Tag: belgrade

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Dave Copeland advocates for “brutalist web design” (found via Kevin Marks)

There’s much to say for this. Although minimalist may be more apt, I get why he calls it brutalism, as it calls for some brutal choices if you start from an over-produced website.

Summarised it means

  1. Content is readable on all reasonable screens and devices.
  2. Only hyperlinks and buttons respond to clicks.
  3. Hyperlinks are underlined and buttons look like buttons.
  4. The back button works as expected.
  5. View content by scrolling.
  6. Decoration when needed and no unrelated content.
  7. Performance is a feature.

I think this blog got points 1, 2, 4, 5 covered, and fails at underlining hyperlinks (3), and has no specific steps taken for performance (6) (e.g. this site isn’t static)

The upside is he says “if every website adopted these guidelines, the web would be fast and readable, our batteries would have much power at the end of the day…”

Then again, brutalist architecture such as the Belgrade Western Gate below, only looks good in a certain light and from a certain perspective. Such as the brief few minutes on a hotel balcony when I took that photo. Otherwise it is often grating and dehumanising. In other words, every metaphor fails at some point.

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Last June I spent time in Serbia doing an open data readiness assessment for the World Bank. Early this month I returned to present the findings, and to mentor a number of teams at the first Serbian open data hackathon. The report I wrote is now also available online through the UNDP website.

odrareportthe printed ODRA report

The UNDP organized a conference to present the outcome of the readiness assessment and discuss next steps with stakeholders. At the conference I presented my findings to the Minister for Public Administration and Local Self Government (MPALSG), and a printed version was made available to all present.

ministerme conf1
(l) the minister (center, me left of her) on open data (photo Ministry PALSG), (r) discussing presented app datacentar.io (photo Hakaton.rs)

At the conference the 11 teams that created open data applications at the hackathon the weekend before, called Hakaton.rs, were also presented. The hackathon took place in the recently opened StartIT Centar, a coworking space (which got funded through kickstarter). I had the pleasure to be a mentor to the teams (together with Georges and Brett from Open Data Kosovo), to channel my experience with open data communities around Europe and open data app-building in the past 8 years. The quality of the results was I think impressive, and it was the first hackathon where I saw people trying to incorporate deep-learning tech. I aim to post separately on the different applications built.

mentorMentoring during the hackathon, with Milos and Nemanja. (photo Hakton.rs)

That the hackathon was about open data was possible because five public sector institutions (Ministry for Interior, Ministry of Education, Agency for Environmental Protection, Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices, and the Public Procurement Office) have been working constructively to publish data after our first visit in June. In the coming months I hope to return to Belgrade to provide further implementation support.

The report is also embedded below:

Serbia Open Data Readiness Assessment

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The week before last I worked on an Open Data Readiness Assessment (ODRA) for Serbia during a week long mission to Belgrade. It is part of my work for the World Bank and done in close collaboration with the local UNDP team, at the request of the Serbian directorate for e-government (part of the ministry for administration (reform) and local authorities).

Next to me visiting a wide range of agencies with local colleagues Irena and Aleksandar, my colleague Rayna did a roundtable with civil society organisations, and my colleague Laura a roundtable and a number of conversations with the business community. We also had a session with UN representatives, and WB project managers, to mainstream open data in their project portfolio.


the unfinished orthodox Saint Sava church, and the brutalist ‘western gate’ Genex tower

Throughout the week we invited everyone we met inside government who seemed to be interested or have energy/enthusiasm for open data for a meeting on the last day of the mission. There we presented our first results, but also made sure that everyone could see who the other change agents across government are, as a first step of building connections between them.

The final day we also had a session with various donor organisations, chaired by the UNDP representative, to explain the potential of open data and present the first ODRA results.

In the coming few weeks the remaining desk research (such as on the legal framework) will be done, and the draft ODRA report and action plan will be prepared. A delivery mission is foreseen for September. In the meantime I will aim to also spend time helping to strengthen local community building around open data.


Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Defence building that was bombed in 1999 by NATO

In Serbia, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and ensuing wars (Bosnia, Croatia), the Milosevic era, international sanctions, and NATO bombardments during the Kosovo conflict (1999), have left deep marks on the structures and functioning of government and other institutions (as elsewhere in the region).

I had always more or less assumed that in the early nineties the former Yugoslavian federal institutions had morphed into what are now the Serbian national institutions. Instead these federal structures largely dissolved, leaving gaps in terms of compentencies and structures, which are not helped by (legacies of) corruption and political cronyism. Serbia is a candidate for EU Membership, meaning a path of slow convergence to EU policies and regulations.