Results of the first six months of E-DATA portal

On December 30, 2015, the meeting of the E-DATA working group «258» took place. The meeting was chaired by the deputy Minister of Finance Oksana Markarova. The work on the portal started in July 2015and is planned to be complete in June 2016 after the test mode of the portal will be over.

The portal on public spending http://e-data.gov.ua/ is without an exaggerating an information revolution for Ukraine. It radically changes the budget process enabling citizens to be active, instead of passive, participants in this process thanks to control tools deployed on the portal.

According to project manager Oleksandr Shchelokov, the portal currently hosts approximately 17000 registered virtual offices of fund managers and recipients, the E-DATA website has 9000 visitors per day on the average; 750000 contracts, reports and protocols have been published on the web-portal so far.

As far as funding for the project is concerned, E-DATA is supported by international organizations. Also, 1.5 million hryvnas have to be provided from the state budget, from which 0.5 million hryvnas will be returned to the state budget as tax revenues. The contract on the creation and maintenance of the web portal for public spending was signed in October 2015, the works have been underway for three months already. According to the latest information from the E-DATA project team, as per 15:00 p.m. on December 30, 2015, zero state budget money was spent on the web portal.

Deputy Minister of Finance Oksana Markarova defined core issues which must be solved in 2016: more active registration of entities entitled to manage public funds, creation of an analytical center, amendments to the Law of Ukraine «On the transparency of the use of public funds», implementation of the concept «Transparent Budget» etc.

Oksana Markarova also thanked all members of the working group «258» for their participation in the project: «We are doing a right thing which will deliver positive results, if we make this process irreversible. Itwill probably deliver more trust to the work of the Government, since our current situation does justly not encourage citizens to trust us and make our work very difficult. I think that our project will bring more light and transparency to our work».

E-DATA is being implemented in three stages:

– the first module “Treasury Office Transactions” was launched in September;

– the second module “Working Office” for fund managers and recipients was launched in October;

– state-owned and municipal companies must register themselves and file reports on the portal in January 2016.