For years, media freedom in Eastern Europe has been a cause for concern for many international organizations which have fought for the freedom of expression and information. The cases of Hungary, Ro...
Marko Rakar
Marko Rakar is president of a small Croatian NGO called Windmill. Marko has a lifelong experience in working/writing for media as well as dealing with the media. He combines his media knowledge with new technologies and was one of the earliest internet adopters in Croatia. He is a recognized lecturer and consultant on the subjects of organizing, the internet, new media as well as politics. He has run a number of successful campaigns and races for organizations, parties and independent candidates on presidential, parliament and municipal elections in Croatia, Europe, Asia and the US. His speciality is new and social media, as well as data transparency and open governance. Marko studied Philosophy and Information sciences at the University of Zagreb, speaks English fluently and is regular columnist and author to a number of blogs, web sites, newspapers and magazines in Croatia and internationally.
He was honoured in 2009 by the World eGovernment forum as one of the "Top 10 who are changing the world of politics on the internet," recognition which he received for exposing voter list manipulation in Croatia. In 2010 he was arrested, held for questioning and accused of leaking a top secret list of war veterans which includes more then 200.000 people who never participated in the war effort and who draw more then $1.2 billion per year in benefits from the Croatian government. In late 2011, Windmill published a list of more then 60.000 Croatian public procurement contracts worth more then $15 billion combined with the financial data of suppliers and other information which helped prove and explain how the Croatian public procurement process is inefficient, riddled with crime and corruption and in general harmful to the interests of Croatian citizens. Windmill and Marko are currently working on an analysis of the Croatian pension system, trying to prove how the private pension funds were used to bail out bad bank loans, as well as a number of other anti-corruption and data transparency projects.
Marko is a member of the board of EAPC (European association of political consultants), a member of the board of IAPC (International association of political consultants), a "School of politics" alumni (by the Council of Europe) and a junior fellow at the World academy of arts and sciences.
Data journalism has been growing enormously in recent years even in countries where public access to information and data are not granted by a Freedom of Information Act, as is the case with many ...