Lithuania offers a look at its public service through an open data portal

Like the year-end report published in France, most countries take the opportunity to conduct an in-depth review of their civil service. Some of this data is published to meet specific classification criteria so that it can be used by international organisations (like the EU or OECD) for comparative purposes.

Even as governments make efforts to publish more and more data on their public service, for the benefit of researchers and journalists, the result is merely a snapshot of the situation at a specific point in time.

In response to this problem (1), Lithuania’s ministry of the interior (who heads up the civil service) decided to create a dedicated portal for open data.

Data going back five years, imported from the HR system, can be searched to pinpoint staffing levels to the day. There are also multiple display options (numbers and graphs for now, with map features under development).

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In addition to predefined searches, the main draw of the tool is the ability to easily obtain data for a set of indicators on the public servant population for a given date, and to track changes over time.

For example, you can find a breakdown of the workforce by a number of factors: posting, job category, salary, training history, age group, gender, education or languages spoken.

There is a special section for recruitment data (number of applicants for a position, pass rates for tests and interviews). You can also find data on the geographic location and profile of vacant positions.

The project, which follows the latest standards for public open data, was built around two central principles: to provide more transparency while guaranteeing full privacy protection with regard to personal identifying information.

With intuitive features (predictive entry, filtering and sorting icons, editing assistance for analytic reports), the portal also has a simplified export feature for customised applications.

¹ In January 2020, Vilnius hosted a European conference on open data.