[open-government] Some thoughts about Russian Open Government and Open Data vs. Open Data Protocol

Sat Mar 17 15:33:43 UTC 2012

Dear Ivan,

I am pleased to see this initiative. It will be interesting to see
whether the initiative continues under Putin (everything on the site
is still branded with Medvedev). I think the fact that individuals are
happy to put their names and faces to the the initiative, is a
positive.

I would be very interested to see whether any of the members of the
working group would be interested in joining us for Open Government
Data Camp at OKFestival, at present, we are discussing the possibility
of some sessions around the OGP, so that could potentially be a good
opportunity to include them in the discussion. One of the aspects of
holding the event in Finland that I was most excited about was the
proximity to Russia and hoping that we would get greater participation
from Russia.

Regarding conversation around Open Data in Russia, what platforms and
forums are people currently using to circulate ideas, prototypes? If
it would be at all helpful, we could set up a mailing list for Open
Data in Russia and start circulating ideas in Russian language to
engage people in the debate more widely - inside and outside
government. I (and other Russian-speaking members of the OKFN team)
would gladly help to facilitate discussions. It could also prove
useful to think about translating the Open Data Handbook into Russian
- if this is something you would be interested in, I would gladly also
help out.

Please let me know, and keen to keep this thread alive,

Lucy

2012/3/12 Ivan Begtin <ibegtin at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> Not so long time ago here in Russia president Medvedev launched government
> working group dedicated to create "Open Government system". One of the goals
> of this working group is to prepare Russia to join Open Government
> Partnership.
>
> It's quite strange government body with a lot of officials and business
> lobbyists and it completely concentrated on social, economical, e-government
> and government performance issues. Nobody from civil society takes part in
> this working group, some experts including me participate in so called
> "subgroups" related to different topics - innovations, social development,
> IT-infrastructure and so on.
>
> They even prepared first time presentation about it. I've published it here
> - please take a look
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2519200/alldoc/rus_opengov_official.pdf
>
> You may find that this all is very far from opendata and open government in
> any meaning since our officials try to focus on government performance,
> services and other non-transparency and non-opendata issues. It's full of
> bureaucraticy and vendors.
>
> I was invited to be member of the Innovations subgroup and as I see most
> people (99%) of all experts doesn't ever understand what is open government
> and open data.
>
> For example today I had a long discussion with one of working groups members
> who was absolutely assured that opendata is "OData" (Open Data Protocol)
> developed by Microsoft. He also thinks that using OData for exchanging data
> G2G or G2B even if data is disclosed and confidential - it is "Open Data
> paradigm". For me it looks like lobbying specific company and also great
> misunderstanding what open data is and how it differs from protocols,
> standards and so on.
>
> Even Open Government Partnership declaration is not enough to explain it
> since membership in it allows countries to choose commitments in a way as
> country officials want.
>
> So right now this is serious challenge for me to convince them why open data
> is important and why it should be government policy and part of any
> government iniciative.
>
> To be honest I don't really know how to change it, but I still hope that
> it's possible.
> So I will appreciate  if you could help me by advice.
>
>
> --
>
> Best Regards,
>   Ivan Begtin
>
> OpenGovData Russia - http://www.opengovdata.ru
> Linked Data Lead at W3C Russia - http://w3c.org.ru
> personal blog: ivan.begtin.name
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> open-government mailing list
> open-government at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government
>

-- 
Lucy Chambers
Community Coordinator,
OpenSpending & Data Journalism
Open Knowledge Foundation
Skype: lucyfediachambers
Twitter: @lucyfedia