The Catalan Ombudsman Rafael Ribó has presented theAnnual report on transparència, access to public information and good governance, corresponding to the year 2018. It is the fourth report which is prepared to assess compliance with the obligations of Law 19/2014, of December 29, transparència, access to public information and good governance.
In this report, the Catalan Ombudsman reveals that no substantial changes have been observed in relation to the situation described in the previous report, stating that There has been a relaxation and slowdown in the fulfillment of the obligations of transparència, a key element in regaining public confidence.
The main aspects that are mentioned are the following:
- Deficiencies detected in previous years are maintained, despite the four years since the entry into force of the Act.
- Figures on non-response to access requests are unacceptable.
- It is necessary to approve the regulations for the implementation of the Law.
- Efforts need to be stepped up to spread the right of access to information, which is still too unknown.
The Catalan Ombudsman is aware that this is one complex law to apply and that it represents a challenge of great proportions, but also considers that it must be a priority for representapolitical figures like a necessary and essential step to regain the trust of the citizens in the institutions. An opportunity to be strengthened given the start of a new term in local corporations.
At the level of active advertising it should be noted that the degree of compliance varies depending on the size of the administration. They generally comply with most of the departments of the Generalitat Administration (84,6%), but only 34,8% of the town councils with populations of more than 50.000 inhabitants. In municipalities with less than 50.000 inhabitants, widespread compliance is very limited or virtually non-existent. It is also noteworthy that, four years after the entry into force of the Act, a total of 787 municipalities have a serious (165) or extensive (622) non-compliance with the publication of the essential contents of the Act.
As for the right to access public information, the report concludes that its ignorance persists, and is especially critical of the unacceptable figures of lack of response by the administrations (in the test of the hidden citizen in almost 35% of the requests has not been given or denied access to information).
The report also highlights the need to have one regulation of the Law (currently at work), increase effort for disseminate the right of access to the public, and focused on town halls, emphasizes the need to move forward in codes of ethics or drafting service letters.
Finally, and relative to portal of transparència AOC (solution offered with the Network of Transparent Governments), the report states that it is the solution most used by the local area as a whole, and concludes that it can be an ideal vehicle to introduce tools that improve published content, to facilitate its understanding and structuring, and to incorporate in a general way comparison tools for the whole set of entities that use it. .
In this sense, remember that the AOC is working on the portal transparència, to advance in making a portal closer to citizens (incorporating more and better graphics, as well as a more understandable language), with more and better automation (working from the origin of the data), while promoting the reuse of public sector information (with a new open data portal that facilitates the publication of the open data of the entities).
More information:
Link to the complete download of the fourth complete report of the Catalan Ombudsman
