Who is behind opendata.mk?
The Center for Civil Communications was established in April 2005 as a non-governmental, non-profit and non-partisan association of citizens. In its ten years of functioning, CCC has focused its work on two groups of interrelated activities: (1) monitoring state institutions and, based on that, recommending measures and policies to improve operations, implement good governance, economic development and to minimize the opportunity for corruption and (2) promoting the ability of journalists and the special role of the media and non-governmental organizations in the fight against corruption and increasing transparency, responsibility and accountability of state institutions.
Why is open data needed?
Open data is a basic prerequisite for interoperability, as it has become known.
Interoperability means the ability of different systems and organizations to work together. In this case, it is the ability to achieve interoperability – or cross-referencing of different databases.
Interoperability is important because it allows different components to work together. This ability to integrate and join components together is essential for building large and complex systems.
The core of the “community” of data (or codes) is that one “open” piece of data contains material that can be freely linked to another piece of data.
This interoperability is key to achieving the main practical benefit of “openness”: drastically improved ability to combine different databases, so as to develop higher quantities of improved products and services (these benefits are explained in more detail in the section: “why” open data).
German Filkov – Center for Civil Initiatives
Links
- Macedonian Government’s portal for open sources – otvorenipodatoci.gov.mk
- Guidelines, case studies and resources for NGOs and governments – opendatahandbook.org
- Open Data Monitor – opendatamonitor.eu
- The Open Data Barometer – opendatabarometer.org
