The new Open Government Plan 2017-2018 brings together all the public policies, promoted by the Generalitat de Catalunya, aimed at consolidating, improving and strengthening the open government in Catalonia in the next two years. The new Open Government Plan approved consists of five areas, nine strategic objectives, eighteen operational objectives and one hundred and twenty-three actions that are gathered in five areas:
- Transparència
- open data
- good government
- citizen participation
- cultural change
The Plan is promoted by the Secretariat of Transparència and Open Government, which is the body within the Generalitat of Catalonia responsible for promoting open government and democratic quality, and has been developed in a transversal and participatory manner, collecting ideas and initiatives and agreeing on actions with public agents who are experts in the field and competent entities in specific areas of open government.
The actions, operational objectives and strategies related to each area are summarized as follows:
- Transparència: Includes actions related to the transparència, that is, the publication of public information in a way that is understandable and accessible to citizens and the management of the right of access to information.
- Open data: It includes actions aimed at making available to specialized groups public data that can be processed and used for purposes, both lucrative and non-profit, that revert to society.
- Good governance: Refers to initiatives and instruments to ensure and promote the quality of public services and strengthen control over the Administration and political power.
- Citizen participation: It involves the establishment of measures to encourage citizen participation and collaboration in the definition of public policies.
- Cultural change: It brings together actions aimed at promoting and raising awareness about open government, as well as the training of the agents involved.
The Open Government Plan includes all the open government actions that will be carried out during the years 2017 and 2018, and the actions that have been carried out in the last period of 2016, while the Plan was in the process of being drawn up.
Monitoring mechanisms
The Plan will be monitored in order to supervise that the objectives are being met in accordance with the agreed deadlines and, in the event of unforeseen events and incidents, rectify or redirect tasks in time. On the one hand, all actions provide for one or more monitoring indicators that will be collected and analyzed periodically. The results collected will be documented through the Scorecard. Secondly, the scorecard constitutes the central management tool for monitoring the actions of the Plan since all the progress, results and deviations of the actions can be reflected in it. Finally, and on a regular basis, the degree of execution of the Open Government Plan will be reported to the Interdepartmental Commission of Transparència and Open Government (CITGO). The reports relating to the monitoring will be published on the Portal of transparència of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
The concept of open government
Open government is a way of conceiving the relationship between citizens and the public administration based on the openness of public information, the use of collective intelligence and the co-creation of public policies, and the accountability to the public. An open public administration is an administration that makes available to the citizen the information it generates, listens to and makes it part of the life cycle of public policies, sets quality standards and evaluates their compliance in a systematic way.
