Skopje, 28 January 2026 (MIA) – The goal of the draft law on Open Data and Reuse of Public Sector Data, discussed in a public debate on Wednesday, is to enhance the transparency of institutions and facilitate access to required data. Minister of Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovski stated that efforts are underway to further improve the existing open data portal data.gov.mk.

“This government is committed to being transparent and open, providing information that matters to citizens, not only through press releases, laws, and decisions, but also via ongoing analyses and documents produced in government work, in a systematic manner. There has been an open data portal, data.gov.mk, but it has seen limited use. We believe this law will clarify the rules, the ways to access open data, how public institutions should publish it, and how it can be used,” Andonovski said.

He added that the complete redesign and reconfiguration of the data.gov.mk portal is very important.

“The portal’s operating system has been updated, with a full backend upgrade, as all previous extensions were development long ago with foreign support and had never been modernized. We now have a new, modern and easily accessible open data platform. In cooperation with Makedonski Telekom AD and Ministry volunteers, we have introduced, for the first time, an AI-powered chatbot that helps citizens, organisations and other interested parties to access the data. Users can now obtain the information they need through simple prompts, without manually searching through large datasets,” Andonovski noted.

He said they will continue in this direction, noting that “transparency is everything. While it can be overlooked when focusing on a task, automating processes makes it much easier for institutions to remain transparent.”

He noted that a draft of the law exists to improve transparency and the use of data, but stressed that it is not fixed and can be revised or improved if stakeholders think it’s necessary.

“The purpose of this draft law is to make it easier for NGOs and citizens to access important information, while also requiring institutions to share this information with them,” Andonovski said after the opening remarks of the event.

He said a technical upgrade of data.gov.mk is in progress.

“The portal will be able to automatically collect data, removing the need for institutions to publish it manually. Once large, high-quality datasets are available, usage will increase, as it is currently very low,” Andonovski said.

The preparation of the draft law is within the framework of the process of aligning National Legislation with the law of the European Union and European policies in the field of open data and reuse of public sector data.

Photo: MIA