Half of Spain’s provincial authorities fail the transparency test

In Spain local and regional governments are responsible for providing most basic services from education and health, to road maintenance and public transport in a highly devolved system of government. In the past decade, however, they have racked up enormous debts – more than 200 billion euros – and are being forced to cut back. As people in Spain face up to this fiscal crisis, it is more important than ever to know how local authorities account for their spending.

That’s one key reason why Transparency International Spain decided to produce an index that shows how easy it is for ordinary citizens to find out what their local government authorities are doing. 

One of the key messages of Transparency International is the notion that citizens have a right to access information about their government, on all levels, so they can hold them to account.

The study and the results

Overall we found a very mixed picture. Less than half of local governments scored more than 50 per cent on our Transparency Index, though a few councils did well, showing that it can be done.

We started with a list of 80 different indicators related to five areas of transparency and compiled a questionnaire that was sent to 45 local authorities, called provincial councils, across Spain. Councils scored a point each time they ticked a box for having information available on their website.

The questions were about everything from the names of councillors to whether or not the rules for public tenders were published. We also asked if it was possible for citizens to search the website to find the information they needed.

This kind of research provides an important baseline to show what information local authorities should be providing their citizens. After all, it is the citizens who pay for and use the services.

The results showed that more than a handful of local councils are very good at keeping people informed. Vizcaya, for example, topped the ranking with an impressive score of 95 per cent, followed by Tarragona with 92.5 per cent. However, 24 of the 44 councils scored below 50 per cent with nine scoring less than 30 per cent.

All this information is now on Transparency International Spain's website so people can see how their local council performed. If they don’t like what they see, we urge them to go to their local councillors, use our index and ask for change.

Past experience shows improvement is possible

We’ve done this before and we know that it works. In 2008 we targeted municipalities and the average score there was 51.2 per cent. In 2010 that went up to 73.2 per cent. The same is true for our transparency index on Spanish institutions dealing with water management, which saw an improvement from 51.2 per cent in 2009 to 59.6 per cent in 2010.

Transparency is the prerequisite for a solid functioning democracy. We believe that the people have a right to know what their government is doing at all levels. Let’s hope that those local councils that performed badly in this index take the necessary steps to boost their grades. They owe it to the rest of us.