Open data against corruption: where Russia is in advance of the West
18 апреля 2016
In Russia, the level of information disclosure in some fields, for example in state procurement, is considerably higher, than in many Western countries. It has helped Russia to improve its score in the Corruption Perceptions Index. What should be done next?
Inevitable openness
Recently, the international anti-corruption organization Transparency International has published Corruption Perceptions Index 2015. In 2015, Russia’s position jumped 17 lines higher compared to the year before. We are still in the last third of the table with rank 119, but that’s the best result in past four years.
The key factor for this success is a huge volume of data disclosed by the Russian government last year. In particular, it has happened due to the introduction of the compulsory assets and income declaration for public officials.
Our NGO “Informational Culture” has prepared an annual report “Open data” for 2015, where we’ve analysed all the developments that helped Russia to take a higher rank in the CPI this year.
Brief summary: Subject of open data is no longer alien for the Russian state and has become a daily routine for public officials responsible for the official websites, IT specialists in state bodies and numerous data users - and that’s not only investigative journalists, but also almost all leading Internet companies and ordinary citizens.
Partly that’s a result of active advocacy of openness on the part of a few activists, and partly a result of a somewhat fragmented, but still existing state policy. However in the first place, this is an inevitability imposed by the market economy and a natural effect of computerization of state authorities .
Catch up and overtake – done
People who are not familiar with open data subject can hardly believe it, but in Russia, the level of information disclosure in some fields is higher than in many Western countries. A remarkable example is the area of state procurement. In the UK, data on procurement for municipal needs are not disclosed, while in Russia not only are such data openly available, but they are also accompanied by actual texts of corresponding contracts. This is a unique situation.
In our country, a huge amount of information is being disclosed. Interestingly, information of this kind is hardly disclosed at such a scale anywhere else in the world. Another striking example is the area of the national security. The Russian Ministry of Defence publishes information on almost all contracts, including purchase of nuclear submarines, at the official procurements web portal Zakupki.gov.ru. Only the restricted (or classified) part of the budget, which is about 26%, is an exception.
The situation, therefore, looks quite different from what is going on elsewhere. For instance, the US Department of Defence has a number of regulations regarding the budget-funded weapons procurement. First, there is a special registration procedure for the suppliers who work with the Department of Defence: they get access to tender documents only after a certain pre-qualification.
Procurement data are not available for wide public even upon request. The second rule says that information on awards of contract should be published with a delay of 3 to 12 months. A text of a contract is not published at all.
Thus, Russia’s openness in the national security matters is on the verge of negligence.
In contrast, many kinds of socially important data are not published on the pretext of national or social security. That’s the data concerning our life quality, in particular the quality of education (e.g. Unified State Exam average scores at schools), universities’ monitoring results, success rates of heart surgeries, detailed crime statistics, air quality monitoring data or the level of soil contamination.
With what other kinds of data do things in Russia also look blue ? Predictably, with the data that are in focus of political agenda. During the whole officials’ declaration campaign, there was no centralized portal created to publish assets and income declarations in the form of open data. Russian Central Election Commission does not publish a thousandth part of the data accumulated in its data bank on elections and referendums. At the government website we see neither full minutes of meetings (not only those held by the Prime Minister, but also by all government committees), nor full video recordings, nor previously collected data in a machine-readable form. While “Open Government” does exist, the openness in the work of government office is not visible.
In contrast, in the United States, the information about visitors to the White House has been openly available for many years, which allows researchers and journalists to analyse lobbyists’ efforts. In the European Union the Transparency Register includes a large list of lobbyists-visitors of the European Parliament.
Alas, in Russia, the “Open Government” does not really deal with such issues.Instead, its efforts are mostly aimed at reforming state-owned corporations and public spending, which is important, of course, but definitely not enough, because it rather concerns business interests than interests of the society.
What should be done to make our public affairs more transparent and accountable?
More transparency
First off, depoliticization of the agenda regarding open government data is badly needed. Ironically, nce in the hands of the “Open Government”, open government data turned into a tool for media support of its activities. It does not help to achieve the desired economic and social effect. Initiatives in the area of open data should be reorganized and divided into projects explicitly aimed at ensuring the transparency of the political system in Russia.
Apart from the political agenda there should be such initiatives as support for start-ups using the information of the public sector and adding to economic effect through creating new jobs, and improving the efficiency of business and public administration. Such initiatives can work on the basis of the existing development institutions such as Russian Venture Company, Agency for Strategic Initiatives and Internet Initiatives Development Fund. In addition, we need new institutions similar to the Open Data Institute in the UK that would act as agents of the state policy to achieve economic and social impact by means of availability of public sector information.
Second, we need a Public Sector Information Council directly accountable to the Russian president. “Why have yet another agency?” would be quite a natural question. But thing is that businesses are interested not only in obtaining open government data, but also is actively attempting to get access to citizens’ data (currently limited or strictly regulated).
For example, data on citizens’ utility payments may be instructive in terms of bank scoring. Public Sector Information Council should become a platform for dialogue between businesses and the public authorities responsible for the regulation of access to information, such as Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications (Roskomnadzor) and the Federal Security Service of Russia. At the moment, these bodies are completely excluded from the dialogue on openness of public sector information. Alas, the structures under the “Open Government” cannot establish a sustained dialogue within the existing communication environment. A revision of the existing international initiatives in the area of data transparency and Russia’s participation should be another part of the of the Council’s work.
Third, we need a national data infrastructure (NDI). In Russia, there are problems not only with the disclosure of data, but also with their collection, storage and subsequent analysis in the framework of the government information systems. There is a need for an organizational and technological platform for classification, collection and integration of the most sensitive data, as well as for organization of data access services.
NDI should become a reliable data control platform. It could establish clarity regarding what kind of strategic data the government has, and which organizations can access them. It will contribute to the accountability of the public authorities and improve the quality of public services by providing data connectivity. An analogy of the NDI in the West is the National Information Infrastructure in the UK designed and developed since 2013.
And finally, we need independent experts participating in discussions on open data. At the moment, de facto they are groups of public and commercial lobbyists. It’s necessary to separate communication platforms of public activists and businesses with a clear definition of the principles and objectives of each platform.
Decisive year
Can Russia get even higher in CPI? It can. Despite the high-profile corruption scandals, our situation is not as grim as it may seem. The very fact that anti-corruption investigations in Russia are possible is worth much (Somalia and North Korea take the lowest ranks in the Corruption Perceptions Index, and there is nothing to hear about local corruption fighters). For a long time, Russia took a decent 9th place in the open budget ranking of International Budget Partnership Organization. In 2015, it dropped to 11th place, not because our budget became less transparent, but due to the fact that other countries have developed more rapidly in this area.
What does Russia need to find itself at least within the top-hundred in the CPI? There is a need for work on disclosure of the data in anti-corruption agenda, a need for real public control of officials’ excess profit and spending. There is a need, after all, for the political will. 2016 may become a turning point: Openness of government data can boost economic growth.
Ivan Begtin,
Head of NGO “Informational Culture”
Originally published at RBC: http://www.rbc.ru/opinions/society/27/01/2016/56a869f19a7947c257896897