On December 16, BIRN Montenegro hosted the launch of the Montenegrin Government Open Data Portal, followed by a panel discussion on open data in Podgorica.
The event, organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Administration, emphasized openness and transparency as essential principles for modern public administration, fostering citizen trust and effective governance.
BIRN Montenegro’s Executive Director, Vuk Maras, highlighted the challenges Montenegro faces in ensuring public policy transparency.
“The Ministry of Public Administration has provided us with a tool, and now it is up to us to use it. It is in everyone’s interest for this portal to become fully operational,” Maras stated.
Minister Marash Dukaj described the new open data portal as a “central point for accessing public-sector data in an open format” and called on all state institutions to proactively publish datasets on it.
The previous portal, launched in 2018, collapsed following a cyberattack on Montenegro’s IT infrastructure in August 2022. After BIRN Montenegro highlighted the unavailability of open data, the Ministry announced on September 27 that a new portal would be launched in December.
The revamped portal includes nearly 400 datasets, categorized by specific areas. The launch also heard the Secretary General of parliament, Aleksandar Klarić, announce that all data related to parliament would now be available in a readable format. He added that citizens would have the ability to visualize and compare data.
Open data refers to public-sector information made freely available online for use and reuse by anyone, enhancing public administration transparency. It is designed to reduce the number of requests for free access to information while increasing the quantity and quality of information published by government institutions.