ZAGREB, March 4, 2018 – Croatia has become a much more open society and one much more accessible to citizens over the past five years because of open data, it was said at Open Data Days, a conference taking place to mark the five years that the open data legal framework has been applied in Croatia.
The state secretary of the State Office for Digital Society Development Bernard Gršić said Croatia was making good progress at European Union level, ranking near the very top in terms of open data use and publication.
Open data do not refer to personal data nor are they classified and their application impacts health, the economy, the environment and other segments of society, enabling the further opening and development of the digital society, Gršić said.
Open data are regulated by European directives, they are monitored and their use is encouraged at EU level. The European Commission estimates that about 1,000 jobs will be created in Croatia by 2020 based on open data economic activity.
The Commission also estimates that 629 million hours of waiting will be saved, Gršić said, adding that digital technology made it possible to process all data and offer them to citizens through various services.
Zagreb University Computing Centre (SRCE) head Zoran Bekić said open data contributed to the transparency of everything that was done, from the public sector to specific fields such as science and education. When we know that data are open and accessible to all, we work harder to make something better and more accessible, he added.
The Open Data Days conference is taking place from Friday to Sunday.
