Knocking out to government agencies or what to do if in the open data someone is wrong?

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As is known, the quality of open data (in particular, data on state finances) often leaves much to be desired . In some cases, this does not prevent them from being used; in others, comments on data sources or additional information are required.

Sources of open data are mainly government agencies, when interacting with which there is at least one big problem - 30 days to answer. Not all programmers have enough patience, and for representatives of commercial companies, such an expectation is unacceptable. But even if you have waited for an answer, it is far from always to be happy - sometimes you do not get answers to all the questions asked, sometimes you are offered to contact other government agencies, which requires additional waiting. Let's try to systematize what other ways there are to “reach out” to government agencies on issues related to their open data.

Zero method , available only for the "elect" - to find a friend or acquaintance of a friend in the state agency of interest . Yes, this method can not be called official, but, unfortunately, it is the most effective (I can assume that this is due to the "mentality" or "traditions in public administration"). In some cases, this is the only option to relatively quickly get the data or comments of interest, therefore networking and attending events are vital (as a true introvert I write about it with pain).
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The first and most traditional way is official addresses . Most often, they can be sent via the electronic form on the website or to the official e-mail (it’s good that you don’t need to use Russian Post or bring the appeals personally). A definite plus of this method is the regulation of the law 59-FZ , according to which you are obliged to respond. Cons - the answer will have to wait a month. Samples of requests for information can be viewed on the IRSI website , but the basic rules are simple: be polite and specific, it will be useful to refer to the regulatory framework.

Example 1. Appeal through the electronic form to the Federal Treasury . When using data on state contracts by Infoculture analysts, it was noted that in the sample under contracts where the supplier's TIN = TIN of Sberbank, contracts with physical contracts are found. individuals and companies that clearly do not belong to Sberbank. Unable to find an explanation for this phenomenon, a corresponding request was sent to the Federal Treasury, which is responsible for the data of the State Procurement Portal. The answer came a week later (this is very fast for a government agency), but it turned out to be useless: the appeal was reviewed, the person filling out the documents on behalf of the customer was personally responsible, and public procurement implemented warning controls. What to do with the responsibility of the customer and why the warning control does not work remains unclear.

FC answer


After a cursory analysis of the data, it turned out that municipal organizations (especially kindergartens) most often indicate incorrect data, so errors in filling out documents can be attributed to low IT literacy (IMHO).

Example 2. Contact via e-mail to the Municipality of St. Petersburg . This is my favorite request, because in it the state body made all the mistakes that could be made, and all the experts on the problem believed that the municipality was right. The problem was that in the budget of the Palace Municipality the same code was used to designate two different municipal programs (which is unacceptable according to the Budget Code). For me, this question was fundamental, because when analyzing the budgets of St. Petersburg we took for axiom the uniqueness of the combination “municipal program code” - “name of the municipal program” and the presence of this error influenced data processing. The first email to Dvortsovy remained unanswered. I called them back in four months, without receiving a response. The girl who answered the call stopped breathing when she heard that they were silent for 4 months (and nobody canceled the 59-FZ). She transferred me to the secretary, the one to the accountant, and according to the version of the "accountant" on the site "there were erroneous data, everything in her data is in order and they will publish the correct files on the site." Of course they did not publish anything. And, after the second call, they said that they are fine and they will send an explanation by mail, because I do not understand the budget classification.

Clarification of the Palace MO

The municipal program (according to the Budget Code) is encoded with 7 characters. The response states that the Palace MO is encoded by 11 characters (including the code section and subsection). In order to prove the existence of an error, it was necessary to contact the Finance Committee of St. Petersburg, after sending the answer to which Palace acknowledged an error (after consulting with the Finance Committee of St. Petersburg), and promised to correct it in 2016. Along the way, they agreed to resume the publication of their budget in the XLS (I consider this an additional bonus).

It is interesting that in the Committee of Finance of St. Petersburg opinions were divided and in parallel with the official answer, according to which the codes could not be repeated, I received an unofficial opinion, according to which the codes could be repeated.

There are two conclusions. First : the budgets of municipalities are really a lot of mistakes (and typos). Second , there are difficulties with the correct understanding of the budget classification by municipal authorities.

Example 3. Request for data on municipal budgets of the Leningrad region . On the example of St. Petersburg, it turned out that the budgets of 100 municipalities for their official sites to collect for a very long time and tiring. It has been suggested that they can be requested from the regional finance committee. The assumption turned out to be a failure: the municipal government is not the third level of power and is not subordinate to the regional one, therefore only municipalities have municipal data (it is useless to request them from the regions and the Ministry of Finance). But it seemed to me an unusual process of communication with the Leningrad region. All appeals are sent from the Leningrad region website (and not directly from the website of the state agency of interest) and get into the “call center”, from which they are sent to the necessary state bodies. All the next day, a representative of the Leningrad Region called me up and asked me to know in which city I live (I have no idea why this was needed and why this question was not in electronic form), but after that the answer was received in 4 (! ) of the day.

At the meeting of the Ministry of Finance with the developers, which took place on June 16, it became clear that if there are “problems” with the municipalities, either the General Prosecutor’s Office should be contacted (or written to V. Putin). I look forward to, as he and the other addressees will be happy to receive a bunch of letters from the Infoculture with such important problems throughout the state as typos in the municipal budgets :).

The second way of communication is to write to the post office for questions on open data (for example, opendata@minfin.ru from the Ministry of Finance), administrator or technical support of the site, leave the question on a special forum (for example, the Treasury forum on budget.gov.ru ). In this case, there is a chance that you will get an answer faster and your question will go directly to the people responsible for the open data, and when using the forums, the answer will be available not only to you, but to all interested. True, such letters are not always equated with official appeals, and the likelihood of not receiving any reply is still there.

The third method , which is gaining particular popularity in June, is participation in hackathons and contests . One of the hackathons will be held this weekend in St. Petersburg and will be devoted to financial data, the other in Moscow in July, and the well-known FinanceAnd competition BudgetApps needs no introduction. State bodies not only begin to participate in such events, but also organize them themselves. And this means that you not only can get direct access to representatives of state bodies at the event itself (believe me, it’s much harder to get away from unexpected questions asked to live than to come up with a reply within a month), but also to get an additional communication channel (request form or special mail). The value of this method is that not only do you need state bodies, but they also need you - at least, nobody canceled reports and PR, but in the ideal case this is accompanied by the sincere interest of state bodies in obtaining meaningful results. And even if representatives of state bodies are not present at the event, you can always contact mentors and experts who can connect you with them or suggest something.

There is another, exclusive, way of communicating with the Ministry of Finance - these are meetings with developers who are in their second year (I'm not sure that you can always learn about them in advance, but we will assume that this is so). One of the first meetings took place a year ago, the most recent one last week. And, in my opinion, they are starting to “work” - there are more reports and they are more meaningful, government agencies have a little more knowledge of the subject area (open data) and are beginning to understand what they are talking about, representatives of commercial companies are preparing meaningful reports. The only negative thing is that the Ministry of Finance’s “ informational message ” about these meetings is still suffering: the meeting lasted two hours, there were many reports, interesting questions were answered, and only the 20-minute report of the Ministry of Finance was informative (and it’s written that even those interested in open data is boring to read).

If none of the described methods did not help - do not despair, contact not the source, but the community, experts and projects . For example, you can ask us about everything that relates to government contracts and public finances (and, in general, to open data) ;-).