The goal of the project is to support the transition towards an adaptive, effective and open governance to place human development at the centre of digital transformation. Transparency practices of the Government are on the test. The amount of information classified by public institutions and withheld from the public continued to grow during the pandemic, in practice further restricting the access of CSOs and the public to key policy decisions.
Furthermore, there is a lack of clarity on what constitutes public information and what can be shared outside of public sector. Even though Montenegro is committed to open data standards, many data sets that are being published do not meet real needs at the ground. In the field of open data, Montenegro ranks among the three last countries in Europe and 83rd among countries overall, according to the Open Data Barometer.
Key gaps and obstacles have been identified in terms of publishing or making data available in online, machine-readable and reusable data formats, whether the data are free of charge, openly licensed, up to date, and whether they are easily searchable for user needs.
On the other hand, Global Open Data Index explores 15 different datasets according to the six criteria that determine the extent and characteristics of open data, including: openly licensed, open and machine-readable format, downloadable at once, up to date, publicly available and free of charge.
According to the last update, Montenegro is ranked on the 49th place in the world. Montenegro is a signatory to the Open Government Partnership initiative and is currently working on a new Action Plan, while the previous one was based on 6 commitments related to access to information, citizen participation, public services and anti-corruption.
