Open Government Initiatives

Projects Implemented▪ Opengov (www.opengov.gr)

▪ Law consultation | Recruitment platform for Public Sector Executives▪ “Cl@rity Program”

▪ Transparency for administrative decisions and spending (diavgeia.gov.gr)

▪ “Agora Program” ▪ Transparency for public contracts (agora.gov.gr)

▪ Illegalsigns ▪ Crowdsourcing for illegal signs in Greece (illegalsigns.gov.gr)

▪ Labs.opengov.gr ▪ Ict Initiatives for the Public Sector

▪ Open taxation data▪ Government Work Progress Monitor▪ Opendata - Geodata

OpenGovOpengov.gr has been designed to serve the principles of transparency, deliberation, collaboration and accountability and includes two basic initiatives:

• Οpen calls for the recruitment of public administration officials and • Electronic deliberation for participatory rule making.

The citizens needs for timely information as well as their participation into public affairs consist the central scope of the opengov project.

Electronic deliberation. Almost every piece of draft legislation or even governmental policy initiative by the government, are posted in a blog like platform prior to their submission to parliament. Citizens and organisations can post their comments, suggestions and criticisms article-by-article. All submitted comments are gathered and assessed by competent authorities and in many cases they are incorporated in the final regulations.

As of October 2009 , when the first deliberation concerned the regulation of state owned cars launched, 153 deliberations have taken place via opengov by 14 ministries while the total number of citizens comments amounts to 67.929. See the latest Electronic deliberations here (in Greek).

Cl@rity Program• Cl@rity program implements one of the major transparency initiatives of the Greek government. • Beginning October 1st, 2010, all government institutions are obliged to upload their decisions

on the Internet. Further, the decisions of all public entities can not be implemented if they are not uploaded on the Cl@rity website.

• Each uploaded document is digitally singed and assigned a transaction unique number (TUN) automatically by the system.

So far all public legal entities have implemented the Di@vgeia program, including independent and regulatory authorities, the State Legal Council as well as local government. In less than a year 1.409.703 decisions have been published in Di@vgeia by 2.441 institutions.

For the first time in Greece the Di@vgeia program introduces the obligation to publish all the decisions of government and administrative entities on the Internet, with special attention to issues of national security and sensitive personal data. It is an innovative program, aiming primarily to ensure the maximum publicity of government policy and administrative actions. The use of the Internet meets the requirement for wide publicity and access to information, progressively contributing to a culture change in the whole Public Administration.

Agora ProgramThe Agora transparency platform for financial decisions monitors the life cycle of any expenditure. The transparency platform is going to:• Monitor all the steps from the request for an expenditure to contracting and final payment.• Support the automated publishing of data in specific format, on a case by case basis and

depending on international standards; for instance, on whether auditing is carried out by external or internal auditors. Especially in the case of listed companies, it will support the transformation of presented data for the purpose of informing all stakeholders by additional flows of information.

• Monitor costs and the complete payment trail of a task.• Identify areas in the supply chain that could lead in enhanced efficiency and reduced costs (e.

g., aggregate orders), with the purpose of achieving economies of scale.• Be compatible with international standards (e.g. CPV codes etc.)• Provide open spending data to all interested parties, such as shareholders.• Support search algorithms with the aim of identifying better prices for procured products and

services. For instance, the algorithm will be able to search for the best possible deal in discount portals, e-procurement services, digital catalogues etc.

• Encompass the ability to be integrated with existing legacy systems and processes.

Consequently, the Transparent Platform can inter-operate with existing electronic procurement systems, ERP’s etc. The Transparent Platform can be connected with any public consultation framework that enables active engagement with stakeholders.

Illegal Signs• The Illegalsigns project aims to address the problem of uncontrolled large number of illegal

outdoor advertisements in Greece based on crowdsourcing and digital communication.• All over the country and especially at the centre of Athens and the highways leading to the

suburbs there were over 25.000 illegal outdoor advertisements mostly of enormous size on the roofs of the buildings and on the sideways. At night they were lit (illegally) charging the bill to the municipalities and the state and creating even more dangerous situations regarding the public safety.

• During the 2004 Olympic Games the project of “clearing” illegal outdoor advertisements managed to remove around 1.500, mainly from the city centre. After the summer of 2004, although in the city centre of Athens there were only legal advertisements, at the outskirts, the numbers increased dramatically.

• At the site, there is also the possibility of uploading through Smartphones, giving automatically the position of the sign on the map. The direct interaction and participation of citizens brought spectacular results since the big participation showed the authorities the importance of the project to the everyday life of the citizens.

• The press covered extensively the project and continues to do so. As a result, more than 1.500 illegal advertising billboards have been removed from the streets of the greater Athens area. The project is ongoing.

Labs• Labs.OpenGov is the first experimental attempt engaging corporate and non-corporate users

into generating sophisticated and immediately applicable ideas.

• It is an open innovations web laboratory that brings together experts from the technological

community and institutions that manage information technology projects for the public sector

and citizens.

• Labs in numbers:

– 2057 comments

– 850 proposals

– 3482 members

Open Taxation Data• The Open Taxation Data initiative aims to improve the accountability, reduce the bureaucracy

and increase the transparency of Greece’s taxation system.

• As part of the initiative, the General Secretary of Information Systems of Ministry of Finance, has

published extensive statistical data from the year 2000 onward. In addition it has made available

on a daily basis each regional tax office’s outstanding and has handled cross-checking cases.

• Further planned actions include the quarterly publication of taxpayers in arrears, the monthly

publication of regional tax office key performance indicators, and a web service providing the

registration details of professionals and companies. The initiative also had planned the

publication of all taxpayer’s income and tax, yet this action was blocked by the country’s Data

Protection Authority.

Open GeoData• Geodata.gov.gr is a catalogue and web mapping framework providing open geospatial data to

citizens.

• The service was designed, developed, and maintained by public bodies, and is built exclusively on open source technologies and standards. Geodata.gov.gr is currently one of eleven governmental services worldwide providing open data to citizens.

• Operating for less than nine months, geodata.gov.gr has succeeded in providing savings of more than 15M euros for the public administration (data re-use), and has aided hundreds of SMEs, engineers, and researchers in their work.

• The service aims to achieve economies of scale for geospatial data through data re-use, enhance the repurpose and efficient exploitation of government owned infrastructures through virtualization technologies, and improve environmental protection. Geodata.gov.gr promotes the national and European agenda towards open Public Sector Information (PSI) in the framework of Digital Europe / Digital Greece 2020.

Ideas for Europe• European Commission could establish a feedback mechanism for improving internal processes.

• Improve policy consultations through state of the art electronic platforms.

• Wide use of crowdsourcing tools.

• Feedback mechanism to measure the impact of EU funds to the EU state members.

• Promote Open Government initiatives in the EU State Members.

• Central monitor of budget and spending (EC and Members). Openbudget platform.

• Social media strategy and better dissemination (participatory) of EU Policies.

• Promote engagement and evoting – edemocracy solutions.

Let’s Co-create the Future