Open City Council: The 4 Dimensions in Public Transparency

Background Information

The difficult economic situation, together with some corruption episodes, reduces credibility and trust in public administration, affecting the potentiality of economic and social development. It’s necessary a resolute commitment with transparency is understood in four dimensions:

•Governance based on transparency, accountability and responsiveness

•Open data

•Collaborative government

•Informative transparency

Sabadell is a capital and one of the economic motors of the Vallès Occidental region, where it exerts a prominent social and economic influence. The Mayor of Sabadell is also President of Catalan Municipalities Federation. These facts constitute an stimulus to excel in our actions.

Goals of the Initiative

•Improve the citizen's proximity feeling, favouring their participation and implication in strategic decision processes and shared project management.

•Establish a trust and legal security climate, which favours business and investment initiatives ant economic growth.

•Spread informative tools to support business development.

•Divulge the information and success accomplishments to improve the prestige and recognition of Sabadell, as a means to achieve the objectives.

Parties and Partners to the Initiative and Resources Used for Implementation

•Council of Sabadell: Impulse and leadership

•Sabadell Technology Service-IAS: Execution of Open Data and municipal Web

•City Board; Agreement for Occupation -Agreement for Infrastructures and Mobility - Sect oral and Territorial Boards : Information, Strategic and Sectoral Government Assessment

•Sabadell Economic Promotion Service -PES: Economic Development Impulse

•Barcelona County Council; Catalan Regional Government European Social Fund: Assessment and economic support

The resources used for implementing the initiative include:

It’s a Good Practice associated to municipal governance, without direct economic magnitudes. Investments in road and technologic infrastructures, and the ICT, as well as the Council human resources involved in its development, which they support are very high.

The project management strategy is based in a transversal action, leaded by the Mayor’s Office, and executed and coordinated by the Economy and Central Services Area, together with the Communication and Citizen's Participation Services mainly.

It entails the participation of more than 40 council workers, with partial dedication to the various action spheres.

Innovation for the Initiative

This project represents a conceptual evolution, with two essential innovations, considering that Transparency:

It’s not only an end in itself (traditional approach), but also a means to obtain the citizens implication and private sector companies (proactive action).

It requires to develop four coordinated dimensions in order to achieve the best results (conceptual evolution/extension).

Innovation appliances

It involves all municipal administration, and mainly:

The main Transparency tool is Communication and ITC development with the maximum information and municipal data spreading.

The planning of municipal action is done through the Municipal Action Plan (PAM), the City Boards and Citizens Participation (Sectoral an Territorial Boards)

The active participation of the Council in supra-local networks, such as the FMC (Catalan City Councils Federation), or International networks, like ESIMEC, URBACT, CCIC-Complex Challenges Innovative Cities, EUROTOWNS, UCLG.

Origins and relations of the initiative

The international foundation Transparency International developed for Spain in 2008 the Councils Transparency Index, assessing the main 110 councils, and Sabadell council managed to climb from 24th position in 2008 to 1st in 2010, with 100 percent of indicators achieved. Together with five other cities, a tour to the winning Spanish cities was organised, in order to spread the benefits of municipal transparency, obtaining great impact in local and national communication media.

Many other City Councils in Spain are following the path open by International Transparency, with Sabadell and the other 5 ITA 2010 winning cities leading the Public Municipal Transparency Improvements in Spain.

Obstacles and Solutions for Innovation

The main obstacles to the innovation were the municipal organisation difficulty in producing information in a way that was widely accessible to the public and the lack of habit in publishing sensitive information, such as salaries, patrimony, contracts, providers, urbanism.

The keys to success were:

•Project leadership by the Mayor’s Office.

•Implication of the entire organisation in generating accessible information, and of the IT department in improving the ICT.

•Departments (specifically Communication, Economic Development and Citizen’s Participation) effort to promote information, transparency and improvements with citizens and companies.

Outcomes and Assessments

With this Good Practice, Sabadell aims to:

•Govern the city according to a Municipal Action Plan (PAM) with the participation and trust of citizens and companies.

•Render accounts of all the municipal action with informative transparency.

•Open to the maximum the municipal web and data to the consultation of citizens and companies of regional and county influence.

•Win citizens and companies trust in the city and region economic development.

Methods Applied

•Renovation of the Municipal Web.

•Creation of the Transparency Website.

•Start-up of Open Data.

•Participation in national and international Innovation and Development networks.

•Municipal action and data presentation dossiers for companies.

Benefits to Other Cities

When the Mayor of Sabadell established that the council must reach a 100 percent in public management transparency, an intense process started to work in the entire municipal organisation. In an institutional level, the Good Government Code and an agreement fostered the maximum public transparency. In an organizational level, all administrative areas were mobilised in a coordinated and transversal way, producing information in a way that is comprehensible and accessible for citizens and businesses, developing the necessary ICT, web-publishing the maximum information, and creating Open Data and the Transparency Website. Developing transparency as one of the keys to municipal governance and making it advance in an innovative way in the four described dimensions in this practice that we submit to the Guangzhou International Award jury’s consideration, has delivered important results.

Sabadell has achieved recognition and a public image of an open and transparent administration, and it has been so acknowledged by totally independent organisms and foundations. The transparency awards obtained, as the most transparent city in Spain in ITA 2010, and the recognition as first Catalan city in the best transparency practices map in 2012 have constituted support and also public projection platforms in communication media, divulging a positive image of the city and its vocation of territorial and regional leadership.

The best benefit for Sabadell has been, and still is, to actually increase the level of trust of citizens and firms in municipal administration and its participation and implication in boosting the economic and social development of the territory. The high participation and implication of citizens and the big firms preference to invest and locate in Sabadell, constitute the confirmation of the decision of this course of action being a wise one, and also that it’s a valid and interesting example for other cities and territories to follow.

The active participation of Sabadell in international networks contribute to spreading and sharing with other administrations our practices, and to learning from the best experiences that other administrations have developed. In a similar way, Sabadell offers this good practice, at the disposal of the city of Guangzhou, of the UCLG, and the cities and territories to which it can be useful.