slovak language. The code is open source, it is beeing
           reviewed at the moment and will be published in 2011.

      4. In October 2010 we ran our first data competition – Fair Play Hack
Day. About 40 people joined a two day marathon to
          produce applications using our Datanest as a source. Prototypes
were presented but applications are still being developed.
          First links also in English should be available in couple of
weeks. Information on the competitions currently in Slovak can be
          found at: www.fair-play.sk/hackday .




Best regards!



Zuzana Wienk



Aliancia Fair-play

Západný rad 39

811 04 Bratislava



tel./fax: +421 2 5564 0131

www.fair-play.sk




__________ Informacia od ESET Smart Security, verzia databazy 5661
(20101130) __________

Tuto spravu preveril ESET Smart Security.

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