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

Mon Mar 19 04:43:20 UTC 2012

Dear Lucy,

thanks for your reply.

Actually here in Russia we have two competing initiatives of Open
Government. One by Medvedev, another by government officials and they don't
mix yet. The final result will be known soon, right after ongoing political
transformation of Russian government.

Thanks for invitation to OKFestival. I already sent this info to open data
experts here in Russia and I hope that they could join this event.

About open data. We don't have much of platforms here in Russia since open
data ideology is not yet popular here. It took for me about 2.5 years to
explain it at least to some officials and experts here. At the same time we
have some Semantic Web related google groups, my blog as of discussion
places and for now W3C Russia starts promoting Linked Data standards here
in Russia. Well actually I do it for W3C Russia right now.

I think that discussion list could be helpful for us to launch
communications. I know lot's of people who would like to join and to
subscribe, especially if it will help to communicate other russian speaking
people from international communities. We have really a lot of Russian open
government experience to share. Just it could be unusual since russian
specifics of governance.

Open Data Handbook - yes, I think it will be helpful for as. I keep looking
for people in Russia who could help as to translate.

Actually we have ongoing process of registration of our non-profit
organization to support projects related to Open Government, Open Data and
crowdsourcing. It will be done next month and we are going to launch some
initiatives here in Russia.

It will be:
- number of contests for developerts
- educational events to about how to extract and re-use open government data
- support of translation and publishing books about open data,
crowdsourcing and open government
- community building here in Russia
- launching and supporting projects about "undestandable government" it's
closely related to Plain Language movement, about explaining how government
processes organized and so on.

Best Regards,
  Ivan Begtin

2012/3/17 Lucy Chambers <lucy.chambers at okfn.org>

> 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
>

-- 

Best Regards,
  Ivan Begtin

email: ibegtin at gmail.com
twitter: ibegtin <http://twitter.com/ibegtin>
facebook: facebook.com/ibegtin
personal website: ivan.begtin.name
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-government/attachments/20120319/152ce2e0/attachment-0001.html>