Page 38 – Albanian Institute of Science

AIS vs. SP, SMI, and DP over Electoral Spending Transparency. AIS request the Administrative Court of Appeal to accelerate the court proceedings

29/02/2016/in Homeposts, Press Releases /by Besi Hysa

In the context of the court proceedings and our efforts to force the political parties to provide the public with real time (during the election) data about the Financing of their Electoral Campaign, we are sharing with you some information about the latest developments.

Thus, AIS has filed a request with the Administrative Court of Appeal, asking it to: Abrogate of Decision no. 44, dated 22.07.2015 of the Commissioner for the Right to Information and Protection of Personal Data. Force the political parties to give the complainant (AIS) the information about the financing of their electoral campaign requested on 09.06.2015.

The complainant in this process is: AIS, a non-profitable organization.

Defendants include: the Commissioner for the Right to Information, DP, SP, and SMI.

The case is registered with the court on 18.01.2016. The announcement of the Decision of the Court of First Instance, and the Transfer of the Case File to the Administrative Court of Appeal were delayed by two months. The court has drawn a lot, as a result of which the case is assigned to Judge Artur Malaj. Pending the court decision, AIS is afraid of potential prolongation and delays as a result of the technical workload of the administrative court.

In this context, AIS notes that the purpose of this court case, and the importance it has for the public interest requires the case to be adjudicated in due time, and without years-long prolongation. If the adjudication is prolonged and not finalized before the start of the next electoral campaign (2017), the purpose of the case and its adjudication are no longer important or relevant. In addition, a final interpretation and court decision would contribute to the process of debate and work for potential legal amendments in the framework of the Electoral Reform scheduled to be made and finalized within 2016.

Therefore, AIS in its capacity as the complainant in this court case, addressed the Administrative Court of Appeal, its Chief Judge Kastriot Selita, the case rapporteur, Judge Artur Malaj, and asked them to accelerate the court trial to as a short timeframe as possible.

Let me also remind you that our claim to real-time information about the financing of the electoral parties is based on Article 9 of the Constitution, point 3 “The financial resources of the political parties and their spending shall always be made public”.

Please find below a copy of the request made to the Administrative Court of Appeal for an Acceleration of Trial

Request for acceleration of adjudication

Copy of the second request made to the Administrative Court of Appeal for an Acceleration of Trial

Second request for acceleration of adjudication

DiploHack applications

05/02/2016/in hidden /by admin

#4Techno

Information on time for public procurement to be improved

Email 1 Print Screen Ap 2 Print Screen App

Swords

Fund your idea:technical assistance, accessibility to data sources capacity building

FYI-Presentation

HopEU

Helping domestic violence victims

hopeu

Slockomats

Education and labor market

PPTX – DOCX

The Pink Team

Common Places, on open digital platform as space of discussion about the creation of common places

DiploHack_PinkTeam

Albanian Tulip

Civil Society Platform:Making Albanian NGO’s more effective by improving their visibility

printsc1 printsc2 printsc3 printsc4

#Love in Action

Universal access in Tirana:an interactive map of accessibility statuis of public spaces for people with disabilities

PPTX – PDF

The Pioneers

Balkan Bike, digital platform for cycling mobility

The Pioneers Slide1 The Pioneers Slide2

Click

Neighbour tap

PPTX

DEC16

Giving a voice to citizens through technology:website and app that allow citizens to contact directly their political representatives

PPTX – PDF

Dothack

See and Act, responsibilities of local governments

PPTX

Sunshine Pirates

WANA app(We Are Not Alone): helping people who live alone for medical emergency purposes

PPTX

The Fifth Power

Be My Guest: Digital tourism ma of Albania with info on region/attraction and populations

PPTX – PDF

DiploHack Tirana Award Ceremony

03/02/2016/in Events /by admin

What happens when a programmer, a civil society representative, and a diplomat solve a problem together?! The Embassy of the Netherlands in Albania and Albanian Institute of Science hosted more than 50 participants on 29-30 January at DiploHack Tirana. Thirteen teams composed of a mixture of diplomats, programmers, and civil society representatives worked together on ways to use open data and technology to strengthen civil society advocacy. In the end, the teams presented thirteen applications designed to raise the civil voice.

The winner of #‎DiploHack Tirana was #‎LoveInAction team with their app AccessHack, an app that maps public buildings in Albania according to how accessible they are for people with disabilities.

PPTX – PDF

DiploHack Tirana Teams and Apps

Team: HopEU, Helping Domestic Violence Victims

Team: Swords, Idea: Fund your idea, technical assistance, accessibility to data sources, capacity building. Title: Fund Jour Idea

FYI-Presentation

Team #4Techno, Idea: Information on real time for public procurements to be improved. Title: Public procurements

Team: Slackomats Idea: Education vs Labor Market.

PPTX – DOCX

Team: The Pink Team, Common Places, an open digital platform as space of discussion anbout creation of common places.

Team: Albanian Tulip. Idea: Civil Society Platform

Team: The Pioneers Idea Balkan Bike Digital Platform for cycling mobility

Team: Click Idea Neighbor tap

PPTX

Team: DEC16 Idea: Giving a voice to Citizens through technology, website and app that allow citizens to contact directly their political representatives.

PPTX – PDF

Team: DotHack Idea: See and Act. Responsibilities of local governments.

PPTX

Team: Sunshine Pirates: WANA app (we are not alone) helping people who live alone for medical emergency purposes

PPTX

Team: The Fifth Power: Be my Guest: Digital Tourism map of Albania with info on region/attractions and populations

PPTX – PDF

DiploHack Tirana is the first of a series of events that the Netherlands will hold in EU countries during 2016 with photos, video presentations, and developed applications.

Programme Diplohack Tirana

02/02/2016/in Events /by admin

DiploHack: Introducing The Challenge

Friday 29 January, 17 – 18:30

Embassy Netherlands, Rruga Asim Zeneli 10

Welcome – what is a hackaton – composing the teams – logistics.

Diplo Hack: Hackathon!

Saturday January, 9:30 18:00

Embassy of the Netherlands, Rrug Asim Zeneli 10

10:15 welcome by Dewi van de Weerd, ambassador of the Netherlands to Albania

10:20 Presentation: open Data and how to use it by Aranita Brahaj

Phase 1: Ideation 10:30 12:00

12:00 DEADLINE: HAND IN YOUR PROBLEM ANALYSIS

Lunch 12:00 – 13:00

Phase 2: Prototyping 12:00 17:00

Phase 3: Preparing an elevator pitch 17:00 18:00

Prepare an elevator pitch of MAx 3 minutes cn the idea MAX 1 visual

18.00 DEADLINE: HAND IN 1 VISUAL FOR ELEVATOR PITCH

Diplohack Tirana Award Ceremony

Saturday January, 19:00 – 21:30

Destil, Qemal Guranjak

Presentations of the teams – Key note speech by Ened Mato – Award and drinks

Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tirana invited in “Tonight Ilva Tare” program speaks on the EU presidency and the country’s integration process

27/01/2016/in Media Coverage @en /by admin

Invited on the “Tonight Ilva Tare” TV program, Mrs. Dewi van de Weerd, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Albania, whose country holds the EU Presidency during these six months, said that non approval of the justice system reform means great sufferings for Albanian people and obstacles standing in the way of the country’s integration process.

However, dedicated people are working hard for this reform and according to the Ambassador finding a consensus to adopt this reform will be a turning point for the Albanian politics.

As regards the fight against corruption and organized crime, the Ambassador said that she was surprised by the fact that the chief prosecutor reorganized anti-corruption structure, given that it is one of the priorities for Albania.

Albanian asylum seekers in the Netherlands have 0% chance to obtain asylum and according to the Ambassador all the Albanians should try to build the future in their own country.

She further underlined, that as holder of the rotating EU presidency, the Netherlands will play the role of impartial mediator with Albania and that Albania should focus more on the work than on words.

In Tonight Ilva Tare television program in Ora News, there were also presented several programs supported by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, including the AIS organization’s program titled Money, Government and Politics. This program aims at creating tools for civil transparency and control over government with the aim to empower citizen’s participation and reaction.

DiploHack Tirana 29 – 30th January

25/01/2016/in Events, Homeposts /by admin

The Embassy of the Netherlands in Albania and the Albanian Institute of Science will host DiploHack Tirana, “A Voice for Civil Society: Using Open Data to Strengthen Civil Society Advocacy” on January 29 and 30. This Hackathon event will bring together civil society representatives, diplomats, and programmers in a day-long session to work together towards creative ways for using open data to give civil society a stronger voice.

As the current holder of the Presidency of the European Union, the Netherlands has as one of its principles to promote dialogue between citizens and governments. Transparency plays a crucial role in a meaningful public debate, and using technology and open data can contribute significantly to empowering civil society, journalists and academia.

Mixed networks and collaborations are becoming increasingly important; the world is changing, and so is diplomacy. The rapid evolution of new technology offers both challenges and great opportunities. To meet these challenges, diplomats regularly collaborate with other actors to set up co-creative events that can approach issues of global relevance through ideation and design processes.

A #DiploHack combines the specific know-how and skill sets of NGO’s, social entrepreneurs, tech developers and designers, and those of diplomats, journalists, and academics to ‘hack’ problems and come up with out-of-the-box solutions. Small teams comprised of a civil society representative, a diplomat, and a programmer will work together for 24 hours. The team with the best idea wins the DiploHack Tirana Award.

Date: 29 afternoon and 30 January all the day.

Location: The Public Award Ceremony from 19:00 till 22:00 at 30 January 2016 at Destil

Hashtag: #DiploHack

Schedule – link
Results

Diplohack Albania 2016 Award

#Love in Action

Access hack in Tirana: an interactive map of accessibility statuis of public spaces for people with disabilities.

DiploHack Data Sets

#4Techno

Information on time for public procurement to be improved

Email 1 Print Screen Ap 2 Print Screen App

Swords

Fund your idea:technical assistance, accessibility to data sources capacity building

FYI-Presentation

HopEU

Helping domestic violence victims

hopeu

Slockomats

Education and labor market

PPTX – DOCX

The Pink Team

Common Places, on open digital platform as space of discussion about the creation of common places

DiploHack_PinkTeam

Albanian Tulip

Civil Society Platform:Making Albanian NGO’s more effective by improving their visibility

printsc1 printsc2 printsc3 printsc4

#Love in Action

Universal access in Tirana:an interactive map of accessibility statuis of public spaces for people with disabilities

PPTX – PDF

The Pioneers

Balkan Bike, digital platform for cycling mobility

The Pioneers Slide1 The Pioneers Slide2

Click

Neighbour tap

PPTX

DEC16

Giving a voice to citizens through technology:website and app that allow citizens to contact directly their political representatives

PPTX – PDF

Dothack

See and Act, responsibilities of local governments

PPTX

Sunshine Pirates

WANA app(We Are Not Alone): helping people who live alone for medical emergency purposes

PPTX

The Fifth Power

Be My Guest: Digital tourism ma of Albania with info on region/attraction and populations

PPTX – PDF

Mentors

Nori Spauwen

nori Nori Spauwen is a junior diplomat who works for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She specializes in Human Rights and Strenghtening Civil Society and is in Albania for a month to help set up a DiploHack. Nori has a background as an advocate for LGBT rights at the UN and holds a Master degree in Political Philosophy. She lives in Amsterdam and works in The Hague.

Rron Nushi

11880358_955168171207866_3259066890582449266_n

Rron is currently doing a master in International Relations at Leiden University and is writing his thesis on Albania’s potential as a regional peace builder in the Balkans.

Besjana Hysa

besjana Besjana Hysa has been working for almost 4 years on promoting Transparency through Data by monitoring and analyzing the information on everything related to public expenditures in Albania and implementing digital platforms that provide information to citizens. She is currently involved in the following project: “Money, Government and Politics” project for publishing data about assets, incomes and expenditures declared by high level officials in politics and judiciary system, Electoral Spending project that contains data and analyses on electoral campaign expenditures.

Shefiko Hajna

shefiko Shefiko Hajna is a Software Developer for several projects such as: Open Spending, Open Data and Za’Lart. She holds a Master Degree in System of Information in Economy, Faculty of Economics at the University of Tirana.

Erald Hoxha

Erald Hoxhabis an Open Data Journalist working in Albanian Institute of Science projects that have generated substantial results in terms of transparency, information, accountability and good governance. His work consist in providing the public with Transparency and civic participation through the open source platform Raised Voices Albania (Za’Lart), where citizens had the opportunity to denounce cases of vote manipulation, misuse of public administration or children, and other electoral distortions.

Ergest Nako

Co-founder of Garazh, a newly organization, with the object to help, and acceleration innovation in Albania and in the region. Ergest has an experience of more than 10 years in the technology sector with strong expertise in Project Management, Information security, Business Process Management and IT management. He hold a MSc in software engineer. During the last two year, he is deeply involved in the innovation sector in Tirana, organizing Startup Weekend Tirana for three times in raw and the first HackDay Albania, mentoring different startup and also giving presentation, motivation speech and moderating different events in the innovation sector. He also was recognized for the startup weekend Tirana as Best Innovative Program for 2014 by Infocom Albania.

Participants list
Organizers: The Embassy of the Netherlands in Albania and the Albanian Institute of Science
Inspiration

http://dynamic.hs.fi/2012/hsopen6-1/index.html

Resource Open Data

Instruments

Google Charts tools

https://developers.google.com/chart/?hl=en

https://cartodb.com/

http://www.highcharts.com/

https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/2571232

Video Presentations (after the event)
Photo Gallery

DiploHack

23/01/2016/in hidden /by admin

DiploHack on A Voice for Civil Society, 29 and 30 January, Tirana, Albania.
The Embassy of the Netherlands in Albania, together with the Albanian Institute of Science, is hosting a DiploHack on A Voice for Civil Society. Mixed teams of 3 or 4 people will work together in a day-long session to develop ways to use open data in order to help strengthen civil society advocacy. The team with the best idea will win the DiploHack Tirana Award.

Open Local Government Procurements – OpenLGP

14/01/2016/in Homeposts /by admin

Albania ranked in 37th position in the Global Open Data Index 2015

13/01/2016/in Press Releases /by admin

In the Global Open Data Index recently published, Albania holds the 37^th position in the ranking. Such positioning shows that the country has less open data compared to other European countries like: Norway, Netherlands, France Romania, Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy, Moldova, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and even Kosovo . Meanwhile Albania left behind Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia, Greece, Turkey, Macedonia Georgia. Taiwan holds the first place in the Index. The European countries with the best performance are Britain, Denmark and Finland, while the United States maintain the 8^th position.

The openness of official data for the main databases in Albania is at 42%. Satisfying indicators show the data on National Statistics and Public Budget. While the information over Public Procurement and Weather forecast it is low or there is lack of data. Global Open Data Index was conducted by the Open Knowledge Foundation Network and for Albania the assessment was organized by AIS staff and associates.

Finalists of Open Data Hackathon Albania 2015

24/12/2015/in Events, Homeposts /by admin

Date: 19.12.2015

Organizer: AIS in the framework of MG&P

Place: My Office, Tirana

Topic of this year: Life in a Different City

Hackathon (Hacker + Marathon) is an open marathon, where various individuals may participate, work, and finalize an application or map. This year, Hackathon was held on 19 December, and the suggested topic was: Life in a Different City. An open invitation was addressed to ordinary citizens, analysts, storytellers, scout programmers, and designers.

The event was organized as a contest among groups and individuals. Six groups managed to get to the finals, presenting the following topics:

Topic: Health Care in My City. How is money spent in the hospitals for citizens’ health? Where is budgeting done best: Gjirokastra, Fieri, Korça, Dibra, or Kukësi? Students of Economics monitored budget-related facts for regional hospitals. Money means first health services, and then health. Some of the Hackers’ findings include: more money is paid for salaries than medications, equipment, and hospital treatment. .

http://ais.al/Hackathon/Shendetesia/girokaster.html

http://ais.al/Hackathon/Shendetesia/korce.html

http://ais.al/Hackathon/Shendetesia/kukes.html

http://ais.al/Hackathon/Shendetesia/list.html

http://ais.al/Hackathon/Shendetesia/Totali.html

Topic: Albanian Facing European Tourism. What should know a tourist visiting Tirana, and what those managing tourism should know about other European countries and about countries neighboring Albania? This was the theme of an application presented at Hackathon 2015.

Topic: Infrastructure Expenses. Two municipalities with the biggest budget for Infrastructure: Gjirokastra and Tirana. Public Works and Infrastructure that each citizen would like to have in his/her municipality. One of the Hackathon contestants identified the two municipalities with the biggest budgets and expenses for infrastructure. Gjirokastra and Tirana are on the top of the list, and Hackathon presentation identified the private companies contracted for public works in these two municipalities.

http://ais.al/Hackathon/transporti/Gjirokaster.html

http://ais.al/Hackathon/transporti/Tirana.html

Topic: Improve My City#‎Saranda. APP or web page? Do you have problems with infrastructure or urban planning? Do you live in Saranda? Report your problems to ‘Improve My City’!! Afterwards, your report shall be posted on the website of the Mayor or City Council. An APP for e-Participation.

http://ais.al/Hackathon/saranda/test.html

Topic: Employment vs. University in My City. The number of those pursuing their University studies is much higher than the number of new jobs requiring a University degree. An analysis of these figures presented at this Hackthon brings a comparison showing how disintegrated these two trends are. Finding: 6% of the country population is University students. However, the number of jobs that require a University degree is far from that. Study fees are the highest at the University of Medicine, but the highest salaries are paid in the Hydrocarbure Industry. The number of IT students is the lowest, but the highest number of new jobs is found precisely in this sector. There is a need for more research in the labor market and its relation with the University – that is the conclusion of the first presentation at Hackathon Albania.

http://ais.al/Hackathon/Ne qytetin tim cdokush shkon ne Univ. A ja vlen/list.html

Topic: Taxes in a Different City. How do I pay for my Municipality?!! A student of the Faculty of Economics, another one from the Faculty of Medicine, and one from IT joined their efforts in finding out the city, where people pay the highest and the lowest taxes.

http://ais.al/Hackathon/taksat/list.html

http://ais.al/Hackathon/taksat/list2.html

http://ais.al/Hackathon/taksat/list3.html

http://ais.al/Hackathon/taksat/list4.html

The six final ideas were presented to a jury composed of the following:

Anisa RULA, Scientific Researcher, University of Milan, Bicocca, Italy
Elga MITRE,Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tirana
Julia HOXHA, Scientific Researcher, Albanian Institute of Science (AIS), University of Columbia, USA
Leonid BLLOSHMI, Open Society Foundation Albania
Rron NUSHI, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Tirana

Hackathon took place in the premises of My Office. This is the fourth year that AIS organizes a Hackathon for Albania. The next event to be organized by AIS is Open Data Day 2016 Albania.