Can you imagine public websites providing citizens with the data on every outlay by every ministry, state office or agency, who authorized what payment, when staff salaries were paid and what they amounted to, or how official credit cards are charged? Can Croatia look up to Great Britain as an often-cited exemplary of data openness and transparency?

It would be easy to dismiss the idea by saying: „in Croatia? Why, that would be science fiction!“ Still, some steps to achieving just this are being made. Although there is still much to be done, any measure of open data provides not only the fuel for democracy – in the sense that openness and transparency foster citizens’ trust – but also the raw materials for economic growth, as they can help open new markets and workplaces.

This is why open data should be on the agenda daily and not only on the occasion of the International Open Data Day, February 21 – The Civic Innovations Weekend. The Open Data Day is celebrated through activities by the CodeAcross organization, including a discussion on improving existing future databases in Croatia, staged by the associations Code for Croatia and GONG in cooperation with the Open Government Partnership. The program consisted of a conference on Friday, February 20 and, on Saturday February 21, a hackathon entitled „Governance principles for the 21st century“, supported and hosted by the Zagreb University Computing Centre.

Source gong.hr…