Featured Commitment – Moldova

Country: Moldova
CommitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action...: Raising awareness of “open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici... by default” among civil servants
National Action Plan: 2014-2015

How is a humble OGP commitment affecting the 2016 presidential race in Moldova?

Since it joined in 2012, Moldova has used its OGP action plans to address the Soviet legacy of government corruption. As part of its plan to rebuild trust and make officials more accountable, the Moldovan government is making government data more open. The Moldovan government, in partnership with civil society organizations is undertaking a suite of activities to improve governance using open data. The first action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... (2013) trained civil society professionals to use the data. In an interesting twist, for the second action plan (2014), Moldova now had civil society organizations train public servants. Specifically, they committed to train 50 public servants on the principle of “open data by default” and develop a plan to make publication a day-to-day practice. “Open data by default’ means that, when agencies develop new data (or release old data), it should be in a format which is public and reusable.

So how did Moldova do on the commitment? The organizations exceeded the target of training 50 public servants. They hosted workshops, seminars, and trainings for over 140 public servants on issues of open data and governance. The IRM report gave a mixed assessment, however. It noted that the commitment led to increased cooperation between civil society and government overall. On the other hand, the IRM found the commitment incomplete as the promised plan for mainstreaming open data was missing at the time of assessment.

What are the results? Between 2014 and 2015, following its first two action plans, Moldova moved up in the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Global Open Data Index, from 43rd to 22nd. Practically speaking, this has meant that elections data and the national company registry are now available for public use. This type of high-value data can contribute to the original goal of reducing corruption in electionsImproving transparency in elections and maintaining the independence of electoral commissions is vital for promoting trust in the electoral system, preventing electoral fraud, and upholding the democr... More and reducing money laundering and bribe-paying.

In fact, Moldova’s activities on open data have even worked their way into the 2016 national election. Data journalists used the open data company register to identify shell companies used by politicians and political parties as well as hidden accounts linked to organized crime and an ongoing banking scandal. With the election scheduled for 30 October, we will soon see how seemingly mundane administrative reforms might change the course of an election.