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Description
The project addresses the lack of open data and transparency at a local government level. Only a few municipalities publish the data required to monitor the work of elected representatives (such as vote roll call results). On the other hand, the data that is published is often unintuitive, inaccessible and/or unfriendly for users, only available in documents that are not machine readable, cannot be searched through and are not interconnected. Buried municipal data is turning citizens away from democratic oversight and represents a high entry barrier for often understaffed and financially weak local NGOs and media.
By Slovenian Municipalities Transparency Ranking we will empower citizens, NGOs and media for advocacy and reporting on transparency of local democracy. By installing local Parlameters (Parlameter is an open source platform for monitoring the work of elected officials) in 4 pilot municipalities we will give citizens, local NGOs, and media greater insight in the work of local elected bodies. Additionally we will organise workshops that will empower advocacy of local NGOs and local media at oversight. As municipalities in Slovenia are quite competitive, we will rank them but also support them with a manual Open, Transparent and Inclusive Municipality, which will include case studies and proposals for increasing transparency. The methodology of transparency will also include web-page accessability for visually impared persons.
The members of the consortium are: DJND, PIC, Organizacija za participatorno družbo, LendavaInfo, municipality Hrastnik and Ajdovščina and Åpenhet - a group of extremely experienced and accomplished organisations that represent all the stakeholders. This partnership puts us in an excellent position to support municipalities in achieving better transparency of their work, create greater involvement of citizens in local democracy, and with project activities empower local NGOs and media.
Summary of project results
Many municipalities do not publish data that are crucial for monitoring the work of elected representatives (e.g., individual voting results). On the other hand, the information that is published is often presented in a user-unfriendly and unintuitive way—most commonly in uncontextualized and machine-unreadable files that cannot be searched. Buried municipal data discourage citizens from monitoring the democratic process, and for often understaffed and underfunded local NGOs and media, it increases the cost of oversight over municipal work
By preparing the Transparency List of Slovenian municipalities, the project empowered citizens, NGOs, and media for evidence-based advocacy and reporting on the transparency of local democracy. By installing the Municipal Parlameter (a platform for monitoring the work of elected representatives) in 4 pilot municipalities, the project provided citizens, local NGOs, and media with better insight into local democracy.
Through workshops, the project further empowered local NGOs to engage in advocacy activities, and local media as watchdogs. It ranked municipalities and utilized competition among them to drive changes, while also supporting them with the preparation of a guide titled "Open, Transparent, and Inclusive Municipality," which contains good practices and ready-made solutions for increasing transparency.
Summary of bilateral results
The project partner ÅPENHET AS (Norway) contributed within project activities in sharing experiences, good practices and support in implementation of workshops.