[open-government] A story about russian transparency, open data and USAID

[Ivan Begtin]

Hi everyone.

Not a long time ago Justin Arenstein shared a story about Tech Camp in
Vilnus and understanding of open data by it's participants. As you may
remember I was sceptical about DepOfState and USAID ability to engage
technical people.

So now I have a story to share on same topic.

Here in Russia USAID is going to lauch Code-a-thon. It's something like
2-days hackaton for transparency, civil engagement and so on. It was
announced on behalf of Medvedev - Obama comission, officially known as
U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Comission.

Before launching this Code-a-thon in Russia they decided to initiate
teleconference between russian and US experts to discuss most important
topics and ideas related to Russian transparency. So happened that they
invited me too since I already created too many open government projects
here in Russia.

And my impressions about that:
1. Lot's of US officials and no one Russian official. I've seen at least one
person from Department of State and 4 persons from USAID, but no one Russian
official presented.
2. Likely they invited at least 2 persons from Russian Yandex IT company,
but all others russian experts were just civil activists from Transparency
International and similar organizations who just don't really understand
tech topics, open data and so on.
3. At the same time open data was one of key topics of discussion and I
actively explained them that it's nearly impossible to get any good results
from contest or hackaton without having open government data and being
focused on problem solving.
4. One guy from USAID had a long speech using words "transparency" and
"accountability" too much. About 20 mentions of each word.
5. Some of US experts were actually impressive. Especially Tom Lee from
Sunlight Foundation.
6. During teleconference of of organizers from SecondMuse created mindmap
with all topics that were discussed. It was about :
- Open Data
- Voting transparency
- Education
- Citizen Reporting / Engagement
- Urban planning
- Public Financial Transparency
- Corruption Awareness

And about final results
1. Since no one Russian official was during this meeting actual status of
Codeathon and this discussion is unknown.
2. Actually event it's not transparent. Nothing appeared on public, except
of what I wrote in this text. No video, no meeting minutes and so on. I
don't really undestand such type of transparency.
3. Discussion was 14 jule and 19 jule they sent all persons who was invited
a mind map with topics that were discussed. Mind map was made using
Mindmeister service that keeps all history of changes. And it was easy to
find that topics - "Open Data" and "Corruption Awareness" were removed by
guy from SecondMuse who initially created this mindmap. Two days ago I asked
persons from USAID who organized this event from Russian side about "is it
technical mistake or where is a reason for USAID to avoid such topics?" and
haven't got any answer.

>From my personal opinion, nor USAID, nor Department of State personell ready
to understand what is open data and value actual transparency. I think that
they avoid such topics since they don't understand them and I think that
they use "transparency" only as a word for speeches and not as something
important to implement.
So it's not so much diffrent in comparison with Russian officials.

-- 

Best Regards,
  Ivan Begtin

email: ibegtin at gmail.com
twitter: ibegtin <http://twitter.com/ibegtin>
facebook: facebook.com/ibegtin
personal website: ivan.begtin.name
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