An administrative case has been opened against the owner of the site, which contains public information about enterprises and organizations. Why doesn’t the Statistics Committee want to allow others to use open sources?
An administrative case has been opened by the Ministry of Internal Affairs against the founder of the Orginfo.uz website, which maintains an electronic register of legal entities.
The case was initiated by an application submitted by the State Statistics Committee.
The site was launched by programmer Boburmirzo Khamrokulov in early January 2021. He told Kun.uz that the platform was created on the basis of open information about enterprises and organizations posted on the official website of the Statistics Committee.
“On the website of the Statistics Committee, one can get information about enterprises and organizations registered in Uzbekistan using the STIR number. All of this is open data. I downloaded all of this information (STIR numbers) and created a convenient site that allows you to search for the name of the head of the enterprise, the name of the legal entity, as well as the founders.
I have no material gain or evil intent in doing so. Note that the site is not opened anonymously, but is hosted on a .uz domain. If I had bad intentions, I could also upload it to foreign servers like .org or .info to hide my identity. There is also no advertising on the platform.
I was studying for a master’s degree in IT when I launched the site. The purpose of creating this site is to compile a variety of software products that I have created in my portfolio to show later to large companies and employers.
It is not easy to find information about companies on the committee’s website – you need to know the STIR number of the company,” Boburmirzo Khamrokulov said.
The programmer said that in August, the MIA Cyber Security Center called him and stated that the State Statistics Committee had filed a complaint against him.
According to the committee, the website orginfo.uz cites the State Statistics Committee as a source, and the information provided sometimes does not match the official source. Because the information about legal entities and enterprises in Uzbekistan is constantly changing.
After that, the programmer ensured that the information on the site he created was updated every 10 days based on the data of Statistics Committee, and wrote a warning that it would be a few days later than the official database on stat.uz.
Three months after the conversation at the MIA Cyber Security Center, on November 17 this year, Boburmirzo Khamrokulov was summoned to the Asaka district DIA of Andijan region, where he lives. On the basis of a letter from the Ministry, DIA officials said that an administrative case had been opened against him under Article 202-2 of the Administrative Responsibility Code and the case would be taken to court.
Speaking to Kun.uz, Shakhboz Jonodilov, head of the Information Security Department of the State Statistics Committee, said that the committee’s information was open to all and could be used by everyone. However, he added that there was no agreement with the committee on the transfer of information to orginfo.uz.
“There has been no agreement or agreement to post the data from the State Statistics Committee on orginfo.uz. I don’t know where this programmer got the data from. He pointed us out as a source for information that was not ours. As a result, when two different things came up while searching for information, investors and others began to have mistrust and we received inquiries.
We do not answer every question individually. Therefore, we issued a letter to Uzkomnazorat on behalf of the committee to identify the person who was disseminating information and send it to law enforcement agencies for taking legal measures.
We are not against the operation of this site, but we are against the use of committee as a source without its consent and the dissemination of false information,” Shakhboz Jonodilov, official of the State Statistics Committee, said.
Kun.uz also asked a question on the ease of use of the register on stat.uz as on the orginfo.uz site and received the following answer from the committee representative:
“Our technicians and programmers are working on this. We are expected to have similar facilities, but it is unknown when it will be launched,” he said.
Sherzodbek Nuriddinov, the head of the information service of the Andijan regional DIA, said in response to a request from Kun.uz that an administrative protocol had been drawn up against Boburmirzo Khamrokulov on the basis of a letter dated June 17, 2021 from the MIA Operational Cooperation Department.
“In January 2021, the citizen created a website called orginfo.uz. It was found that this website had disseminated old, untrue information on its website about legal entities, citing the State Statistics Committee as the source.
In addition, as a result of the фиқутсу of agreement between B. Khamrokulov’s website orginfo.uz and the committee, there have been various misunderstandings in the society by citizens and foreign investors about the official statistics,” the regional DIA said in an official statement.
The Asaka district DIA also issued an administrative report on the case under Article 202-2 of the Administrative Responsibility Code. However, the DIA official said it was not known when the trial would take place.
On the one hand, the validity of the arguments made by the State Statistics Committee is also questionable. Why didn’t the committee, which owns a large open database, make the database easy to use? Maybe then the “distrustful investors” would have received the information not from orginfo.uz, but from the official website?
Moreover, independent media and bloggers have recently been using the open information provided on the platform to disclose to the public a lot of information about officials and their relatives who are allowing conflicts of interest in the system of government. Perhaps someone doesn’t like that kind of openness.
For information, Article 202-2 (Dissemination of false information) has recently been included in the Administrative Responsibility Code.
This article is not about any kind of false information, but about the dissemination of false information that “leads to the degradation or discrediting of an individual”.
The fact that the official body of the state body places public information on the site it created, which does not contain information that would degrade or discredit anyone, casts doubt on the committee’s claim and the actions of the police department.
A number of lawyers interviewed by Kun.uz commented that the Statistics Committee could claim copyright only, and the DIA’s accusations against the citizen were incorrect.
Kun.uz covers the course of events, in particular, the lawsuit against the programmer.
