“Data are “oil”, or the most valuable resource of the 21st century”, it was announced today at the round table on “Publication of Data in Open Format“, held within the Open Government Partnership Week “Global Call to Action – Government Serving Citizens” organized by the Ministry of Public Administration and UNDP.

The introductory part of the round table included presentations of Mr. Dejan Abazović, State Secretary at the Ministry of Public Administration, Ms. Bojana Bajić, Head of the Directorate for Interoperability of Registers and Normative Affairs, Mr. Dražen Žujović, the author of the manual “How to start a start-up from Montenegro”, and Mr. Tomica Paović, Democratic Governance and Economy & Environment Team Leader in UNDP.

State Secretary at the Ministry of Public Administration, Mr. Dejan Abazović, said that information drives society and encourages creativity in every field, from the economy to tourism, culture, and science. By opening data, it will be much faster and easier to get answers to a number of questions: where and how much is spent, how much is polluted, and so on. The potential of the data, increasing in volume on daily basis, and their easy availability and the possibility of reuse, are of utmost importance for the efficiency and transparency of the work of the Government and all public administration bodies.

He said that the Open Data Portal www.data.gov.me was established in accordance with the principles of open data based on the International Open Data Charter from 2015. The launching of this portal created the conditions for opening the data of public administration bodies, which contributes to the improvement of transparency, accessibility, efficiency in the work of the Government and public administration bodies.

Ms. Bojana Bajić, Head of the Directorate for Interoperability of Registers and Normative Affairs, said that open data are digital data available on the Internet which can be freely used and can be reused in an open and machine-readable format. Ms. Bajić said that the goal is that all data published by the public administration should be in a machine-readable format and structured so that they can be reused.

Ms. Bajić emphasized that the goal is that all data published by the public administration are available in an open format for reuse, so that they can be downloaded for re-processing. “The goal is to publish proactively as much data as possible on the public administration portals, i.e. the Open Data Portal, in order to increase the transparency of the work of the public administration and reduce the need for submitting requests for data that are already available”, said Ms. Bajić.

She said that the open data portal has been functioning in the test phase since March, and its implementation started in August, by completing the normative framework for publishing data in open format. There are 55 datasets currently available on the portal, with a tendency to constantly increase this number. She explained that the Ministry of Public Administration is in charge of establishing this portal and providing administrative and technical support for its functioning, while the obligation to publish data in an open format, in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information, is on the public administration bodies.

She said that the goal of data opening, in addition to improving eDemocracy and contributing to the transparency of the work of the Government, is to increase the economic development of the State and to create added value, i.e. to give the opportunity to small and medium enterprises, start-ups, software developers to have their interest in creating applications to process data generated by public administration. She also announced that the current year is the year in which intense efforts will be made to promote this data publishing concept, through coordinated activities of the public administration as a whole to publish as many datasets as possible, and organize a competition for the development of applications that process data in an open format.

Mr. Tomica Paović, Democratic Governance and Economy & Environment Team Leader in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), said that open data can answer various economic and political questions and that their openness achieves greater transparency of public policies and citizen participation.

He pointed out that digital transformation and digitization of the process also contribute to data openness. “Many projects implemented by UNDP in Montenegro in partnership with state institutions using information technologies have the ultimate goal of achieving greater effectiveness, efficiency and transparency of institutions, because peaceful and inclusive societies cannot exist without them” – said Mr. Paović.

Mr. Dražen Žujović, the author of the manual “How to start a start-up in Montenegro”, spoke about the start-up community and Montenegro and the possibilities for using open data, and that in the following period, it is necessary to define what the data needed for the start-up community in Montenegro.