Ivan BegtinRU

About

I have worked in IT since 1999. I started as a Unix system administrator, then was a software developer at BioLink and a system architect at EPAM Systems and Compulink, and led a data mining laboratory. In 2007–2010 I ran Enot Poiskun, a search engine for public procurement, and in 2009–2024 I was CTO of ODSS (Datacoon), a data engineering company.

Since 2009 I have worked on government openness and open data, and since 2010 on data catalogs: from a community open data hub to an open registry of data catalogs of the whole world and the Dateno search engine built on top of it.

Another long-standing topic is digital preservation. Since 2009 I have archived government websites that close or change, and since 2017 Infoculture runs the National Digital Archive.

Expertise

  • Open data and open government
  • Data catalogs and dataset discovery
  • Data engineering and open-source data tools
  • Digital preservation and web archiving
  • Public spending and procurement data
  • Government information systems
  • Linked data
  • Plain language in government texts

Career

  1. 2024–

    Founder and CTO

    Dateno

    A search engine for datasets built on the open registry of data catalogs.

  2. 2023–

    Co-founder and project leader

    Open Data Armenia

    Promoting open data in Armenia and in the global Armenian community.

  3. 2023–

    Creator of the registry of data catalogs

    Common Data Index, later dataportals-registry

  4. 2019–2021

    Deputy director, head of the Open Data team

    FKU CEAIT SP, a subordinate institution of the Accounts Chamber of Russia

    Openness research and products on open data, including the public spending portal spending.gov.ru.

  5. 2018–2022

    Director

    Association of data market companies (aurd.ru)

  6. 2018–

    Founder and CEO

    APICrafter

    A data technology company focused on open-source software.

  7. 2017–

    Project lead

    National Digital Archive (Infoculture)

  8. 2013–2018

    Member

    Open Data Council of the Open Government working group

    Open data research and advocacy.

  9. 2013–

    Ambassador

    Open Knowledge Foundation Russia

    A network of open data activists.

  10. 2012–

    Founder and director

    Infoculture NGO

    A non-profit for open government, digital preservation and information culture.

  11. 2011–2016

    Linked Data lead

    W3C Russia

    Promoted open and linked data in Russia.

  12. 2010–

    Co-founder

    Apps4Russia contest

  13. 2009–2024

    CTO

    ODSS (Datacoon)

    Open data, big data, data analysis and data engineering.

  14. 2009–2015

    Founder

    OpenGovData.ru

    News and a knowledge base about open government data; archiving of government websites since 2009.

  15. 2008–2009

    Account manager

    Unified Trading Systems

    E-government and research projects.

  16. 2007–2010

    Owner, system architect and product manager

    Enot Poiskun (enotpoiskun.ru)

    A search engine for public procurement.

  17. 2005–2007

    Senior architect, development group manager

    Compulink

    Software and solution architecture, management of software and QA engineers, procurement systems.

  18. 2004–2005

    System architect

    EPAM Systems

    C# development, system architecture and UML modelling, team lead.

  19. 2000–2003

    Software developer

    BioLink

    Software and automated testing for Linux and Windows; fingerprint processing at the scale of millions, including an elections project in Nigeria.

  20. 1999

    Unix system administrator

Awards

  • PressZvanie award 2011, e-government category
  • Special prize of the Vlast No. 4 award for 2011

Languages

  • Russian: native
  • English: professional working proficiency
  • Spanish, Armenian, Polish: elementary
  • Latin: limited working proficiency

Short bio

For event organizers and publishers. Free to copy.

Ivan Begtin is the founder and CTO of Dateno, a search engine for datasets, the founder and director of the Infoculture NGO (Informational Culture) and a co-founder of Open Data Armenia. He has worked on open data and government transparency since 2009. In 2019–2021 he led the open data project area at the Accounts Chamber of Russia, where his team built the public spending portal spending.gov.ru. He maintains an open registry of more than 40,000 data catalogs worldwide, writes open-source tools for data engineering and digital preservation, and is the author of books on data catalogs and data inventory.

Elsewhere