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

Thu Mar 7 16:26:29 UTC 2013

Julia,
    each dataset has it's specific issues - I will try to describe all of
them.

*Campaign and elections finances data* - available as PDF reports at
Russian Election comission website. It's mostly irrelevant and most people
don't trust it much. We have too large shadow economy here in Russia and it
helps to avoid campaign financing limitations.

*Election results* - available as HTML reports. These results effectively
parsed by many NGOs and activists here in Russia, but we don't have any
machine-readable data from government yet. NGO's that used this data (it's
GOLOS and few others) are under government pressure since new Russian laws
are very strict about  financing of NGO from foreign sources.

*Government contracts* - completely available for free as machine readable
opendata. It's huge, good and complete dataset about 200-300 GB
uncompressed. This data is very actively reused by business and
anti-corruption NGO's.

*Asset disclosures* - most of government agencies publish this data as DOC,
PDF and rarely as XLS files. So it's 1-star or 2-star data not better. We
have ongoing discussion how to organize this data machine readable and to
create all-Russia asset disclosure government website. I can't say that
Russian officials at middle level like this idea, but I think that it could
be implemented as political decision. And sure we have a few NGO projects
that parse unstructured data (like Scraperwiki project does) and creates
civil society asset disclosure websites. One such project I made 2 years
ago. It's calls - www.publicprofit.ru another one made by  Transparency
Int. Russia and it's called Declarator.

Other datasets are also available - we keep watching all of them. We helped
to complete Russian part of open data census - http://census.okfn.org

Best Regards,
  Ivan Begtin

2013/3/7 Julia Keserű <jkeseru at sunlightfoundation.com>

> Ivan, this is great, thanks for letting us know!
>
> Could you give us a bit more detail on politically relevant datasets and
> their disclosure policy, if any? (Campaign and finance data, election
> results, government contracts, asset disclosures, etc.)
>
> Best regards,
> Julia Keseru
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Andrew Stott <andrew.stott at dirdigeng.com>wrote:
>
>> 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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>> > open-government at lists.okfn.org
>> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government
>> > Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-government****
>>
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> -- ****
>>
>> 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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>>
>
>
> --
> Júlia Keserű
> International Program Coordinator
>
> 1818 N Street NW, Suite 300
> Washington, DC 20036
>
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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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