Journalists and civil society activists do not use much the information published on the open data portal date.gov.md owing to the data sorting deficiencies. According to the author of the report on the most open public institutions Dumitru Lazur, in order to be used as a real source of information, this portal must be improved. The report was presented by the Independent Journalism Center.

In a news conference at IPN, the author said that compared with last May, the percentage of those who consider that the data are useful rose from 47% to 71%, while of those who believe that the sets of data are not very useful fell from 41% to 20%. Furthermore, no journalist or civil society representative considers that the sets of data are useless. In May 2013, this figure stood at 3%.

The questionnaire was filled out by 40 journalists and civil society representatives. 47% of them said that they used the portal at least once. Compared with the previous study, the percentage of those who use the information from date.gov.md in their work grew from 28% to 47%.

As in the previous monitoring period, some of the ministries and state or public institutions do not open the public data on date.gov.md or do it occasionally. Another problem is the impossibility of sorting sets of data according to the institution’s area of activity. The systematized data for the previous years is missing. Some sets of data are incomplete and there is no common data publication format.

The author recommends adjusting the portal functioning principles to the needs of the journalists and civil society. In order to ensure greater accessibility of the data published on date.gov.md, it is recommended setting clear criteria for identifying the whole range of governmental data that must be opened by every institution. Most of the journalists use mainly data published on the official websites of the public institutions. That’s why the governmental portal should be interconnected with the official websites.

Director of the Independent Journalism Center Nadine Gogu voiced hope that in the future the portal date.gov.md will contain all the open data and will be used by the mass media as a real source for carrying out investigations and other activities inside the office.

The report was produced within the Open Government for an Informed and Active Society Project that is implemented by the Independent Journalism Center and the Association for Participatory Democracy  ADEPT between March 2013 and March 2014, on the initiative and with the financial support of Soros Foundation Moldova.