Open data from existing state portals

When we talk about open data that government agencies need to disclose, we often face the fact that there is no data in the form we need. Or, at least, so say those who must maintain databases and registries created by the state.



And indeed, there is data which, most likely, simply does not exist, for example, data on the borders of sections of post offices. In the world, for example, in the census of open data, the Open Knowledge Foundation is one of the most important data sets, but it is completely absent in Russia.



But there is another side to this medal. There are already established state portals and projects in which large databases are collected that are inaccessible in machine-readable form for citizens. And this is exactly the case when officials cannot say that there is no data, the only question is the quality of the data and their availability in a convenient way.

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Further I will write only about those portals and projects that are created and maintained with public money. And those that contain a lot of useful information.

OBD Memorial

Link: http://obd-memorial.ru





From the site we can learn that:

To date, 13.7 million digital copies of documents about the irretrievable losses of the Great Patriotic War period have been entered into the OBD from 38 thousand archives of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Central Military District, RGVA, the General Assembly of the Russian Federation, the regional archives of the Rosarkhiv and 42.2 thousand passports of military burials existing military grave sites in the Russian Federation and abroad.



Additionally, more than 1000 volumes of the Book of Memory have been downloaded to the OBD.



In total, the OBD has about 29 million records from archival documents (not to be confused with the total number of combat losses - 8.67 million people) and about 10 million records from the Book of Memory.



In other words, a large-scale work on digitizing data and transferring it to an online database was carried out at the state expense, but it did not provide any interface for working with data - neither database dumps, nor API with REST + JSON, nothing else that would allow analytical work on the data.



Why do you need it? What the state has not done, volunteers and developers who wish to do this can do geocoding of data, creating mobile applications and regional projects dedicated to the Great Patriotic War.

Single portal of public services

Link: http://gosuslugi.ru





It would seem that what could be more obvious than open data on topics that the state declares as one of the highest priorities. The availability of open data on public services can give us a lot, for example, search engines can embed them into their issuing interfaces, special mobile applications can be developed, the public services website can be reworked into a more convenient and practical interface, and for any online project in the regions The location of the authorities where the services are provided is very useful.

Portal TakZdorovo.ru

Link: http://takzdorovo.ru





Many probably remember this project created by the order of the Ministry of Health and Social Development. There it was supposed to make a lot of services for citizens, collect interesting information and organize a social network.

Personally, I confess, I dislike this project - I think that it is not a matter for the state to try to do projects that can be successfully created by business and public organizations.

But, in any case, a lot of information was collected on the portal, which could well be presented in the form of databases. Information collected on taxpayer money.



In particular, this data: recipes, exercises, addresses of institutions, tables of calorie foods and much more.

There are dozens of projects that could use this information and those that could be created on this data. And who knows, they would not have been made much better than what was previously done with state money.

Work All

Link: http://trudvsem.ru





On the information portal “Work in Russia”, at the beginning of the Ministry of Public Health and Social Development, and now the Federal Service for Labor and Employment places a huge base of vacancies and summaries collected all over Russia. This portal would be even more valuable if the market for such portals had not been formed for a long time and it is unclear how the portal created by the state could compete with commercial portals in this area.



However, data from there would certainly be useful. If the state provided API or regular dumps of the data collected, this would greatly facilitate the ability to create job selection services for so many startups and individual developers.

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Undoubtedly, our state over the years has created much more projects and portals where there is data that can be useful for all of us and which we want to receive. How to make them open?

First of all, it is necessary that they receive a public request. Personally, I am going to raise at one of the future meetings of the Council for Open Data.



On behalf of Information Culture, we will write to the authorities responsible for these portals so that they publish data dumps and disclose the data themselves under open licenses.

How can I help?

First, write and talk about it more often. There should be a clear and clear request to all these bodies - “we do not need your projects without open data”.



Secondly, direct appeals. In addition to the letters that we will write to them, you should always request data from them. If they refuse, we will be able to directly request them through requests to the Government and the Council for Open Data.



And, of course, if you know other important state portals where you need open data - write about them here in the comments.