Ahmeti: Pristina citizen to become city owner

Citizens of Pristina will already have the opportunity to be informed with a few clicks of all decisions made by the mayor of the municipality, through the digital platform Alpen Dataı, which has been launched on Wednesday and is available to all.

Digital platform “Open Data” contains 130 documents in 14 different categories, which can be downloaded every moment while containing municipal property information to subsidies, including all decisions the capital's mayor, Shpend Ahmeti, has made.

In this case, Ahmeti has said that through this platform, they intend to turn Pristina's citizen into the owner of the city. He has praised the launching of this platform as a result of the hard work done in advancing transparency. Meanwhile, it has invited other municipalities to follow this example in order to increase accountability to their citizens.

We've been trying to get all the information that citizens are asking for, whether in terms of accountability or in terms of simple information to have access to as few clicks as possible... I extend an invitation not only to other municipalities but also to the ministries and governments of the Republic of Kosovo to take as an example that they can do in their institutions, because we think transparency and accountability are the foundations of democracy so that citizens can be informed of both the expense and the decisions and any other information they need. Despite the election outcome, I think this will be good for the Pristina municipality in whatever way we turn the citizen and make the city's real owners”, he said.

Asked whether municipal debtors will be involved on this platform, Pristina's chairman has said the idea is not to have classified information which could result in ill-governing and mismanagement, while said all information will be included on this platform.

And according to Ahmeti, the problem remains that municipal property has expired.

We're already collecting debts with the completion law. I believe this will be over soon. We have a problem with property that has expired with contracts, before it was giving in to very easy exploitation while now in competition procedure. They have built something for example on this land, and now we have not done anything to bring down those properties and we have not let them compete, we are expecting a change of the use law so we can address this problem”, Ahmeti said.

Pristina municipality deputy head Muhedin Nushi has praised top digital platforms with which citizens will have the opportunity to process the data there. While explaining that data presented in the form of billboards is divided into 14 categories, including education, administration, agriculture, economy, culture, environment, infrastructure, health, procurement, property, urbanisation, and the Chairman's Cabinet.

According to him, building this platform does not end with that, according to him, there will be new advantages in the service of citizens.

And we've taken this information from the platform which is built in one of the largest cities in Europe, the city of Barcelona, from where the idea of building such an accounting platform in general, where citizens and NGOs can come very quickly to the exact information of spending, on our income, on our budget, but also making comparisons between incomes and spending, and see where these means of citizens are dedicated to, in which form they are being spent. 4 36” In all, there are 14 categories of 48 RHs. We also have 130 documents loaded on this platform that can be downloaded at any moment”, he said.

The digital platform "Open Data" is available to all citizens of Kosovo and is built with the help of UNDP and Albanian I CT Awards.

Meanwhile, in the Pristina municipality, it is working to soon enable citizens' communication with the municipality through the app “Whats up”.