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Ukrainian Parliament launched an open data portal

Kyiv, 4 December 2015 – The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine introduced the Open Data Service on the official website in its efforts to enable e-Parliament.

 
20151205Today marked the launch of the beta version of the new Open Data Service on the official website of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine as part of implementing the priority measures to ensure greater transparency, openness, and accountability of the Parliament.
 
The Verkhovna Rada's Open Data Portal is aimed at publishing data in open formats and implementing the Law of Ukraine "On Access to Public Information" regarding access to public information in the form of open data.
 
According to the Regulations on datasets to be published in the form of open data, the priority list of open datasets managed by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine includes:
 
• Legislation of Ukraine (database);
• Information on the consideration of issues on the agenda of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (plenary session);
• Database of bills of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
 
The Open Data Service introduced in the framework of the priority measures to create e-Parliament in the Verkhovna Rada. From now on, the public, experts, scholars are able to exercise more effective control over the activities of the Parliament as they take out at their disposal tools of preventing and detecting corruption.
 
The Service will not only ensure the public and expert groups participation in decision-making of the Parliament and committees, but also provide quality public services due to the expected reduction of time expenses on processing requests.
 
The Open Data Portal will be finalized in cooperation with Parliament's partners - United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and OPORA.
 
UNDP has been a long-tern partner of the Parliament in moving the open data agenda forward in Ukraine. Following the growing request from the public for openness, transparency, and accountability at all levels of the society, UNDP was the first international organization in Ukraine that popularized the use of open government data at the national level. Open data support activities started as a small pilot initiative on disclosing municipal budgets. It grew later into a national-level initiative to stimulate state bodies to disclose public information in the open data format and eventually culminated in the adoption of the open data legislation.