Transparency stands as a cornerstone principle of the European Union and a global standard in modern governance, promoting at its heart trust between governments and the stakeholders it serves. It is essential for maintaining democratic integrity and ensuring efficient governance, serving as a guardrail against the multitude of detrimental effects that corruption has on public administration and society’s overall wellbeing.
A strong framework of transparency in government, complemented by an effective system of sanctions and prosecutions, as well as an active free press, is essential for mitigating corruption. When businesses, civil society organisations, and diverse government agencies have unfettered access to information, this open exchange enables stakeholders to anticipate regulatory changes, assess program effectiveness, and advocate for policies that align with their interests.
When corruption happens, it undermines governmental effectiveness, deepens inequality, and infringes upon human rights. It weakens checks and balances to consolidate private power and wealth, advancing the interests of a select few at the expense of the many, while also weakening accountability. Moreover, when citizens witness abuses of power, they can lose trust in political systems, leading to potentially dangerous consequences such as low voter turnout.
Therefore, enhancing the transparency of governmental operations is crucial for safeguarding the effectiveness of public administration. Although governments are progressively adopting innovative approaches to promote data-driven, transparent, and accountable governance, numerous significant data-related challenges persist. In recent years, open data has emerged as a pivotal tool for promoting transparency.
The Impact of Digital Transformation on Public Governance
Research demonstrates a profound impact of digital transformation on public governance. The digital revolution has reshaped how governments deliver public services and interact with citizens and businesses. This increasing digitalization presents opportunities for authorities to release datasets of greater quality, scope, and diversity. Studies suggest an inverse relationship between a country's level of perceived corruption and the volume of open data it makes available, highlighting the potential of transparency in combating corruption.
The European Commission recognizes the importance of this digital transition, making it a key priority in its strategy and recovery plans. This focus has become particularly significant in light of the COVID-19 crisis, as the pandemic underscored the crucial role of digital technologies in enhancing governance processes and ensuring sustainable development.
Beyond streamlining services, digital transformation empowers citizens to demand closer relationships with their representatives and greater involvement in decision-making, therefore re amplifying the importance of trust and transparency.
The Open Government Paradigm: A Collaborative Approach
The open government paradigm represents a fundamental shift towards increased transparency and collaboration within the public sector. Governments embrace openness by making processes, services, and data readily available. This promotes collaboration with stakeholders, including citizens and businesses, to create shared public value. Open government initiatives can take various forms, such as ‘joined-up’ governance or platform governance. In these models, the public sector opens up its assets, data, decision-making processes, and policymaking on platforms designed for collaboration.
One successful example of the open government paradigm is the use of deliberative platforms. These platforms offer public administration the opportunity to open government processes to communities, ultimately enabling citizen participation in decision-making. The technologies underpinning these platforms promote greater transparency by making procedures more accessible. This openness also ensures the participation of individuals and communities in specific public services or programs. Opening up policy-making serves a dual purpose: building trust in government over time and enhancing transparency in government decisions.
Open Data: A Beacon of Transparency
Open data policies serve as a key mechanism to ensure government transparency. These policies compel governments to actively disseminate public information through digital platforms. This goes beyond mere transparency; open data initiatives strive to provide data in user-friendly formats, enabling easy analysis and combination with other data sources. This promotes a data-driven approach to decision-making and empowers citizens to hold governments accountable.
The CEDAR Project: A Powerful Tool for Transparency and Accountability
The CEDAR project emerges as a timely and impactful solution, advancing the concepts of open government and data-driven governance. It recognizes the critical role of data and advanced analytics in strengthening governmental accountability, integrity, and transparency, directly tackling the challenges of fraud and corruption.
Building upon recent significant changes in the EU's legal landscape concerning data processing - including the Data Act, the Data Governance Act, the AI Act, and established regulations like the GDPR - this project will develop innovative methods and tools to strengthen anti-corruption efforts.
At its core, CEDAR establishes a Data Common Space that aligns with the open government paradigm. This approach promotes not only transparency but also the data-driven decision-making that citizens increasingly demand. Through methods and tools for automated public administration data digitization, CEDAR directly addresses the need for more efficient and transparent government processes.
The high-quality, high-value datasets itaims to create and leverage, when made accessible and understandable, empower citizen engagement. Communities and stakeholders can then participate more meaningfully in policy discussions and decision-making.
Additionally, CEDAR's focus on machine learning (ML) and data analytics aligns with the growing recognition within the EU of the potential of emerging technologies to transform public governance.By developing robust algorithms for human-centric and evidence-based decision-making, CEDAR bridges the gap between complex data analysis and practical governance applications.
Moreover, the project's commitment to co-creation and pilot studies in multiple countries recognizes the importance of understanding diverse community perspectives. Involving end-users in development and testing ensures CEDAR's technological solutions are grounded in real-world needs and challenges, promoting effectiveness and adoption.
Finally, CEDAR acknowledges the significant volume of personal data managed by public administrations and the associated privacy concerns. Consequently, it aims to implement solutions that carefully balance transparency with privacy risks. To address this priority, CEDAR will create an inclusive, federated, and privacy-preserving Data Commons space, establishing a secure and reliable environment for information sharing among stakeholders across multiple domains. The project will facilitate increased data availability in the economy and society while ensuring that data generators—both companies and individuals—maintain full control in a trusted, secure, and transparent manner.
By directly addressing the crucial element of trust between communities and public authorities, CEDAR aims to strengthen public confidence in government institutions, perfectly aligning with the EU’s top priorities of enhancing transparency in public administrations and facilitating human-centric, evidence-based decision-making in governance. This focus has the potential to reverse trends of declining trust identified in previous research and promote a future Europe characterised by strong democratic principles.