Abstract
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When it comes Open Government Partnership (OGP), Serbia is still a beginner in this area, currently in the beginning of the process for creation of the Third Action plan for the implementation of OGP in Serbia in a period of 2018-2020. Serbia participates in OGP since 2012, and from the beginning the process was slow and had little or none transformative power, which has been considered a main asset of OGP itself. Until today, it has advanced in the aspect of inclusiveness of main stakeholders, including civil society too. In the process of creation of the Second Action plan, Belgrade Open School (BOS) took active role giving the process important input on local transparency, possible direction of future commitments and direct support in the process of implementation of the commitment. BOS proposed commitment to open Information Booklets – main tool for proactive disclosure of information of public importance. Information Booklets are currently compiled in PDF or Word document, and they consist of income and expenditure data, public procurements, state subsidies, types of data collected, etc. There are around 4000 public institutions which are obliged by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to publish Information Booklet on their webpage and to update it annually. This presents valuable resource of data for policy makers, researchers, but also for other stakeholders. Proposal of commitment to compile this data in open data format became part of the Second Action plan, and its potential impact was classified as transformative. First step of the commitment was to develop a single IT system to access, process and present the Information Booklet.
From July 2017 until December 2017, together with United Nations Development Programme Serbia (UNDP) in Serbia and CRTA – Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability, BOS implemented pilot mapping of possible utilization of open data from Information Booklets on the local level, namely in 4 local self-government units (LSGU). The objective of this mapping was to analyze local cases of open data production and usage, in the context of Information Booklets and commitment from the Second Action Plan. Scope of the mapping included 9 LSGUs and their Information Booklets and projects of 5 civil society organizations (CSOs), in 9 mounts time period. Main methodology tool was multiple-case study analysis which mostly included interviews and direct observations, along with text analysis. The results of the mapping showed that LSGUs are mostly open to the idea of open data Information Booklets, and that even though still in the process of piloting local CSOs managed to implement small-scale researches based on provided open data. However, they mostly see it as a stepping stone, rather as concrete example of open data utilization in the benefit of local communities. From 9 LSGUs, 2 were more engaged in the process and 7 were only declarative supporters. Out of 5 CSOs, all of them showed high engagement in the process, with concrete outcomes of the projects – one pager website which provide all relevant information regarding their utilization of open data provided by the LSGUs prior to their researches.
This mapping showed that there is a basic level of support and readiness for this step among LSGUs and local civil society. However, there is still a lack of awareness and knowledge regarding open data among both analyzed groups. CSOs show more tendency to open data, which goes in line with their watchdog role in the society.
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