OGP Albania – Ministry of Finances Censures the State Treasure Public Data

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In the name of the principles of Journalism for Public Information, I would like to share with you a concern over a recent case of State Treasure Public Data being censured.

The Albanian Government is obliged by law and by the respective secondary legislation acts to ensure transparency over every single detail about the way that the Albanian taxpayers’ money and monetary public assets are spent.  Besides, in the context of its commitments for an Open Government Partnership (OGP), our Government is obliged to publish the daily List of Payments sent by the State Treasury to the Bank of Albania for execution. In addition to the date, total amount, and paying authority, such list includes also the identity of the beneficiary, the legal act on which the transaction is based, and other descriptions. Since February 2012, these data have been updated on the website of the Ministry of Finances, under the section Reports – Treasury. The Prime Minister Sali Berisha, Minister of Finances Ridvan Bode, and the Minister for Innovation Genc Pollo have also referred to this process of ensuring respect for the principles of democracy, good governance, transparency, and rule of law. Although the data were published using a technological model not in compliance with the ‘user friendly data’ principle, they were constantly published online from 1 February 2012 – 30 May 2013. Currently, however, the data for February, March, April, and May 2013 have been removed and censored during the first week of September. These four months of 2013 are significantly important, both because they are the last months of the right-wing Government, and months of an electoral year. In addition, the data for June and July are presented in a defective and non-convertible format.

The Treasury data have to be published even as a result of a very expensive project for introducing AMoFTS, a modern system for processing the transactions of the Central Government based on international standards and practices for financial reporting, and efficient, effective, and transparent use of public money and assets.

The Open Data / Spending Albania staff notes that this is a case of flagrant censorship to the detriment of public information. This type of censorship affects one of the largest responsibilities of a Government, i.e. the responsibility for efficiently using public finances and assets. The Albanian citizens have the right to know how their money is spent, and whether that money is used in the public or political and personal interests. Likewise, every citizen of the Republic of Albania has the right to know who the suppliers of the state and public institutions are, and who benefits from the taxpayers’ money. The removal of the data for four months, and the continuous defective publication of these data shows a case of misuse of duty, if not the fact that the respective state officials do not feel comfortable facing the public over this period of their governance. 

A democratic state ensures transparency and accountability for the ways it spends public money. With hopes of having your attention and media awareness through your website and programs,

Respectfully,

Aranita BRAHAJ
Open Data Albania
Web: http://open.data.al
Email: [email protected]

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

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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.

Java e Përdorimit të Internetit – Get Online Week Albania 2012

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Instituti Shqiptar i Shkencave në partneritet me Telecentre Europe organizon për herë të parë në Shqipëri fushatën: Get Online Week 2012 – Java e Përdorimit të Internetit 2012. Kjo fushatë organizohet prej tre vitesh në vende të Bashkimit Europian. Qëllim i kësaj fushate është nxitja dhe aftësimi i sa më shumë personave në përdorimin e internetit. Këtë vit Telecentre Europe ka mbështetjen e drejtpërdrejtë të Komisionit Europian dhe disa organizmave të rëndësishëm ndërkombëtar. Synimi është shtrirja e  kësaj fushate në vende të ndryshme të Europës. Instituti Shqiptar i Shkencave do të përcjellë dhe konkretizojë në Shqipëri qëllimin e fushatës për dobishmëri dhe zgjerim të përdorimit të internetit nga qytetarët. Në fushatën 2012 në fokus qëndron aftësimi i grave për të përdorur internetin,  si dhe tek përdorimi i internetit në punësimin e të rinjve.

Sipas Eurostat Europa është ende larg për të arritur përdorimin e gjerë të internetit nga popullsia e saj. Vitin e fundit niveli i rritjes ishte vetëm tre përqind duke shënuar kalimin nga 65% tek 68%. Kjo dëshmon që ka shumë për të bërë. Në Shqipëri niveli vjetor i rritjes është shumë më i lartë, por numri i përdoruesve të internetit dhe përdorimi për aftësim dhe dobishmëri janë proçese dinamike që kërkojnë vëmendje dhe kontribut. Gjatë kësaj fushate një javore në 30 vende evropiane, nëpërmjet 15 000 qendrave të internetit synohet të realizohet aftësimi në përdorim i rreth 200 000 personave. Në Shqipëri fushata Get Online Week 2012 synon nxitjen e mbi 500 qytetarëve në përdorim apo aftësim të mëtejshëm në internet. Instituti Shqiptar i Shkencave fton qytetarët, organizatat jofitimprurëse, institucionet e edukimit, median dhe këdo tjetër të interesuar të përfshihen dhe bashkëpunojnë në Javën Shqiptare të Përdorimit të Internetit 26 – 30 mars 2012.


Hackathon Day in Tirana

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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.

1451612_476308789153492_2047205985_n 1452314_476438755807162_1713528146_n 1453509_476420919142279_1042597143_n

Action – Cleaning of the Castle of Bashtova

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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

Volunteer Action: “Castles of my coast”

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On October 18th, we organized the “Castles of my coast” action in Borshi Castle with the participation of 120 volunteers.

This castle is located in a tourist area along the coast, and it is very interesting for its tourist and environmental potential. Its maintenance leaves a lot to be desired. The road to the castle was blocked before the action because of sliding stones.

Our 120 volunteers reacted under the “Act Now as a Smart Tourist” motto, freeing the road from stones.

The castle was also cleaned of the waste produced during the latest tourist season.

On October 19th, there was another action organized with the participation of 60 volunteers for cleaning the fortress in the village of Qeparo. This is one of the most beautiful villages along the Albanian coast, but most of its inhabitants have immigrated leaving the village neglected. In addition to our contribution to cleaning at the end of the summer tourist season, we also tried to raise the public awareness for a better management of our monuments and environment, and for creating possibilities to make use of their cultural and tourist potential.

On October 20th, the volunteer action continued in Porto Palermo.

Porto Palermo is also one of the most beautiful castles in the country with a long history of battles for protecting the Albanian territory. The castle is somehow better maintained, but the site is previously used as a military basis, which has created problems of environmental pollution.

After the actions, the participants made sure they also raised awareness about this important environmental site, promoting its beauty through the social networks facebook and blogs.

The event was covered on TV through spots that promoted citizens’ reaction and action.

The volunteers were mainly from Tirana, and were joined by activists of three local organizations and students from Borsh secondary school.

In this Actions, Smart Tourist Albania was also joined by Tirana Ekspres; ‘Rojat e Kepit’ Club; World Vision Vlora; SEEP Albania, and other organizations and initiatives.1380730_585679804801288_228848239_n 1393491_585678208134781_1960814413_n 1235436_585672328135369_1036995985_n

Invitation for Participation at “Hackathon Albania 2013”

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Open Data Albania is proud to announce its Annual Hackathon 2013.

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!”
If you are an activist, programmer, designer, economist, you are welcome to contribute by participating in Hackathon Albania, on Saturday, December 7, 2013, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, at Tirana’s downtown.
Be part of an active society by joining us!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hackathon-albania-2013-tickets-9490782185

Central Election Commission violates the Electoral Code concerning Financing of Electoral Subjects

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Legal and administrative irregularities in appointing the Auditing Experts

After publishing the data about the electoral expenditures for the two last campaigns, Open Data Albania, in an effort to ensure as much transparency as possible over the official data concerning the 2013 Electoral Campaign, found certain violations of the law in the organization of work by the Central Election Commission (CEC). Such violations have led to serious irregularities and shortcomings in the process of selection and appointment of the Licensed Auditing Experts for auditing the funds received for the 2013 electoral campaign.

Thus, the CEC is assigned by law (Article 91 of the Electoral Code) to appoint by lot a licensed auditing expert for each electoral subject, party, or participant running in the election. The drawing of such lot as a very important process in ensuring transparency over the financing of the political parties in electoral campaigns requires a strict application of the law in respect of the principles of transparency and impartiality.

Violations and Irregularities include:

1. The lot for the 2013 Campaign was drawn on 02 August 2013 in a meeting of the same date in the presence of four members of the CEC, and representatives of the political parties. The Decision for Announcing the Election Results was registered as Decision No. 752, and it was issued on 02 August 2013. According to the law, specifically Article 91, point 1, the lot must be drawn no later than 45 days after the announcement of the election result. The law implies that the deadline for drawing the lot starts on the date the election results are announced, and expires 45 days after that. Actually, the results of the 2013 parliamentary elections were announced by Decision of the CEC No. 759, dated 06 August 2013. This means that the lot was drawn four days before the expiry of the deadline. Bringing thus the lot date forward is in contradiction with the legal deadline, and hasty without a legal or administrative justification.

2. Such a failure in meeting the legal deadline deepens further shortcoming with the violation at the same time of Article 92 of the Electoral Code “Selection of the Auditors by the CEC„. Specifically, point 2 of this article contains the criteria that the list of experts for this lot should meet. The article specifies that “The list should contain at least 20 experts who have been exercising this profession in the last 5 years „. In contradiction with this article, the lot of August 2nd, 2013, was drawn with an initial list of only 9 experts. These 9 experts were appointed for auditing 68 electoral parties, including both parties and individuals. Thus, each expert will have to audit 7 to 8 subjects as an average. The requirement for providing an initial list of experts that contains at least 20 participants is also foreseen by Instruction No. 8, dated 25.03.2009 “On Appointment of licensed Accounting Experts for auditing the funds received and spent by the electoral subjects for their electoral campaign”. Having not met this legal requirement, the CEC should have cancelled the lot procedure, and repeat it at a later date within the legal deadline. The decision of the CEC does not contain any interpretation of why the lot was drawn in violation of the legal requirement of having a list of at least 20 experts.

3. The failure of the Legal Experts to show up at the lot demonstrates, first of all, a shortcoming of the work of the respective administration staff of the CEC. The notification about the date and time of the lot in the two previous elections was made by sending a nominal official letter via mail by the CEC Chair Arben Ristani. The invitation for participation in the lot in 2009 and 2011 was sent officially via mail to each accounting firm or individual experts that met the participation criteria. This good model of official notification was not followed for the 2013 elections. The notification was only made in the media for a general audience, while an invitation was only sent to those experts who are part of an official list, i.e., members of the Institute of Authorized Accounting Experts. The public notification was also associated by another defect, i.e. lack of its publication on the CEC official website.

Electoral Spending as Open Data

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Some countries lack the process of the publication and transparency for Electoral Expenditure. Former communist countries, countries with a new democracy or the ones who do not acknowledge political freedom, have not put into law the obligation to publish the Electoral Expenditures. Even in places where this law exists, there are big difficulties in building models and control mechanisms that ensure information, transparency and public debate on Electoral Expenditure.

Albania lacks the process of transparency over electoral expenditures. Only in 2008, the Parliament approved the law that obliged Political Parties to report their finances to the Central Election Committee (the institution that manages the elections)[1]. This finance tables are not published from the parties. The Central Election Commission publishes some reports with abbreviated information, in a format that is very difficult to find, while the data is not available for use (excel; PDF)[2]. The political parties’ expenditures are never made public during the electoral campaign. Even when they are published on the Central Election Commission website, this is done 6 months after the elections in the best case, and after two years in the worst scenario. The Albanian Media is not informed about the electoral expenditures; the public debate based on data is not present and the citizens are not informed on these expenditures. Very few individuals have the knowledge about the political parties’ legal obligation in publication the electoral expenditures.

To ensure transparency with the Public Spending, Open Data Albania worked in building tools and graphic presentations of Electoral Spending (2009 & 2011)[3]. This was made possible by programmers and designers of the Albanian Institute of Science. Till now our project was focused:

  • Gather data on the electoral expenditures. The source of information: the Ministry of Finance for the part of the income that is covered from the National Budget; the PDF table published by the Central Election Commission; information taken from political parties; audit reports from accounting companies.
  • The data were processed into common tables for the 55 political parties, grouped in various categories, like the political parties’ total income; the total of expenditures; income divided based on the source; the income according to the donor; expenditures according to regional units.
  • Build tools for the data visualization.
  • Incorporate the data in the catalog /database of Open Data Albania, a catalog that includes statistics on Albania’s economy and society. Open Data Albania is an Albanian Institute of Science project.
  • Distribute and design the data to networks, forums and social media.
  • Announce the datasetElectoral Spending Albania through a press conference and encourage the present journalists from various media outlets to publish the data on electoral expenditures[4].

The realization of this idea was something brand new for the country. No graphic presentation has illustrated before the expenses of the electoral subjects in this country. In addition, since the political parties financing in Albania has different features in comparison to other countries, the graphic tools that will be build will be brand new and compatible only with countries that have an electoral system similar to Albania’s. This have to do with giving to individuals a more transparent model in understanding how the electoral subjects spend their money, who are the donors of the political parties, who are the most sensitive points of the electoral campaigns.

This leads to public debates between the parties or to an account – giving process between the subjects and their respective supporters


[3] Ligjin nr. 10.019, datë 29.12.2008 “Kodi zgjedhor i Republikës së Shqipërisë”.

Dita e të Dhënave të Hapura 2013

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POPULLSIA & CENSUSE 1870 – 2011

Këtë vit në mbarë botën ditët e Open Data finalizohen më 23 shkurt me evente të rëndësishme si Hackathon, Datathon apo me publikime interesante në formatin dhe standardin Open Data. Projekti ynë Open Data Albania po publikon në vigjilje të kësaj date të dhëna të Popullsisë për Shtetin Shqiptar në 11 censuse zyrtare. Gjithçka në formatin Open Data . Edhe në censusin e fundit INSTAT, koordinatori ynë i të dhënave kombëtare publikoi në standardin CLOSED dhe me kosto marramendëse një atlas tradicional me të dhëna. Open Data Albania  Ju fton të kuptoni brenda pak sekondash e të gjeni, përdorni dhe ripërdorni të dhëna të hapura që datojnë në dy shekuj.

Shqipëria rezulton ta ketë arritur kulmin historik sa i përket numrit të popullsisë më 1991, pas së cilit popullata erdhi në rënie si pasojë e emigrimit masiv. Gjatë dekadës së parë pas rënies së komunizmit, popullata u reduktua me 0.35 për qind në vit, ndërsa në dekadën e dytë, 2001-2011, ritmi i rënies u përshpejtua në 0.92 për qind në vit. Në total, gjatë njëzetedy viteve të fundit, popullata ka rënë me 0.6 për qind në vit. Në rast se tendenca me rënie 0.9 për qind në vit, siç ka qenë në periudhën 2001-2011 vijon, në fund të kësaj dekade, popullata e Shqipërisë do të jetë rreth 2.5 milionë banorë.

http://www.open.data.al/sq/lajme/lajm/id/669/titull/Popullsia-ne-Shtetin-Shqiptar-1870-2011

Ju faleminderit që na ndiqni!!!