Albanian Government is engaged in creating an Open Data website by the Action Plan indorsed to Open Government Partnership in April 2012.  It is very easy for the Albanian Government today to create its Open Data portal. This is because there is already a model built by the Albanian Institute of Sciences AIS. In addition, during these two years, AIS built Open Data audience and community. And we’ll wait to see how the Government will work on this, but Albanian Government has not set a deadline and till now nothing concrete has been done.

For “Open” to function, for Open Government to be something concrete, there is the need of creating an ecosystem that consists not only of technical standards, but also democratic standards. The process of Openness it is not only ensuring machines, computers, or programs for the digitalization of the public administration. The process of Openness should change the relationship between the government and the citizen. For this reason, the role of independent experts and civil society representatives is very important. The governments will likely call the process successful after they spent money on New Technology, but this is not enough.

What is the role of Civil Society in building an Open Data Community?

What it takes, is for people to better understand better how the government works. This is done in order to ensure civic reaction and participation. It also needs to encourage the governments to use standards that make their work more transparent. Some Balkan countries as Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania and Slovak Republic are engaged through the Action Plans for Open Government Partnership in creating Open Data Portals. It is a big difference between Open Data Portals build from the people, independent experts, and Open Data portals that will be built from Governments of countries that have young democracies, like some Balkan countries.

The Albanian Government, when it launches its Open Data portal, will publish first data on the growing number of internet users, on museums’ number, on the growing number of tourists who visit Albania and other data that in most of the cases will be data of success. What is for sure is that the Albanian Government will never publish data like this: Maternal mortality in Europe is 5-7 mothers per 100,000 live births while in Albania is 31 per 100,000 live births, so five times higher. Even compared with the region, Albania has a very negative indicator. It ranks as the country with alarmingly high maternal mortality in the region. In our country (Albania), the mortality of mothers per 100,000 births, is two times higher than in Montenegro, about four times higher than in Macedonia and fifteen times higher compared with Greece for the same number of live births.

The question that rises is: is the Government interested in publishing correct data (expenditure per capita) on health, when Albania has the most negative indicators in the region? Albania is the last on the list, with USD 549/per capita and with a big difference with the second one, Macedonia, around 30% less. Montenegro stands even further, with a total budget per capita on health twice bigger than Greece that tops the list with a budget five times bigger.

 

For small countries it is very important that civil society works more with Open Data. Of course, in order to see the results, you help people understand better how they are being governed; help activists to fight for more money for public health; encourage policymakers to try for a better governance.

It is the duty of independent experts to help people learn and be part of the process for better governance. It is the civil society's duty to use this big power given by the new technology of information. The data is powerful and let’s use it. The leaders of the Civil Society are more interested in openness than the politicians or officials. This means that the civil society has a big role in persuading governments to be transparent and to offer not only open data, but also open services for their citizens.

 

The picture of the protest on July 23 1921 has been published by The National Library of Ireland on FLICKR. It forms a part of public domain.