This report was first published in the Russian Analytical Digest
To Hide or Not to Hide
In the summer of 2023, following drone attacks on Moscow in May, Russian federal agencies conducted an inventory of public data. According to our sources in the government, the Ministry of Economic Development, which oversaw this task, set the goal of categorizing each dataset into one of three categories:
- Critical, requiring immediate removal from the website (several dozen datasets);
- Sensitive, requiring temporary removal from the website until it could be transferred to a closed circuit accessible through the “Gosuslugi” portal (about 2% of datasets);
- Not requiring special action (more than 97% of datasets).
Datasets requiring immediate removal included information on infrastructure locations, such as lists of thermal power stations or power transmission lines, as well as statistics on oil, gas, and coal production. Sensitive datasets included other geodata (such as topographical plans or road infrastructure information), lists of infrastructure objects, and registries of licenses (e.g., for the turnover of alcoholic products or waste management)—information that, according to officials, could be used in planning military attacks or imposing sanctions.
Two weeks after the drone attacks on Moscow, a dataset with atmospheric characteristics by altitude, which could theoretically have been used in drone development, was removed from the website of Roshydromet, the federal agency responsible for monitoring and forecasting weather, climate, and environmental conditions. Later, departments gradually removed lists and registries of potentially attackable objects—power stations, combined heat and power plants, power lines, and other similar objects. A total of 36 federal agencies hid datasets with addresses of their institutions and territorial departments (out of 55 agencies that posted such data), among them not only security and infrastructure executive bodies, but also, for example, the Ministry of Education and Rosalkogoltabakkontrol, the agency responsible for regulating the production, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products.
This is just one of many examples of the increasing “closedness” of the Russian state. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian authorities have been regularly removing data from public access. According to our calculations, nearly 600 datasets have been removed from the “Open Data” sections of official websites of federal executive bodies in the ensuing 2.5 years. Another 360 datasets from federal executive bodies (Ministry of Defense, Federal Penitentiary Service, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Economic Development, and Ministry of Sports) disappeared along with the state Open Data Portal, as these agencies did not repost the files on their own websites.
The number of datasets cannot be considered a universal measure of data openness, as they contain varying amounts of data. Some datasets contain a single indicator for a specific year, while others span 10–20 years. One-sixth of the removed files (101 datasets) contain only administrative data (addresses and phone numbers of institutions, lists of public events, or lists of information systems). Low informativeness and relevance are common characteristics of datasets that Russian authorities publish as “open data.” One-third of the remaining 1,800 files contain administrative data, and one-third have not been updated for two years or longer.
Data that was not formatted as “open” (machinereadable)—various registries; statistical reporting forms; and textual reports containing macroeconomic, financial, crime, and social benefits indicators—were also deleted, sometimes retroactively for all previous years, or ceased to be updated. The exact volume of hidden data is difficult to assess due to the chaotic nature of statistical and open data publication—files in different formats were placed in different sections of websites and sometimes appeared as interactive web widgets.
On the Path to Legitimacy
The fact that we now have a reason to talk about data closure indicates a fairly high level of openness in previous years. Over the last 30 years, the Russian state has gone through three phases regarding openness (Begtin et al., 2019):
- 1991–2012: formation of the legislative base for implementing the concept of openness and open data; first projects on data disclosure (State Procurement); launch of the “Open Government” initiative.
- 2012–2018: striving for maximum openness; “Open Government” and other institutions working for open data.
- 2018 to present: abandonment of the previous concept; gradual transition to a paternalistic model of relations between power and citizens; creeping rollback of initiatives for open data.
Why did the Russian state move toward openness? The literature provides several potential answers, related to internal and external legitimacy and their uses by the governing authorities.
First, the Russian government was influenced by a desire for international legitimization and integration with supranational institutions. For instance, as a member of the G8, Russia expressed its willingness to join the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative that secures commitments from national and sub-national governments to promote open government, in 2012. In 2013, the OECD, in partnership with Rosstat, the governmental statistics agency, assessed the quality of Russian official statistics and their compliance with international standards, in particular the system of publication of statistical information (OECD 2013).
Second, the desire to attract foreign investment required the implementation of international transparency standards. It might be that some autocracies disclose information (especially related to economic performance) as a signal to the international community and potential investors. Maerz (2016) finds that economic globalization and international pressure stimulate non-competitive autocracies to publish some information and develop other factors promoting transparency, such as electronic government. Comparing several post-Soviet countries that have adopted Open Government Initiatives, the author concludes that the degree of transparency was higher in Russia than in other cases. The improving quality of governance correlates with Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in Russia, per World Bank data (World Bank n.d.). Hence, openness became a mechanism for ensuring the security of investments.
Third, the prospect of domestic legitimation encouraged the Russian government to disclose information and make it publicly available. Information flows are important for good governance (Islam 2006). Maerz shows that competitive authoritarian regimes adopt e-government and open data initiatives mainly for internal legitimation purposes. The government publishes not only datasets but also detailed information about the government itself, its responsibilities, legislative texts, and documents. All this information, as well as established e-government processes, improve the quality of bureaucratic performance and consequently increase government approval. Beazer and Reuter (2019) analyze economic performance data and show that the Kremlin party United Russia is punished by voters for poor economic performance in places where mayors were appointed. This suggests that the state should care about such performance, which would explain why it is interested in collecting data that are used to govern and make decisions based on this information.
Fourth, the authoritarian technocratic model of state governance presupposed intensive digitalization and reliance on expertise, for which data were also required. According to the theory of informational autocracy (Guriev and Treisman 2020), modern autocrats forego the use of ideology or mass repression, instead focusing on fully controlling the information sphere and creating the perception that they are competent economic managers. However, it can be hard to lie about economic indicators. As such, some autocrats actually work to improve the quality of government and state capacity, which goes together with a certain degree of accountability and the free flow of information. Given that there are few end users of the “raw data” nationally, it does not pose a great danger to the regime as long as media access thereto is controlled by the authorities.
At the same time, in regimes where elections do not play the primary role in electing politicians at any level of power, accountability is transformational. So-called “long route accountability” (Dewachter et al. 2018) presumes greater centralization of power and stricter bureaucratic oversight. In this model, bureaucrats are not directly responsible to citizens. Rather, citizens voice their dissatisfaction to higher-level politicians, who in turn influence outcomes for lower-level bureaucrats (usually through punishments ranging from formal reprimands to loss of resources).
The high level of digitization and centralization characteristic of state information systems leads to many details becoming available simply as a by-product of administrative processes—data become an artifact of the “digital paternalism” model.
In Russia, for example, there is a very high level of openness of judicial data. The “Justice” information system, launched in 2006, is used by courts across the country in their daily work, and also helps citizens monitor the judicial process. Simultaneously, researchers and journalists have the opportunity to collect this data and study the functioning of the judicial system. While the official module aggregating judicial data stopped working at the beginning of 2024, it remains possible to collect data directly from court websites. Journalists and researchers have developed special tools for this purpose, such as the judicial data parser of the “To Be Precise” project.
The peak of the movement toward openness was the creation of specialized institutions that were supposed to spearhead the openness agenda at the federal level. In February 2012, “Open Government” appeared, but in the six years of its existence, it did not receive either sufficient powers or sufficient funding, which ultimately made its work less effective than planned.
Nevertheless, thanks to “Open Government,” standards of openness for federal executive bodies were adopted and both the concept of “open data” and technical requirements for publication, lists, and procedures for data provision were defined. Federal authorities published 2,200 machine-readable datasets on their websites.
By the time of its closure for “technical maintenance” in March 2023, the Open Data Portal contained 27,000 datasets. Most of them (84%) were first uploaded during the period of “Open Government,” with updates peaking in 2017.
Overall, the portal was more often an object of criticism by researchers than a “flagship” of open data in Russia. As of early 2023, 60% of datasets had never been updated, 30% had never been downloaded, and only 2% (470 datasets) had been downloaded a hundred or more times.