The Ministry of Digital Transformation, in collaboration with the Metamorphosis Foundation, held a public discussion today on the Draft Law on Open Data and Reuse of Public Sector Data, aimed to promote the systematic publication and use of public data.
Minister of Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovski stressed that transparency and openness are a clear commitment of the Government.
"Something that is a commitment of this Government is to be transparent, open, to publish information that is important for citizens, but not always only for announcements, laws and decisions, but also at the level of ongoing analyses, of documents that are accessed in the work of government institutions, but in a systematic manner. Until now, there was an open data portal Data.gov.mk, unfortunately, without much use, and now with this law we think that we will clarify the rules and methods to access open data, and how state institutions should publish it and how and in what way it can be used." stated Andonovski
The Minister also informed that MDT has made a significant technical modernization of the portal, and as part of the improvements, an AI chat-bot integrated with the portal was promoted, developed in cooperation with Makedonski Telekom and with the engagement of volunteers from the Ministry, which should help citizens more easily access the necessary information.
"The operating system it was running on has also been changed, a complete backend upgrade that happened because all the extensions were made a long ago with foreign support, but were never upgraded. Now we have a new, modern portal for open data, easily accessible, and in collaboration with Makedonski Telekom and our volunteers from the Ministry, for the first time we have a chat-bot that uses artificial intelligence and which will easily help citizens, interested parties, associations, to easily access data, without having to search through vast amounts of information themselves, but rather with simple prompts to reach the information they need," said the Minister of Digital Transformation.
He added that there is a draft text for this law which is necessary for increasing transparency and use of data, but, as he emphasized, that text is not set in stone and therefore he expressed readiness to be changed and improved if interested parties consider it necessary.
"This text of law is aimed at making it easier to access information that is important for non-governmental organizations and citizens, and also obliges institutions to share this information with them," said Minister Andonovski in a statement after the introductory speeches at the event.
He also pointed out that a technical upgrade of the portal Data.gov.mk is being prepared.
"This will enable it to automatically pull the data so that someone responsible in the institution does not need to publish it. I think that when you create high-quality, huge data sets, then the use will also increase, because at the moment it is really very small," emphasized the Minister of Digital Transformation.
The draft law has been prepared within the framework of harmonization with European Union law and European policies in this area.
