Publish Financial Data (SK0079)

Commitment No. 22: Publish data on the use of funds provided by central government authorities within the European structural and investment funds, the EEA Financial Mechanism, Norwegian Financial Mech-anism, the Swiss Financial Mechanism and subsidy schemes from the state budget, at least in the defined structure at the website https://data.gov.sk/dotacie.

THEME - EU Funds and Subsidies Data Portal  

Comm 21, 22

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan^{[Note : The Office of the Plenipotentiary, “Open Government Partnership National Action Plan of the Slovak Republic 2017 – 2019”, http://bit.ly/2QYIlHV ]}:

Commitment 21: “Define the minimum scope and structure of the disclosed data on the use of European structural and investment funds, the EEA Financial Mechanism, Norwegian Financial Mechanism, the Swiss Financial Mechanism and subsidy schemes from the state budget.”

Commitment 22: “Publish data on the use of funds provided by central government authorities within the European structural and investment funds, the EEA Financial Mechanism, Norwegian Financial Mechanism, the Swiss Financial Mechanism and subsidy schemes from the state budget, at least in the defined structure at the website https://data.gov.sk/dotacie.”

Start Date: Not specified                

End Date: 31 March 2017 and ongoing

Context and Objectives

The EU Funds and Subsidies Portal^{[Note : EU Funds and Subsidies Portal (Modul dotačných schém), https://data.gov.sk/dotacie (in Slovak). ]} was launched in 2016 as part of the previous action plan^{[Note : The Office of the Plenipotentiary, “Open Government Partnership National Action Plan of the Slovak Republic 2015”, http://bit.ly/2RevqCc ]}. The aim of the portal was to shed more light on the allocation and use of EU funds and subsidies on a single platform.

The experts interviewed for the last IRM report argued that the portal is of limited use for investigative journalists or anti-corruption activists^{[Note : Mária Žuffová, Open Government Partnership, “Slovakia Special Accountability Report 2014 - 2015”, http://bit.ly/2EzH4Ws]} due to the poor quality and format of published data. Data has been provided in an unsystematic manner and did not allow for any meaningful comparative analysis^{[Note : For instance, while some projects have identification number, other have some sort of serial instead.  ]}. The portal is difficult to find without using a search engine or knowing the exact URL. Both civil society representatives and public employees agree that the portal is not usable in its current state. One of the main recommendations from the previous IRM report was to ensure at least a required minimum of data to be published, e.g. identification number, legal form, the address of the subsidy provider and recipient, amount of subsidy, and the purpose of the awarded project.

In this view, commitment 21 to define these minimum standards is a positive step and could have a minor potential impact. Having minimal standards defined and their application made obligatory would contribute to better quality and usability of published data. According to the investigative data journalist interviewed for this report, if more granular data were added to the EU Funds and Subsidies Portal, such as the names of evaluators, it would be a positive change toward making the portal useful^{[Note : Interview with Martin Turček (Aktuality.sk), 15 October 2018. See Section ‘VI. Methodology and sources for details.   ]}. Once this commitment is well implemented, commitment 22 to publish more data seems a sensible next step. However, awareness of the portal remains low, limiting its usefulness for monitoring EU funds allocated for Slovakia.

Next steps

Interviewed experts perceive the EU Funds and Subsidies Data Portal as a failure and are not convinced more public resources should be devoted to its further development. The responsible agencies could gather experts and potential users to discuss potential further avenues for the portal. 

Interviewed data journalist made a case that investments should be rather channeled to other portals that are widely used, such as the Central Register of Contracts. According to the journalist, a commitment to add contracts of state companies, and contracts and subsidies of municipalities and self-governing regions in the Central Register of Contracts would be more useful.^{[Note : It is important to note here that the Office of the Plenipotentiary does not have competencies over municipalities. Also, this would probably require an amendment of FOIA.]} Therefore, publishing the data that is planned to be published on the EU Funds and Subsidies Data Portal could instead be migrated to the Central Register of Contracts in the future.