According to the latest study of the European Union “Open Data Maturity Report 2022”, within which the data on the development of 35 participating European countries in the field of Open Data was published, the Republic of Serbia took the 27th place overall, and was recognized as one of regional leaders, with a total score of 66%.
In the final list of ranked countries, Serbia is ahead of Greece, Slovakia, Latvia, Montenegro, Iceland, Malta, Albania and BiH, and is in the group of countries with a significant level of development of Open Data, among which are Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Austria and Sweden. The average level of maturity in terms of Open Data within the EU countries is 79%, while the most dominant in this area are France and Ukraine with 97%.
Within this year’s Report, data disclosure practices were evaluated and compared from the perspective of four dimensions: Open Data Policy (the focus is on programmes and strategies in the field of Open Data and their status); Open Data Impact (insight into the activities aimed at monitoring and measuring the dynamics of data opening, data reuse and the effects of open data application); Open Data Portal (assessment of the functionality of national Open Data portals); Open Data Quality (the focus is on mechanisms which ensure data and metadata quality). The report had shown that, compared to the countries of the region, Serbia is a leader in almost all areas and values of the indicators.
According to the Law on e-Government, the authorities are obliged to publish Open Data from their competence on the Open Data Portal of the Republic of Serbia (https://data.gov.rs/sr/) in a way that enables their easy search and reuse, which increases the transparency and responsibility of public authorities and brings concrete social and economic benefits to the citizens, the economy and civil society. Currently, 93 organizations are actively publishing data on the Portal, at which a total of 6,162 resources are made available and 40 examples of data use are identified.
Thanks to the data opening, many innovative solutions have been developed, among which are the mobile and web GIS application “Bici Bor” dedicated to improving traffic safety, the environment and the accessibility of traffic infrastructure in Bor; the “xEko Pollen” application, which shows the saturation of the ground layer of atmosphere with allergenic airborne pollens in the Republic of Serbia, while the visualization of more than 90 budgets of cities and municipalities is available at the following link:https://budzeti.data.gov.rs/ .
The Report states that an increasing number of countries are ready to make efforts in the direction of improving the process of opening data resources, so that their social and economic potential can be utilized to its maximum.
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