Free access to public government data is an innovative initiative for governments, civil society and the information and communication technologies (ICT) communities worldwide. The "Free access to public government data" initiative provides, among others, placing governmental data in a standard online format. The program aims to increase the transparency of institutions and to enable citizens take informed decisions. This action has been launched in many countries around the world, from leading countries such as U.S. and UK to developing countries.

In order to align to international trends, e-Government Center launched the open data platform date.gov.md. With this new platform, the Government offers citizens and businesses access to public data sets. The platform - a single point for open data - contains information produced by government bodies. On this basis, companies, organizations or individuals can develop their own applications and analysis designed to help improve citizens’ quality of life and encourage business development.

On the portal, the public data are structured according to the ministries: State Tax Service, Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Finance, National Health Insurance Company, e-Government Center, Tourism Agency, etc. Citizens can easily consult data sets, require useful information, express their opinions and propose manners of improving the platform. This way, citizens’ voice can be easily heard by the ministries and the dialogue between authorities and citizens is particularly important for useful open data.

Within the new platform, an innovative application can be accessed, one that allows tracking how the public budget is spent, the web version of Public Expenditure Database (BOOST) undertaken by the World Bank. The application helps citizens visualize data easily, data structured by year, sector, and type of procurement, economic groups and regions. (For details, please visit www.moldova.wb-boost.org).

At the moment, there are 433 open data on the portal from 36 state ministries.

Civil Society and the ICT community in Moldova began to capitalize open data by creating technological applications. In the summer of 2011 the contest "Your e-application" dedicated to app developers was organized. The winner of the "Your e-application" contest was the www.alerte.md project, which aims to identify and solve public problems in Chisinau. This platform was created in order to help people report problems in their community faster and easier. It is an alternative to the classic process of initiating petitions addressed to public authorities.

The "Parkanoid" project, which won the first prize at Social Innovation Camp Moldova 2012, held on July 27-29th in Ivancea Orhei, refers to a social problem. Using a free mobile application "Parkanoid", users can photograph illegally or wrong parked cars, then report it to the Traffic Police via cell phone. «Parkanoid" is a tool that connects citizens, on the one hand and public authorities on the other.

Government’s use of an open data portal can be beneficial for journalists too. Open data based journalism, successfully created by publications such as "The Guardian", could revolutionize media feature reports in Moldova. An example of using these information would be presenting data through dynamic digital maps, easy to understand and easy to use. Journalists can compare types of data and can present them as they unfold. Thus the articles become more valuable.

The use of the date.gov.md portal in journalists’ daily work can change the way they observe and monitor changes in society and how the government faces diverse challenges.