E-Data project releases data on spending by public institutions in 2017
Today, a press conference has taken place at the Ministry of Finance marking the second year of operation of the project “E-Data” which is aimed to ensure the transparency of public spending. The project team hosting the press conference told about the achievements of the managing entities and receivers of public funds in opening their spending data as required by the Law “On the Open Use of Public Funds”.
Using this opportunity, First Deputy Minister of Finance Oksana Markarova announced that on September 15, 2017, the Unified Portal on the Use of Public Funds was launched in full-scale by the Ministry of Finance. This means that the entities managing public funds have no obstacles in meeting the law requirements as well as no excuses like “test mode operation” to avoid responsibility for their failure to publish contracts, certificates of acceptance and reports.
“E-data.gov.ua is the basis for the management of public finances, - Oksana Markarova said. – We have made another important step to implement the next module “Open Budget” for the public”.
Oleksandr Shchelokov, the manager of the E-Data project, reminded: “E-data.gov.ua is an umbrella for two modules: SPENDING and OPENBUDGET. The first module refers to the use of public funds. The module OPENBUDGET will contain more information about the state budget like, first of all, budget revenues and a detailed breakdown by budget lines and programs. When these two modules start to operate together, we will at last have a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the public finance management. Apart from that, the reports of the State Treasury Office, the Ministry of Finance and the entities managing public funds must be made clear for the citizens and easy to use. This is the only way to receive the desired social impact of the project”.
Oleksandr Shchelokov also reported that the E-Data team had conducted trainings in 23 regions of Ukraine not only to educate the managing entities which are obliged to upload the relevant information, but also to teach journalists and civil activists using it for their activities. “It is for the fourth time already that we host the contest “E-Investigation” to promote the use of e-data.gov.ua, 007.org.ua and other open public data resources to disclose cases of corruption. Currently, the contest “E-Data Rating” is under way which stimulates city mayors to properly provide their data”, the manager of the E-Data project said.
At the same time, the full-scale launch of e-data.gov.ua will let Ukraine qualify for the top 20 countries in the global rating “GlobalOpenDataIndex” in 2018.
“In 2016, Ukraine significantly improved its performance in the global ratings going up 23 steps to position 31 in GlobalOpenDataIndex and 18 steps to position 44 in OpenDataBarometer. The key contributor to this success was the portal E-Data which discloses to the public the most up-to-date information about the use of public funds“, Andreas Brunnbauer said, who is the deputy manager of the GIZ project “Reform of Public Finances”. – The Governments of Germany and Great Britain continue to support the implementation of the new reform strategy for the management of public finances in 2017-2021 which, among other steps, contains the integration of the portal with other e-governance tools like, for instance, ProZorro. Integration with other systems and further development of E-Data can further improve the performance of Ukraine in international ratings”.
For information:
The unified web portal on public spending e-data.gov.ua was launched on September 15, 2015, according to the Law “On the Open Use of Public Funds”. Presently, it contains data about more than 20.6 million contracts, certificates of acceptance and reports. The number of visitors of this web portal rose from 0.5 million in 2015 to 11 million in 2017. Today, e-data.gov.ua is one of the main sources of official information for journalists and civil activists who investigate the use of public funds.
This is the only web resource in Ukraine which fully complies with the international OpenData standards, i.e. contains information in the format suitable for machine-reading.