News

On the 18th of March (Thursday) in the hotel Holiday- Inn Center for Change Management (CCM) in partnership with Center for Sustainable Development ALKA held the closing conference of the project: Putting People First, financed by the European Union and co-financed by the British Embassy Skopje.

The aim of the conference was to present key findings of the project which include "Standards for e-transparency in local government" that in detail defines the information and data which should be published by local governments on their web sites in the form of open data as well as "Guidelines for Open Data for local government units" which aim is to make the process of publishing open data from local governments much more easily done.

A number of representatives from the local governments, civil society organizations as well as central state institutions that are responsible for developing and implementing policies in this area were present at the closing conference.

Aside from presenting the main activities and results of the project a debate started concerning the meaning of open data for social and economic development. Furthermore, guidelines were developed as to how these formed standards can be incorporated into the regulatory framework and for their implementation to be supported by units of local governments.

Participants of the conference supported the initiative for establishment and implementation of such standards by local governments, recognizing that providing a unified practice for publishing information and data will significantly improve the transparency of the municipalities.

The project: Putting people first will focus on improving the transparency of the units of local governments threw established standards for open data at local level, with the aim for better including citizens and civil society organizations in following the work and decisions made by the municipalities. More on the research and project can be found here.