Open Data Council: Related Data Working Group, Openness of FIU and Rosleskhoz

At the end of September, a regular meeting of the Open Data Council was held ( official press release ). The agenda included open data from the Pension Fund of Russia and the Rosleskhoz, as well as the creation of a working group for the development of related data.

1. The Pension Fund of Russia (PFR) , whose activities can be found in its annual reports , discloses data from 2015 and today publishes 42 open data sets on its own initiative. The list of datasets, sets and passport formats are approved in the Order of the Board of the Pension Fund of Russia No. 554 p of 19.11.2915 “On the Open Data of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation”, which I could not find in the public domain. Practically all selectively viewed data sets consist of 1-10 lines and contain extremely generalized (aggregated) data, that is, their practical use, in my opinion, has little meaning and is not required.

The Open Data Council recommended the FIU to publish disaggregated data, indicate the contacts of the responsible persons and interact with the reference groups when publishing the data. It was also suggested that the FIU conduct hackathons to obtain applications and services based on their data. According to the Council, the cost of such hakatons is zero, and you only need to pay for the result. In fact, this is not entirely true, since the organization of a quality event requires not only financial, but also labor costs. Other extra-budgetary funds (FSS and FFOMI) and non-state pension funds were recommended to compile and publish their data. Already now on the sites of the territorial MHIF (for example, St. Petersburg ) one can find detailed and interesting statistics on the work of polyclinics and hospitals, services rendered and the number of visits by citizens. True, this data is usually not machine-readable.

2. The data of Rosleskhoz have already been discussed at a meeting of the Open Data Council this year. Then the question was raised about the lack of publicly available information about the quarterly network, which is necessary for the Federal Forestry Agency to publish data. To date, information about the quarterly network is classified, and, unfortunately, for half a year nothing has changed, so this question has been raised again. Reports by representatives of the Rosleskhoz, Roslesinforga, the Federal Agency for Forestry and the World Wide Fund for Nature can be summarized in several points:
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1. Work is underway to unify the forms of inquiries and provide statistical information and study the geoportals of the regions, among which the leaders are the Komi Republic and the Kirov region.
2. Part of the data Rosleskhoz does not publish, citing the Forest Code, according to which some information is provided only on a fee basis.
3. A separate report was devoted to the Roslesinforga geoportal , a link to which the speaker did not consider it necessary to provide either in the materials that were sent by mail before the meeting of the Council, or in handouts, and dictated it only after a question from one of those present. It was very difficult to perceive the report on the rumor without being able to see it or at least screenshots.

Despite this, the activities and participation of the Rosleskhoz (and its Public Council, the elaboration of reports and materials which are respected) in the Council on open data, as last time, leaves a positive impression and hope for the emergence of new datasets. The reports are structured, they are not read out verbatim, and the speakers announce the problems that prevent them from publishing more data. Of the plans voiced by the Rosleskhoz, I was interested in his intention to consider the possibility of publishing all the lease agreements and a map of free forest areas.

3. The Project Office of the Open Government presented guidelines for the organization and planning of activities in the field of open data. I hope that they will be published in the public domain, because I didn’t find the time for a month and a half to study and comment them in detail)).

4. The most interesting item on the agenda, in my opinion, was the report and the proposal to create a working group on the development of linked open data at the Open Data Council. Several authorities have already tried to publish their data in a related format: for example, the Ministry of Culture and the Tula open data portal published data that formally corresponded to the syntax of RDF, but in fact there was no semantics in them. The most competently related data was published by the FSSP of Russia, which based on the British ontology of organizations ( Organization Ontology ) prepared an array of data with information about employees and their contacts. In my opinion, these data are not the most interesting for conversion into a format related, but there are no complaints about their structure and semantics.

The Open Data Related Open Data Development Working Group of the Open Data Council, the creation of which was approved by the Council (and by now, a work plan and a group have been prepared) will deal with the following areas:

1. The development of standards for the presentation of related data (secondary open data), which should take place in a consortium or working group.
2. Dissemination of international experience (for example, W3C) and successful cases, analysts. Methodological support focused on reducing technological barriers for open data consumers and publishers.
3. Development of common approaches and URIs for open government-related data at all levels of government (one of the most pressing problems, according to industry representatives).

In general , the Council meeting this time was brief and systematic, there is hope that the data will be more and they will be better and more structured. What is surprising is the choice of FOIV whose activities are reviewed at the meetings: for example, the “forest” departments this year are discussed a second time, and there are no “financial” ones yet.