[open-government] A lot of new Russian news and open government projects

Wed Mar 6 15:16:56 UTC 2013

Ivan

Thanks for this further information.  I had been struck by the same point as
Daniel.

There are some links which suggest that some government information is
already being released on an "open" basis (and in a few cases Creative
Commons licences are being used) - is that right?  The licence for the
President's own website [1] looks as though it is in the right direction too
(although it could be more explicit in some areas, such as whether
"reproduction" includes derivatives).

[1] http://eng.kremlin.ru/about/copyrights

It's not unusual at the start of an open data initiative to find that
governments already make information available for non-commercial uses -
often that is actually useful in that it establishes that there is no
difficulty in principle about releasing the information into the public
domain.  In my experience earlier limitations on commercial uses often have
come from an early official cautiousness and a wish to proceed on a case by
case basis - before the benefits of Open Data were understood.   

I've tried (with the help of Google Translate) to understand some of the
links about Creative Commons licences and their compatibility with the
Russian Civil Code, but I'm afraid that I did not really comprehend it.  In
particularly it was not clear to me whether there were particular issues
with the way Creative Commons works (the Voynikanis study also reports
earlier issues with French and German law) or whether there is a more
fundamental problem with making intellectual property "open".  I'd be
grateful for any pointers.

Regards

Andrew Stott 

From: open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Ivan Begtin
Sent: 05 March 2013 09:16
To: Daniel Dietrich
Cc: Open Government WG List
Subject: Re: [open-government] A lot of new Russian news and open government
projects

Hi Daniel.

Sure that's what we do and russian NGO dedicated to freedom of information
help us. Just it's not so easy to do. We have some articles of Russian Civil
Code that oppose Creative Commons. Some explanations here -
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Russia

Since this problem is not yet solved we don't have any data provided under
open licenses like Creative Commons or ODbL.

Right now we have some limitations for government geodata - it's provided
only for non-commercial usage. 

But we hope to find solution and to promote Creative Commons and other open
licenses here in Russia.

Best Regards,

   Ivan Begtin

2013/3/5 Daniel Dietrich <daniel.dietrich at okfn.org>

Thanks for sharing, Ivan! This looks very promising. Could you perhaps
explain a little more on

> "1. Open licenses are not adopted yet and do not conform russian law"

Do you have some examples for open and non-open licensing of gov data in
Russia? Maybe its worth contacting the people in charge? Thanks!

Daniel

On 3 Mar 2013, at 18:54, Ivan Begtin <ibegtin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> last year here in Russia we actively promoted open data and open
government initiatives, started new projects and right now we see and review
a lot of open government projects lauched by government agencies.
>
> Unfortunately most of these projects are only in Russian so I suggest to
use tools like Google Translate to get more information.
>
> First of all we launched 2 new CKAN based open data catalogs:
> - OpenData Hub - http://hub.opengovdata. We moved all datasets from our
OpenGovData.ru website to the CKAN based repository. Also we loaded a lot of
new data and
> - Open police data - http://data.openpolice.ru - it's special data hub
with crime statistics, police organizations, police budget and so on. It's
part of OpenPolice project - http://www.openpolice.ru
>
> At the same time russian government agencies also started publishing open
data and new projects appeared not so long ago:
> - Moscow city administration open data portal - http://data.mos.ru -
announced 3 weeks ago. It has about 140 public datasets. Most datasets are
geodata.
> - Open data "promotion website" - http://opendata.bigovernment.ru it's
part of russian federal government initiative "Open Government and right now
it includes documents, ideas, cases and other topics related to the opendata
>
> And even more! Last week Russian Ministry of Finances announced
http://budget.gov.ru  - all-Russia open budget / open spending portal. it
provides a lot of information about russian budgeting system, provides open
data about budgets and other budget and spending information.
>
>
> Also we have ongoing process of publishing open data by Russian federal
government agencies. As it's planned we will have not less then 500
valueable datasets published till 13 july 2013.
> It's one of the goals for newly established Open data council under
Government Commision for "Open Government".
>
> Me and other co-founders of our NGO "Informational Culture" are members of
this council and we keep promoting open data principles.
>
> Sure we still have a lot of issues like:
> 1. Open licenses are not adopted yet and do not conform russian law
> 2. Not so many political open data available (like election results,
campaign finances and so on)
> 3. Hard to get census data - Russian statistics agency is very far from
openness.
> 4. We don't have much information about our projects in English so we are
quite isolated. Sure we read a lot about all open data projects around the
world, but not so much about Russian projects known outside of Russia.
>
> But future is brighter now.
>
>
> --
> Best Regards,
>    Ivan Begtin
>
> Director of NGO "Informational Culture"
> email: ibegtin at infoculture.ru
> phone: +7 499 500 96 58, +7 910 426 68 83
> website: http://infoculture.ru

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-- 

С уважением,

  Иван Бегтин

Директор НП "Информационная культура"

email: ibegtin at infoculture.ru

phone: +7 499 500 96 58, +7 910 426 68 83

website: http://infoculture.ru

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