Background and initiatives
Tanto a nivel nacional, como regional o local se han dado ya varias iniciativas de Gobierno Abierto. Entre las más interesantes podemos destacar las siguientes:.
Los primeros pasos hacia un gobierno abierto han venido de Nueva Zelanda y, sobre todo, Estados Unidos, han sido los países que más han apostado por este modelo y lo están aplicando en sus administraciones. En el caso de Estados Unidos, el proceso fue impulsado directamente por el expresidente, Barack Obama, a través de la Iniciativa para el Gobierno Abierto. A nivel local también hay iniciativas de gobierno abierto interesantes, como las de los Ayuntamientos de Washington D. C., Los Ángeles o Nueva York. Más recientemente, Reino Unido comenzó su estrategia de apertura de la mano de Tim Berners-Lee, el creador de la Web.
Chili
In Chile, the need to apply the idea of Open Government becomes fundamental given the need for more modernized areas appropriate to technological advancement, but also due to the recognition of a growing and more complex demand from citizens to local, regional and national administrations.[5].
The idea of modernization in Chile began to be promoted at the end of the Civic Military Dictatorship, when in 1990 the Concertación por la Democracia came to power democratically. Such a coalition had a program in which the beginning of a modernization of the State was necessary for its proper realization and implementation. Here two fundamental objectives could be seen, which were the democratization of the state apparatus and the decentralization of the State administration. Also necessary for the development of modernization was the 1990 UNDP report, which outlined the main challenges that the newly elected government would have to go through in order to carry out good State administration.[16].
Specifically in this country, the idea of open government was launched by the Ministry of the General Secretariat of the Presidency through the Modernization and Electronic Government Unit,[17] this unit aims to modernize the State, seen from the digital government, which is about transformations, technological innovations, policies, among others, that ultimately improve the capacity for the State to respond to the needs of citizens in an efficient and effective manner.[18] This initiative in Chile was promulgated on August 11, 2008 through Law 20,285 by President Michelle Bachelet, this being part of the probity and transparency agenda and at the same time part of the State modernization agenda.[17].
Chile has also joined different organizations that promote Open Government and help implement it. The most recent is the Open Government Alliance, which Chile joined in 2012. In October 2015, Chile formed part of the Direct Committee of this alliance. All member countries commit to complying with 4 essential pillars: greater access to information, supporting citizen participation through encouraging transparency and facilitation so that people can express their opinions, promoting standards of integrity, increasing and promoting access to new technologies in order to increase openness towards the rest of the citizens as well as to achieve better and transparent accountability.
This country has made two action plans around Open Government due to the need to change the paradigm and operate with this new one, which is why these action plans were prepared, one from 2012 and the other from 2014-2016.[19].
The 2012 action plan referred to Chile's recent entry into the Open Government Alliance on that date, which happened during the government of former President Sebastián Piñera. It is also proposed that Chile has been able to join this alliance, since the country meets minimum criteria regarding access to information, its transparency, innovation, service delivery, among other things.
This year's plan presents Chile's progress regarding the Open Government that the country has had to date, the main ones being the modernization and improvement of public services, being able to see here the development and implementation of Chile. Note that it is a service in which it is intended that people can go to only one place to be able to carry out their procedures, here is also the improvement of the Open Government Portal helping to better access information and another important change in this area was that of digital identity, a technological change that is quite significant to be able to modernize State facilities and advance in the same way that the world is advancing around new technologies.[20].
In 2013, specifically in October, a summit of the Alliance was held in London, where work was done on the action plan, seeking new proposals and building new commitments to apply and implement in the action plan. Chile did not send the draft action plan to OGP on that occasion. With this, Chile was faced with two problems, one was the change of government that the country was going through and on the other hand the publication of the new action plan that had new requirements, thus having to redefine the commitments previously adopted. For the proper development of this, a Permanent Board of the OGP was created to continue working, which was finally sent to the OGP and ended up being the action plan from 2014 to 2016.[21].
The 2014 action plan to last until 2016 understands Open Government as:
Taking this into account, Chile bases its Open Government ideas on 3 pillars, these are: Transparency, which is when it refers to the openness of information and better access to it by all of the country's citizens. Citizen Participation, which is where the incentive is sought in the involvement of people in work at the government level and finally there is the modernization of the state, with this it refers to the modernization of the State and Digital Government, thus seeking to change the paradigm of what the administration was, trying in this way to innovate in different areas and not only from technology.[21].
El Salvador
In El Salvador, the Undersecretary of Transparency and Anticorruption attached to the Presidency of the Republic, launched the Open Government portal in December 2012, which contains centralized public information from more than 70 Executive institutions as well as different tools that facilitate citizen access to information. The portal allows you to make online public information requests to institutions as well as send complaints, notices and reports to improve services and prevent corruption.
Within the Open Government initiative is the Infoútil portal, which contains socially useful information through which citizens can make decisions about the acquisition of goods and services. The portal is fed with public databases, among which are the reference prices of food products in supermarkets, the cost of registration and tuition fees, doctors authorized to practice in the country, food establishments with health permits, the list of legally registered unions, companies fined for labor violations, among others.
Spain
Spain[23] has been a member of the Open Government Alliance since its founding in 2011 and has presented four open government plans. The latest action plan was approved on October 29, 2020. This Plan includes 10 commitments that public Administrations assume to reinforce transparency and accountability, improve participation, establish public integrity systems, and train and raise awareness among citizens and public employees on Open Government, with the aim of contributing to a more just, peaceful and inclusive society. In Spain, the Open Government Forum of the Government of Spain was created in 2018.
An important step towards the consolidation of Open Government was the promulgation of Law 19/2013, of December 9, on Transparency, Access to Public Information and Good Government "Transparency Law (Spain)"), in addition to Law 37/2007, on the reuse of public sector information, which regulates and encourages the reuse of data prepared or kept by public sector Administrations and organizations. To support Law 37/2007, it is also worth highlighting the Aporta Project,[24] which promotes the reuse of information and its making available to citizens. To this end, it has created a reference guide, the Aporta Guide, and has a public information search engine on the Internet on its website (http://datos.gob.es). Also worth mentioning is the creation of the Open Government Forum.
In Spain, regional governments and many local administrations have also put into practice "open government", information about them is accessible at the following link on the transparency portal of the General State Administration.
The pioneering "open government" projects at the regional level in Spain were those of the Basque Country (especially the Irekia[25] and Open Data Euskadi[26] projects) and Catalonia, and more recently Navarra[27] and Castilla y León.[28].
At the local level in Spain, some of the most interesting City Council projects in relation to "open government" were those of the municipalities of San Baudilio de Llobregat, Jun or Getafe.
In Spain at the regional level there were various pioneering initiatives, among which the Basque initiative Irekia stood out. Irekia managed to obtain international recognition[29] by Open Government experts. In April 2012, the Basque Open Government participated in the first meeting of the Alliance for Open Government,[30] an event that can only be attended if it is a formal country. Even so, Irekia had an invitation to attend the meeting because it was one of the most important projects in this field at that time.
Guatemala
Guatemala joined the Alliance for Open Government in 2011, participating since then in four cycles of action plans, 2011 to 2020.[31] The Secretariat of Control and Transparency (SECYT), the Presidential Commission for Transparency and Electronic Government (COPRET), and finally the Contact Point of the Alliance for Open Government in Guatemala have participated in the design of these action plans, a person appointed by the president. on March 31, 2016 and that acts on behalf of the Presidency, but is not attached to a specific institution.
Throughout this process, the role of the Organization of American States (OAS) has been key. In 2015, the President of the Republic requested support from the Secretary General of the OAS to make a diagnosis of the Open Government in Guatemala based on interviews carried out with different key actors in the country. From there came some recommendations that the government partially implemented.
The process of co-creation of the action plans has been carried out with the participation of representatives of the Government and civil society, although this has varied as the plans have been more participatory and the commitments have become firmer. The thematic axes also changed throughout the action plans, the main ones being the use of public resources, transparency and citizen participation mechanisms, access to public information, accountability, technological innovation, security and justice, education, health and food and nutritional security, and local governments. Regarding the commitments established in the action plans, in the 1st Action Plan 3 commitments were proposed, in the 2nd Plan 48, in the 3rd Plan 22 and in the 4th Action Plan 24 commitments were proposed.
Regarding the 4th Action Plan, although this was formulated in a participatory manner among all organizations, due to some decisions and actions taken by the government of the Republic, a group of civil society organizations decided to leave the Open Government Technical Table and suspend the process. The government published this action plan, although it is not validated by the majority of civil society organizations. Open government are not only the commitments established in the action plans promoted by the Alliance for Open Government, but there are other series of initiatives both in the State and in local governments which are becoming effective and which are also having a positive result.[32].
Peru
In Peru, since 2003, with the approval of the Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information, great steps have been taken in order to bring citizens closer to what the government has been doing.[33] Currently there is a National Open Data Portal of Peru that unifies the information of the different government entities and provides updated information, immediately accessible to the citizen.
The progress towards an open government, translated in part by a national open data portal in Peru, is the most significant sign of progress since 2012, when Peru joined the international Open Government Society initiative.
This service covers the lack of accessible information that can be processed through computers in State institutions. Open data Portals give citizens back the interest of being informed, of participating in what their authorities are doing, of sharing the information that is accessed and of proposing innovative solutions to the great challenges facing the country, and allows changing the climate of distrust in State institutions, which is reflected in low citizen participation and mitigating the problem of corruption in the country, an evil that afflicts the majority of countries in the world, must be faced with transparency. Open data are spaces in which this transparency is encouraged, which allows the citizen to be a supervisory participant. In Peru we mainly have the following milestones:
This plan will present progress and results of the Peruvian state in areas such as:
Dominican Republic
In this area, according to what was expressed by political analyst Geovanny Vicente Romero, in an analysis by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB):.