Centre for European Perspective in cooperation with European Policy Centre Belgrade hosted an interactive and solution-oriented conference “Exchange od Experience in Opening of Public Sector Data” in Belgrade, Serbia on Wednesday, 28 February 2018. As part of the activities under the scope of the Official Development Cooperation between the Republic of Slovenia and Republic of Serbia the event attracted over 100 participants from state authorities, public administration bodies, business sector and civil society.
Consisting of four distinctive parts, the format of the event brought in a fresh perspective and approach, which resulted in a comprehensive, inclusive and distinctively open debate and experience exchange.
Morning session addressed the most important motives for opening and exchange of public sector data, where transparency and value of the opening for the society at large were at the forefront of discussion. Experts emphasized the impact on the working processes, where opening data makes the everyday operations inside the public administration more effective and efficient and therefore allow public officials to focus on new tasks.
The second part shed a light on very concrete conditions and operational developments that need to be in place in order to achieve progress in the field of public sector data opening. Among them, cooperation, teamwork and communication were exposed as the crucial preconditions for success.
Official Development Cooperation programs of CEP always tend to offer spaces for exchange of good practices, which is why selected speakers presented a wide range of existing solutions, such as eBeba, eZUP, Supervizor, PISO Portal, Posmatrač application, Techfugees platform.
Late afternoon sessions were highly interactive in nature and provoked participants to take stands on the topic of opening and exchange of government data. According to their answers to the questions “Where do you want to be and how to get there?” they were divided into a group of optimists and a group of realists. Night owl session offered an open market of ideas, practices, experiences and networking opportunities.
Comprehensive exchange of thoughts, experiences and practices between all interested parties (representatives of government, independent institutions, experts from the public administration, representatives of business sector, the media, academic institutions and civil society) has been achieved through introduction of open and semi-open formats of discussion.
The conference is part of the CEP program activities financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia in the scope of international development cooperation.
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