The Ministry of the Interior, the Department of the Chief Engineer of e-Government, has prepared the annual report on the state of open data in the Czech Republic. The report informs on developments in the field of open data in the Czech Republic, whether related to legislative preparation, implementation practice or other activities of the National Open Data Coordinator team in 2021.
In July 2021, a new obligation to publish official boards and public records in the form of open data was approved. Although the new obligations should be fulfilled by the binding entities only in the following years, already in 2021, state authorities, regional authorities and municipal authorities with expanded powers began to prepare for new obligations, and some authorities began to publish data in the future time. By the end of 2021, 53 organizations have published open data, and this number will increase exponentially in the future. At least 30 organizations published new data sets in 2021, with 13 organizations publishing open data for the first time this year. Publishing open data is no longer just a voluntary activity of open data enthusiasts, who often work “formally illegal” in ministries, but has become a commitment for a wide range of subjects.
Number of open data providers according to legal standard
In 2021, the Open Data National Coordinator team provided and also implemented methodological support within the project”Develop data policies in the field of quality improvement and public administration data interoperability (KODI)With the aim of increasing the number of published open data as well as improving its quality. A total of 62 educational activities were carried out in 2021, attended by 1168 participants, including 1034 representatives of the public administration and 134 representatives of the professional public. Despite the Covid wave, 17 open data conferences, hackathons or symposiums were carried out in 2021, the most important of which was the one organized by the National Open Data Coordinator team. By the way, the 7th Open Data Conference will be held on November 28, 2022. The birds chirped on the roof that the team yaroslav brocha From SAO prepares for 7-8 October 2022 next year Hackathon open data for public administration.
Number of events and training
As an example of good practice in the dissemination of open data in 2021, the report cites, for example, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the Czech Social Security Administration, the Czech Land Survey and Survey Office, the Czech Statistical Office, and at the municipal level Hradec Kralów or the legal city of Brno . All open data providers had a local open data catalog and satisfactory metadata quality and availability. At the same time, they had a deployment plan, defined roles in the organization, constantly published new data sets, updated them regularly, communicated with users and, in most cases, monitored the use of their data. Unfortunately, from the point of view of international comparison, this is not enough and the Czech Republic fell into the category of so-called followers.
Unfortunately, the annual report also notes that the quality of the metadata records is very low. In 2021, only 7 providers completed all mandatory metadata elements for their datasets and 5 providers completed all mandatory metadata elements for most of their datasets. More than two-thirds of providers did not populate the mandatory metadata for more than half of their datasets. It appears that the reason why mandatory metadata elements are not filled in is also that an inappropriate method of recording datasets was used. The CKAN local catalog interface is no longer supported and does not allow all mandatory metadata elements to be filled in without further extension.
Quality of metadata records
Legislatively, this year’s implementation debt has been met. Parliament debated the executive amendment to the Freedom of Information Act and signed it by the President on August 16, 2022. The amendment, which implements Directive 2019/1024 on Open Data and Public Sector Information Reuse, was published in a set of laws under No. 241/2022 Coll.
The amendment, which entered into force on September 1, 2022, essentially brings the following changes:
- Expand the scope of the binding entities to include state-controlled public institutions that are explicitly required by the directives,
- Commitment to publish dynamic data in the form of open data,
- Commitment to publish high-value data sets as open data,
- the possibility of concluding an exclusive agreement on the provision of information in the event of the digitization of cultural resources,
- Modify access to research data developed as part of scientific research or development fully funded by public funds.
From the point of view of the EU regulation, it is necessary to state the consent Data Management Law. The objective of this regulation is to facilitate, or increase the sharing of personal and non-personal data within the European Union. This is achieved through several tools. For example, by making more public sector data available for reuse. Therefore, the Regulation establishes a framework for the reuse of protected data for reasons of commercial confidentiality, statistical confidentiality, protection of the intellectual property rights of a third party or protection of personal data. Member states are required to designate a single information point and support entities for data reuse, as well as to designate supervisory powers for data brokers, data altruism and sanctions.
