Open Data Board: Transport Disclosure

Photo source: Open Government website

On May 24, a regular meeting of the Council for Open Data was held, the agenda of which was the disclosure of transport data. Compared to previous meetings, “blunders” were less, this time no one requested additional funding in the amount of the agency’s half budget , and an emotional assessment of Roshydromet’s activity was already written in the official press release on the Open Government website. It remains only to go through the agenda items and talk about published and planned datasets.

The speakers at this council were representatives of the Ministry of Transport, Rosavtodor, Roszheldor, Rosmorrechflot, Rostransnadzor, Rosalkogolregulirovania and the Ministry of Agriculture. It is necessary to admit honestly that, unlike financial, I practically did not encounter transport openness, therefore such a variety of transport federals was news to me. The reports, at first glance, looked prepared, but a significant part of them was assigned to state services and anti-corruption activities.
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1. Open Data of the Ministry of Transport

The Ministry of Transport is in charge of two information systems, one of which relates to ensuring transport security, data from it, for obvious reasons, cannot be disclosed, and the second is software for the operation of the site mintrans.ru. The “Open Data” section and feedback form have been created on the website of the Ministry of Transport. Formation and actualization of datasets are done manually. To date, 35 data sets are available, the Ministry of Transport does not have information about applications (services) created on the basis of open data, requests from the media and reference groups have not been received. Therefore, if you are doing projects based on their data, or you need some datasets, feel free to write about this in the feedback form - all the more, according to the speaker, they are open to dialogue with the developers.

The following sets are potentially ready for disclosure:

• general register of regular bus routes between subjects of the Russian Federation;
• register of regular international bus routes;
• list of checkpoints across the state border of the Russian Federation.

Problems that prevent the development of open data (according to the Ministry of Transport) are standard: the need to clear data from information with limited access (for example, to remove personal data, information that is restricted), the lack of automatic unloading, and problems with data consolidation.

The most interesting was in the comments that followed the report:

Firstly, according to the version of the Ministry of Transport, everything that they were supposed to publish was published, but (!) This list can be updated at the request of programmers.

Secondly, in the opinion of one of the participants of the meeting, Moscow is better than London because there are 80 transport applications in Moscow, and only 60 in London. An interesting question is how does the attractiveness of cities or even the level of development of the transport system relate to the number of transport applications?

Thirdly, M. Abyzov voiced an interesting idea of ​​how to “force” regional transport agencies to publish open data - you must indicate this requirement when allocating subsidies from the budget.

2. Open Data of the Federal Road Agency

In the Federal Road Agency and its subordinate institutions there are more than twenty information systems functioning. Automatic unloading of open data was implemented in five of them: an archive of scientific and technical developments, operational accounting of scientific and technical developments, an industry fund of technical regulations and standards, an address and telephone directory of organizations of road facilities, a branch library of scientific and technical documents.

There are several systems, information from which cannot be published for general use, for example, data from the Unified State Road Register cannot be opened, because “the provision of information contained in the EDRAD is charged in the manner prescribed by the order ...”.

To date, 150 datasets have been published , the number of views of which exceeds 44,000, but only 308 downloads. In my opinion, it is worth considering either the relevance of published datasets, or the intuitive clarity of the interface.

Examples of published data:

• Road graph indicating the state body and the company responsible for the maintenance of sections and objects of transport infrastructure;
• Transport and operational state of federal public roads;
• Information about federal public roads, transferred to the trust management of Avtodor;
• Key social infrastructure facilities;
• The list of public roads of federal significance (classification);
• Repair plans.

Potential for disclosure (on the basis of statistics of citizens' appeals and requests of reference groups) are the following data:

Issues of transport security;
Information on the development of innovation Rosavtodor;
Publicly available information from the information systems of the Federal Highway Agency.

The urgent problems Rosavtodor considers the need to delete information restricted access. According to them, after this the value of the data decreases, and the sets become unclaimed. With the definition of demand among representatives of Rosavtodor, the truth is difficult: for example, in the discussion of the report there was an amazing thought that, in the speaker’s opinion, no one needs open transport data, and before publishing open data “I want to understand the user of open data: who and how will use?". M. Abyzov’s answer again corresponded to international practice: “Open everything that is not limited (open by default) or provide the results of a competent sociological research on the relevance of data”.

3. Open data of Roszheldor

The presentation of Roszheldor traditionally begins with a listing of subordinate institutions, functions, government programs in which the state body participates, and public services. Total Roszheldor provides 23 services, 22 of them, according to the agency, are of low demand. As part of its activities, Roszheldor processes spatial data of land plots for which a decision is made on reserving, withdrawing, changing the type of permitted use. The storage and processing of this data is currently not automated. From information systems, uploading open data sets is done manually.

To date, 7 data sets have been published , containing a total of 52 indicators and 15,000 lines. In total, three requests were received from the Open Data Portal, two of which were not within the competence of Roszheldor, and the third requested information in text form (in this text, in my opinion, it again calls for a request for data of interest to you).

Until the end of 2017, Roszheldor plans to implement an automatic update of datasets from information systems, and expresses actual problems with a formula suitable for all government agencies “there is no one and nothing for that.

Roszheldor’s proposals for increasing the effectiveness of openness activities are peculiar and elegant:

First, it is more efficient to request some priority socially important data sets in the bodies that consolidate them: the economic activities of federal executive bodies are from the Russian Ministry of Finance and Treasury from the Electronic Budget system, the list of public services from the Ministry of Economic Development from the federal register, information about income, expenditures, on property and property obligations of civil servants - from the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media from the “Common Information Management System for the Personnel Management of the State Civil Service of the Russian Federation”; of the federal Treasury, and data on state planning - from the portal of the state programs of the Ministry of Economic Development.

Secondly, Roszheldor would be glad not to duplicate datasets on his website (and would only place them on the OD Portal of the RF), therefore it is necessary that the AIS “Monitoring of State Sites” would award points for placing datasets on the federal portal (another confirmation that in Russia, ratings are one of the main motivations for openness).

4. Open data of Rosmorrechflot

One of the main information systems of Rosmorrechflot is KIIS MORE. It is designed to integrate information resources in the field of shipping safety, monitoring, accounting and classification of ships. The MORE system interacts with more than 40 sectoral, national and international information systems, but does not have the status of a state, and its funding comes from extrabudgetary sources. At the moment, the question of the possibility of anonymizing data on individuals and companies for publishing information from this system is being considered.

The development of another system designed for certification of members of crews of ships, was started by Rosmorrechflot together with Rostrud in the framework of Hackathon 3.0 (I do not know other examples of government participation in hackathons as developers, not organizers or partners).

As for the current work and plans for openness, the “Open Data” section is currently updated and updated, work is being done to automatically synchronize the site with the federal open data portal, it is planned to publish 28 data sets, to conduct an industry hackathon, and to introduce in the medium term openness and publication of data sets by subordinate organizations.

5. Open Data Rostransnadzor

Rostransnadzor’s openness plans include the creation of an “open data set containing information about IP, which, among other things, maintains information resources, registries and registers that Rostransnadzor operates with.”

In addition, by the end of the year it is planned to create a register of comments to the posted sets from representatives of reference groups (which means that Rostransnadzor also needs to send its proposals, wishes and requests) and expanding the list of open data.

It is strange that improving the work of the press service, as well as the plan for placing press releases for each data set, are also included in the openness plan, and the list of requested data sets is generated only on the basis of requests from the media (judging by the report).


The structure of the Departmental plan of activities of Rostransnadzor in the field of open data

6. Miscellaneous

Rosalkogolregulirovanie with an “informal approach” to openness (the informal approach is the assessment of the speaker, what it is, I could not understand from the report) and the Ministry of Agriculture were different at this meeting. I do not have any comments on them, but you can get acquainted with the content of the discussions in a press release to the minutes of the council, which are published here .

Instead of conclusions

I repeat that, in my opinion, this time there were fewer incompetent statements; all the reports of the transport departments were prepared according to a single structure and a single terminology. There were, of course, points that do not directly relate to openness, but statements of readiness to accept requests and suggestions from reference groups make us hope for the best.

Additionally, it is worth noting that the publication of real-time data, for example, about the location of public transport, was not discussed at this council. Perhaps this is due to the fact that they mainly belong to the municipal or regional levels of government. At the same time, these data are in demand, as evidenced by the popularity of the Yandex.Transport service, but in Moscow are inaccessible to other developers (in St. Petersburg, as far as I know, access to them is possible).

In general, attending each meeting leaves a slight bewilderment - the council oversees the disclosure of data by federal government agencies, but is in no hurry to open their data: records of meetings and materials for meetings are not published at all, and minutes are available only for individual meetings. It would be nice if the openness of the ML Board would be an example and de facto standard for the work of other government agencies.