Open data for Ukraine demystified at IDCEE Conference

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09.10.2014

Kyiv, 09 October 2014 – IDCEE, or Investor's Day Central and Eastern Europe, is one of the 5 major IT events dedicated to startups, Internet activists and entrepreneurs, chief executive and technical officers of IT companies, IT professionals, bloggers and digital media specialists. 

This year it has gathered over 150 startups and more than 2500 participants from 45 countries in the capital of Ukraine. This 5th anniversary edition of the event offered a unique mix of experience-sharing, pitching, discussions and startup fun coupled with very serious negotiations and implications for the IT sphere.

UNDP Ukraine has been part of the Conference by partaking in a panel discussion throughout day two, addressing the issue of open data in general and some of the international approaches and lessons learned in this realm, in particular. The panel comprised representatives of the newly created State Agency for E-governance in Ukraine, SocialBoost civil society organization, Microsoft, CityTransport startup and UNDP “Democratization and Human Rights” Project. Over 20 conference participants were present at the event within the larger framework of IDCEE.

The discussion kicked off with the presentation of the priorities for the just-established Agency, delivered by Oleksandr Ryzhenko, its Head, including the 4 strategic areas spanning electronic services, electronic interaction (e-nteraction and interoperability) between government bodies and with citizens, formation of the “E-Ukraine 2020” roadmap, as well as operationalization of the open data regime for the country. Head of the Agency maintained that it was the last issue that could be of great interest to both the state bodies, who would be able to demonstrate a lived commitment to transparency vis-s-vis citizens, and to the IT sector with its large and small players, which would be able to thrive through creative utilization of the available open and high-quality data. Mr. Ryzhenko also noted that an enabling regulatory environment, which is being at this point of time designed for the open data regime through support of UNDP, would soon come to life and, hopefully, enable the growth envisaged from use of such information.

Capitalizing on the points emphasized, Maksym Klyuchar, UNDP DHRP expert provided a brief overview of the international practices applied in the area of open data production and management both within the global flagmans, such as Great Britain, and within some of the regional champions, including Moldova. Throughout his presentation, appealing to an analogy with fresh water as a common good, Mr. Klyuchar noted that akin to this unique resource, data and information is becoming a more and more inseparable part of our daily lives.

Kindred to fresh water, data could be used to produce multiple products, could be reshuffled and mixed with other sources to produce commercial or non-commercial share-alike products. Yet, the inherent value and beauty of the open data concept would manifest itself if understood as a commons, a shared, unimpeded source and raw material for business or community-oriented tools that would use such data as their foundation and source of inspiration. It is exactly the concept of the common good and applicability of open data to so many more situations than just demonstration of transparency that UNDP has been supporting the development of the open data legislation that is undergoing expert discussions at the moment within the working groups of the Reanimation Package of Reforms, as well as under the Vice-Prime-Minister Volodymyr Hroysman.

Denis Gursky, founder and CEO of the SocialBoost organization, which started out as a movement based on hackatons and social innovation events in 2012, and has grown to incubate the first beta-version of the National Open Data portal for Ukraine, presented the initial results of www.Data.Gov.Ua operations as well as plans for the future. “It is our goal – he emphasized – to run a set of improvements on the existing portal, which is based on an open-source CKAN platform, and to transfer it then to the Agency for upkeep and operations”. Currently the open data portal is fully functional but has a limited number of datasets, which have been provided by government bodies and agencies at the direct request of hacktivists rather than at their own motion. The plans are to increase the number of datasets due to implementation of new regulations that stem from the principles enshrined in the new open data legislation.

Mykhaylo Shmeliov, Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft Ukraine, dwelled on the principles of public-private partnerships and the role that open data could potentially play in stimulating economic growth (by 2020 the total additional GDP that could spring up from open and big data in the EU-28 could be as high as + 206 billion Euros). In addition, he emphasized that the company supported open data developers, who oftentimes wrote their programme code on non-proprietary platforms, and were ready to offer expert assistance in discussions regarding the open data future for Ukraine.

The panel was also enriched with very practical considerations presented by Anton Moyseenko, an IT activist and open data enthusiast, who has been behind the CityTransport smartphone application that allows one to determine the fastest possible way to get from one place in Kyiv to another one based on real-time data about the schedules of public transportation. His presentation also dealt with challenges that startups had to face and some of the strategies to overcome those.

The panel discussion was held as part of an open data support initiative ran by UNDP Ukraine to raise awareness of open data benefits for Ukraine and support a more enabling environment for opening state-generated information to public scrutiny and use.