The open data portal is an information system that provides publicly available data of government agencies and other organizations in machine-readable format for re-use without restrictions imposed by copyright, patents or any other control mechanisms.

The open data portal is one of the components of Open Government which is being implemented for the sake of transparency of the state as such and of the interaction between government and citizens.

The portal is primarily intended to help everybody who needs government agencies’ information.

Open data is published by government agencies in a mandatorily manner pursuant to the Laws: “On Informatization” and “On Information Access”.  The other information holders publish it on their own initiative and in accordance with citizens’ requests.

Government agencies approve the lists of open data and publish such data on the portal according to those lists. In the event that in the lists there is no data you are interested in, you may request it from government agency (see more detail in Question 8).

On the data.gov.kz portal, the data of central government agencies and of akimats of regions and the republican-status cities are published in different categories: Education, Health, Transport, Statistics, Culture, Security, etc. You may select data according to categories or to government agencies.

A variety of data is presented as information about entities, such as: description, contact details, business hours, geo-location, etc.

In accordance with subparagraph 10) of paragraph 1 of Article 6-2 of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On Access to Information", the Authorized body in the field of access to information approves a single list of open data of state bodies posted on the open data Internet portal 

The data is updated on an ongoing basis in accordance with the update period specified in the approved unified list of open data of government agencies posted on the open data Internet portal..

For viewing, searching, downloading the datasets, no user authorization/registration is required. To place your comment/request, you need to get authorized.

Subscription for a certain dataset requires authorization.

If you are already authorized on the portal then when viewing a datasheet you can see the “Subscribe” tab in the top right corner.  By clicking on the tab you subscribe for the changes related to the dataset.

Also, when clicking on the user`s name located on the top right corner, the pop-up menu appears in which you should choose “”Subscriptions” section. When clicking it, the list of monitored datasets appears together with other actions on the portal to which you can subscribe if necessary via the chosen channels (SMS, e-mail or PUSH-notifications in eGov app).

Below the datasheet there is “Submit a comment” tab for commenting the open dataset, and “Submit request” tab for updating the datasets. If a user has noticed that data is outdated, incomplete or not available, he/she can submit a request for update.   

When sending a request for update you need to fill in the request form in the following way: choose data category or dataset in the list and indicate the reason why you think the open dataset should be updated.

It should be mentioned that for the sake of convenience it is recommended to submit requests for each dataset.   

In case, if the data you need is not found, a user can apply for publication of a dataset. To send an application for dataset publication, you should choose the “For publication” tab. 

To optimize and automate the process of applications submission as well as your time, we ask you to familiarize with the existing applications, as it is possible that similar application was submitted earlier and if it was, then you will have to vote for such application.     

To look through the applications, click "Applications for publication" link, search for an application and vote.

If no identical application has been found, you can apply for a dataset publication by filling in the required fields.    

Put a tick in front of “Submit new application” text.

Next, fill in required fields: data category, name, description of an open dataset (what information exactly should be provided), and also choose a government agency which holds the data or indicate Other organizations, if the data does not belong to a government agency. Then click the “Send” button.

You can use the data in various ways, such as: analyzing changes in one area or comparing various parts of government operation. Developers can create helpful applications using basic data, so that such applications can be used later by anybody else. One can also use a new API which provides multitude of capabilities. API guideline is located in the “API Description” section.

All open datasets published both with the help of portal workstation and through integration are available via API.

*API – (application programming interface) is a set of ready-to-use classes, procedures, functions, structures and constants provided by an application /library/ service or operating system for the use in external software products. It is used by programmers when creating various applications.   

This allows getting data through direct requests to the system, which is convenient for developers and other portal users.

More information in API operation can be found in “For Developers” section, “API Description” subsection.  

Metadata is the data related to supplementary information regarding content or facility.  Metadata discloses information on characteristics and properties describing some entities which enable automatically searching and managing them in large data flows. 

Metadata are displayed on the portal in the “Datasheet” tab when viewing datasets.