ICT Tools for Monitoring Public Treasury Albania

In order to increase transparency over the Government data, AIS, the implementer of Open Data Albania Project, has enabled the Albanian public, journalists, scientific researchers, businessmen, and Government’s opponents and opposition, to get informed in real time about every expenditure made by the State Treasury both in the form of transactions and payments.

Such monitoring is done through the Spending Data Albania portal under the Treasury Transactions section. This system, which is open to the public, includes data from the state treasury for 1400 state-budget institutions like ministries, Government agencies, independent institutions, municipalities and communes, and central and regional directorates.

Every such transaction is now online for all those who wish to know how and how much is spent. The application contains data from January 2012 up to date.

People may search the data using the available filters for the following categories:

  • State-budget Institutions that make payments;
  • payment Beneficiaries or Clients;
  • the date on which a payment was ordered or executed;
  • the value of a transaction.

Data can also be searched through the Expenditure Category. Every transaction contains a description of the order or contracts that enables a payment. Payments made for public works awarded through a tender procedure are also part of the system.

The system also contains a special section on Monitoring Ministries only, as part of the Government Cabinet.

This space for transparency enables the public to lean about expenditures on public interest, cases of abuse and excessive expenditures for specific categories, and cases of nepotism and conflict of interest involving certain clients or beneficiaries.

We would like to thank NED and OSF for financially supporting the work for enabling the online Monitoring of the Treasury Transactions. We would also like to thank the Albanian Government, which since January 2012, in the context of its commitment for Partnership for an Open Government, enables access to payments made by the state institutions through the state treasury. Thus, our country, Albania, becomes part of the countries, where the public has access to the State Treasury Transactions.

We invite the public to widely use these data; the taxpayers may get information about how their money is spent; the media may report on cases of abuse and conflict of interest; and watchdog organizations may use the Treasury Transactions data to promote accountability and exercise public pressure for good governance.

DataThon Albania 2014 – Invitation for participation

Activist, Journalist, or Student of Economics; Journalisms and Political Sciences!
The Marathon of Open Data – DataThon Albania is coming.

This year, competition will be based on the data on Budgetary Expenditures. How do the young people analyse the budgetary expenditures of state institutions, which are the most distinct clients that are provided with money buy the state, and while making these payment available, are there identified cases of abuse, nepotisms or conflict of interest situation. Having a better understanding of the delivery of taxpayers money – this is the goal of this marathon in this fourth year of its organization.

Competition is recommended in groups of 2-3 persons. This year, those that will conduct better analysis during DataThon, there will be 2 rewards for them, each of them consisting in a 15 000 Leke.
In order to be inspired on Transparent Expenditures, you may click in advance. Spending Data Albania .

It organised AIS and ODA

All those who would like to participate in this event, may be registered for free in the following liknk, and be provided with a free participation ticket.http://www.eventbrite.com/e/datathon-albania-2014-tickets-1…

This ticket is necessary to be shown upon your presence at Protik on DataThon

Takim Informues: Si të bëhesh pjesë e DataThon 2014

Të Martën datë 28.10.2014

Ora 11:00

Vendi : Protik Innovation Center

Aktivist, Gazetar apo student në Ekonomi; Gazetari e Shkenca Politike!
Maratona e të dhënave të hapura – DataThon Albania po afron. Këtë vit konkurrimi bëhet për të dhëna mbi Shpenzime Buxhetore. Si i analizojnë të rinjtë shpenzimet e institucioneve buxhetore, cilët janë klientët e spikatur që marrin para nga shteti dhe a konstatohen përmes pagesave raste abuzimi, nepotizmi apo konflikt interesi. Të kuptosh më mirë ku shkojnë paratë e taksapaguesve – ky është synimi i maratonës në vitin e katërt të organizimit. Në ditët në vijim do të mbahet një takim për të prezantuar eventin dhe opsionet për pjesëmarrje. Konkurrimi këshillohet në grupe 2-3 persona. Këtë vit ata që analizojnë më mirë gjatë DataThon shpërblehen edhe me çmim, ku jane 2 cmime secili 150$.
Paraprakisht për tu frymëzuar mbi Shpenzime Transparente klikoni Spending Data Albania http://spending.data.al/.

organizon AIS dhe ODA

The Supreme State Audit and the Albanian Institute of Science signed a cooperation agreement

The Supreme State Audit and the Albanian Institute of Sciences (AIS), engaged through a cooperative agreement for the exchange of data between institutions. The agreement was signed by the chairman of SSA, Bujar Leskaj and the executive director of the Albanian Institute of Science, Aranita Brahaj.

Pursuant to this agreement, SSA will engage in exchanging data of mutual interest, opening a window of communication with the public in order to increase transparency and modernize the institution.
Through this cooperation, it will be created the possibility of using various data published by Open Data Albania which is a serious project appreciated from both within and outside the country for the quality of data and analysis that it prepares and publishes.
Through the implementation of this agreement, SSA is fulfilling the tasks for capacity building and enhancing professional standards in auditing, through training, workshops and other joint activities with the aim to modernize the institution and strengthening the fight against corruption.
Brahaj, in turn, praised the cooperation and new approach of SSA to Civil Society, noting that this cooperation through the exchange of data will generate new ideas and will help in finding defects, improving the fight against corruption. Both sides expressed the determination to implement this agreement and the belief that a sincere cooperation between public authorities and civil society will give concrete results in increased transparency, improved economic analysis by using data on socio-economic indicators in Albania, aiming of improvement of governance.

AIS presents at Samos Summit on ICT-enabled Governance

Samos2014

AIS participates at Samos Summit on ICT-enabled Governance, 30 Jun – 02 Jul 2014.
The principal advisor of AIS, Dr. Ing. Julia Hoxha, presented a paper on Open Spending Albania.

openspending-slide
Link to the paper

Link to the talk presented at Samos Summit

Below is the abstract of the talk:

In this paper, we describe Open Data Albania (ODA) project and concrete cases of open data utilization. ODA aims at providing open datasets of valuable information which can be structured, analyzed and presented in different forms leading to intuitive knowledge representations. Besides the datasets, the project has also produced analytical studies based on the data and insightful visualizations to make the knowledge understandable and easy to utilize by different communities.

The platform where the data is published online is the most prominent one for open data in Albania and very popular between the journalists, who are continuously using data from ODA to provide the public with information on different social-economic aspects. In many cases, the project has been used in direct advocacy initiatives. In this paper, we described a set of cases where the data is utilized by different groups, such as government institutions, NGOs, media, and academia.

AIS attended the conference: Political Accountability and New Technologies ( POINT 3.0 )

point3.0 1466039_780531985324219_1887497166427510096_n 10276554_754510451256537_739708157_n 10301942_687586951301094_5858042977116287858_n 10325510_780532318657519_4879991722102836526_n 10380994_687585887967867_4851449464017010075_nPolitical Accountability and New Technologies ( POINT 3.0 ) conference took place in Art Cinema Kriterion in Sarajevo from May 22nd to May 24th.

This year’s program offered a variety of great speakers, panels, exhibitions, workshops and screenings.

Among other great speakers, there appeared Michael Slaby, the CTO of the Obama 2008 campaign; Chris Albon from Ushahidi; Sultan Al-Qassemi, one of the most distinguished bloggers and analysts on the Middle East also Ardian Haxha and Drinor Selmanaj from FLOSSK Kosovo in collaboration with Victor Nitu and Ioana Cristea from Ceata Foundation Romania with the workshop about Security and Privacy.

Several panels in the two days of the conference addressed interesting and burning issues, like challenges of open government, humor and satire as means of political activism, measuring truth in the eve of elections and political activism going digital.

Albanian Institute of Science was introduced , in the second day of the conference, with the project of Open Spending Albania/ Open Data Albania. Our representative Besjana Hysa spoke about Open spending Albania – five apps for treasury monitoring. First, money map provides information on the budgets in the past few years (planned and actual!). Bubble tree is an app that visualizes the budget and provides citizens with an overview of budget categories, a cool thing to do, being that budgets can be boring sometimes. Daily bread tells you how much money are you giving to which area through your taxes. Another part of Open spending Albania is Fund diversion. Great feature of this app is that it identifies most discriminated areas of the budget. Also, the most important thing was monitoring of state treasury spending, and although we had problems with transparency from the government, things are now much better.Thanks to several years of work and coordination among the civil society and the public administration in the framework of OGP, Open Data Albania managed to develop an application for monitoring the state treasury. The work for this result has started much earlier than the project itself.Finally, the Albanian state budget is open, and our application offers some information filters based on: how public administration spendsthe Money; where do the funds go; how much is paid for different services; how much Money specific companies receive from specific institutions over a certain period of time; how much Money was spent in a short period of time.

Treasure Monitoring marks the most decisive moment in the process for an Open Government.

Due to the tragic situation caused by unprecedented floods across the country, POINT 3.0 Conference dedicated part of its time to try and help people in need. U.G. “Why not” already established the “Flood Map” website throughout which citizens can report the problems incurred as a result of floods, publish locations help collection, the most important information to contact support services operating in BiH, but also lists of all the bank accounts opened for donation.

POINT 3.0 Conference devote the entire third day of the conference, which is scheduled for practical workshops, to developing new or improving existing platforms for disaster aid.

POINT conference was organized by CA Why not (Zašto ne) from BiH, in cooperation with Center for Research on Transparency and Accountability (CRTA) from Serbia, Metamorphosis from Macedonia, Mjaft from Albania, Center for Democratic Transition (CDT) from Montenegro and IPKO Foundation from Kosovo.

Partners and supporters of this year’s conference were also National Endowment for Democracy, Balkan Trust for Democracy, Embassy of the United States in BiH, Heinrich Boell Foundation, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, TechSoup, Emerging Democracies Institute, Analitika and Mediacentar.

Hackathon Day in Tirana

Open Data Albania organized  its annual Hackathon, “Hackathon Albania 2013” on Saturday, December 7, 2013, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, at Tirana’s downtown.

This event is a gathering of friends, activists and citizens that want to give their contribution through visualizations or projects, and help the general opinion.
Hackathon is a casual meeting, where we collaborate as a team in writing applications, downloading data, creating visualizations or publishing analysis by using the open data. This is done in order to show support and to encourage the implementation of open data policies from the government, as well as local and international institutions.
This year’s theme is: IT in Service of the Civil Society!”
A large group of activists, programmers, designers, economists contributed in the event.

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Action – Cleaning of the Castle of Bashtova

Action for Cleaning the Castle of Bashtova – 01 May 2014.

This is the action of a group of volunteers of the “Act Now as a Smart Tourist” project. About 40 volunteers participated in this action for cleaning and promoting the castles along the Albanian coast.

The Castle of Bashtova is a monument of the first category and is located next to the village of Bashtova, about 3-4 km in the North of Shkumbini River. The castle was built in the 15th century and served the venerians. The Castle is a witness of traces of civilizations. Its surroundings are still intact. Although very close to Tirana, only a few people are aware of its existence, or visited it.

The problem with such monuments is related not only to their pollution, but also with the lack of their promotion, as a result of which they are not used as tourist destinations.

In addition to contributing to cleaning the area on the eve of the summer tourist season, our activities also intend to raise awareness for better management of our monuments and their environment, and create more possibilities for using their cultural and tourist potential. We also try to publicly invite more citizens to visit our picturesque coast, not only for its nature, but also for its national and monumental values.1609701_669759823059952_8842407782604975130_n 10176143_668520189850582_7314880931481567300_n 10250077_668520356517232_5739368280734353705_n 10291285_668520276517240_956186825857344286_n

Aksioni Vullnetar “Kalatë e Bregut tim” në Kalanë e Bashtovës

“Kalatë e bregut tim” është një aksion i një grupi vullnetarësh të projektit “Act Now as a Smart Tourist” http://smarttourist.al . Aksioni synon pastrim nga mbeturinat dhe promovim të monumenteve fortifikime në Brigjet e Shqiperise. Këtë rradhë Aksioni ishte në Kalanë e Bashtovës dhe u realizua në datën 1 Maj 2014. Ky projekt mbeshtetet finaciarisht nga Programi i Granteve të Vogla i Komisionit për Demokraci i Ambasadës së SH.B.A.-së në Tiranë.

Kalaja Bashtovës është monument i kategorisë së parë dhe ngrihet pranë fshatit të Bashtovës në një distancë prej 3-4 km, në veri të grykëderdhjes së lumit të Shkumbinit. Kështjella është ndërtuar në shekullin XV dhe u ka shërbyer venecianëve. Kalaja ka trajtë katërkëndore me përmasa 60 x 90 metra. Pjesa perëndimore e saj është rindërtuar në shekullin XVIII. Muret e saj kanë një lartësi prej 9 metrash. Kalaja e Bashtovës është një monument kulture që dëshmon për gjurmët e qytetërimit dhe civilizimit. Rrethinat e saj kanë mbetur të plota.

Pavarësisht se shumë pranë Tiranës, shumë pak prej nesh janë në dijeni apo e kanë vizituar këtë monument.

Veç kontributit me pastrim në fillim të sezonit turistik veror, aktiviteti ynë synon edhe sensibilizim për menaxhim më të mirë të monumenteve dhe mjedisit të tyre, krijimin e më shumë mundësive për të shfrytëzuar potencialin kulturor e turistik që ato mbartin. Gjithashtu edhe promovimi dhe ftesa publike për të nxitur të tjerë të vinë dhe të vizitojnë zonën jo vetëm për natyrën e bregut piktoresk por edhe për vlerat kombëtare e monumentale.

Workshop- Academic’AL

26 June 2013

Instituti Shqiptar i Shkencës ka organizuar një 26 qershor 2013 një workshop me pjesëmarrjen e përfaqësuesve të lartë nga universite të vendit. Moderator nderi i aktivitetit ishte Prof. Petraq Papajorgji një nga akademikët më të shquar në shkenca teknologjike në Shqipëri që mban disa grada shkencore, si dhe fitues i disa çmimeve kombëtare për kontributet e tij në arsim.

Pjesa e parë e workshopit u përqëndrua në prezantimin e websitit Academical dhe filozofisë së Open Access and Open Science. Pjesa e dytë konsistoi më debate në forumin e debatit, diskutimet dhe pytje mbi rolin e kërkimit shkencor në Shqipëri, vlerat e dhe vizibilitetit e tij në lidhje me institucionet e kërkimore ne nivel local dhe ndërkombëtar. Në workshop pati edhe propozime konkrete mbi vijueshmërinë e projektit Academical, si dhe aktiviteteve të mëtejshme të tij.

Link: http://academical.al/

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