I. Metshin: “We have made considerable progress on the issue of open government through IT-services”

(KZN.RU, August 8). Rifat Khannanov, the head of Information Technology and Communications Office, spoke about how to develop public electronic services of the city under the auspices of the City Hall at the Business Monday in the Executive Committee today. 

The head of the Office noted that the volume of information has increased half times in eighteen months on the open data portal of the Kazan city data.kzn.ru, which put into operation in the execution of the 149 Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information”. 35 units of the Executive Committee update information on the portal in the regular mode. In total it contains 145 datasets. Information about the movement of public transport is displayed in the dynamic data set format. 

The main goal of the project is to increase information transparency of local governments’ activities and ensure that all groups of users and developers have complete, relevant and reliable information, formed by local authorities of Kazan. This allows creating applications, forming reports, forecasting and analyzing the results, developing a variety of services on their basis, demanded by the residents of the city. 

According to R. Khannanov, any IT-company can implement a mobile application on the basis of Kazan Open data or a pilot project in the particular unit of the Executive Committee. He emphasized that the Executive Committee is interested in cooperation with IT-companies, including in the framework of public-private partnership. 

The portal of the official publication of municipal legal acts and other official information docs.kzn.ru is one of the main services, on which the information is laid out by units of the Executive Committee. “The resource was developed in May 2015, and started its operation in January this year. For today, 950 papers published on the portal with possibility of searching. Each document has a passport, which confirms the date and time of publication. The system is running in parallel with the publication of “Collection of documents and legal acts of the municipality of Kazan”, which is issued on paper. The next step is a complete rejection of the paper print. This will simplify the process of publication and reduce the production costs of collections”, said Rifat Khannanov. 

Another online service – portal data.kzn.ru open data – shows the growth of indicators: the amount of collected data has increased almost half times, up to 145, in two incomplete years of work. Information about the movement of public transport is displayed in the dynamic data set format.  

Residents can evaluate the work of web-platform for public voting and competitions. Selection of winners in competition "Tsvety Kazani” and “Ogni Kazani”, the selection for the post of the head of the Committee on Children and Youth Affairs was held on the service. “All voting sites are united by a unified flexible platform and unique styling, the selection results are available as a set of data, and each user can ensure transparency in the selection and correctness of elimination of bots and cheaters”, said Rifat Khannanov about service features.

According to the head of Information Technology and Communications Office, the number of spatial data is increasing annually by more than 14 thousand objects, the total base increased by more than 270 GB, formed more than 300 thousand unique requests; it is the reason of growing demands on system hardware. Rifat Khannanov said that digitization of data and their correct reproduction allows to reduce the terms of providing services to the population and organizations and getting a permission. 

Bringing geographic information systems to use the same format is the next step in the development of public information services of the city. Standard geodata is already developed, the introduction of a single editor for all geodata and a complete rejection of the paper or file sharing geodata in the Executive Committee of the divisions are planned. Rifat Khannanov noted that the task is set to complete the standardization of geographic information systems in the next year and a half. 

Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan, praised the made progress, noting that such projects seemed unattainable a decade ago. “Efficiency is one of the main criteria for the effectiveness of any government. It is important that due to the IT-services, which are introduced in the republic and Kazan, we have made considerable progress on the issue of transparency and accountability of government. Online queue to kindergarten, utility payments through the “Open Kazan”, viewing of all applications online - it seemed beyond possible before. Today, all the electronic services are available to citizens, it is very important and it needs to be developed”, said I. Metshin.