What is Open Self-Government 2011?
Does it measure corruption?
What areas were assessed?
Why these questions?
How were the data evaluated?
How many data had been collected?
How old are the data?
How were the “grades” calculated?
Are all data correct?
I am a citizen and would like to see my region to score better.
I am the representative of a region and the data had changed already.
I like your work. How can I help?
Who are the authors?
I see Slovak text on the site. Why?
What is Open Self-Government 2011?
Open Self Government: Regions 2011 is a transparency survey of the Slovak self-governing regions. It measures information availability and accessibility as well introduced anti-corruption measures in place in 11 policy areas. The survey ranges from 0 (least) to 100 (ideal case).
The survey highlights both strengths and weaknesses of Slovak regions, offering practical fixes for improvements.
Open Self Government: Regions 2011 is just an indicator of municipal openness. Although the ranking does not measure corruption, Transparency holds that higher score in the ranking and more transparent towns and cities provide fewer opportunities for corrupt behaviour. However, it cannot be ruled out that municipalities high up in the ranking are not corrupt and vice versa. Municipalities interested in obtaining more specific data and a more complete picture of their administration should consider Transparency’s Transparent town audit in a way cities of Martin, Prievidza, Žiar nad Hronom, Banská Bystrica and Bratislava-Ružinov did.
Regions had been assessed by 133 questions and ranked in 13 areas. Areas assessed cover powers and duties vested with regions (e.g. public property sales and leasing) as well as policy areas deemed important by Transparency for good and ethical governance (e.g. ethics, conflict of interests). Areas and their value on the survey score reflect their importance and propensity to corruption.
The maximum score was 100. All questions and scoring details are provided here.
| POLICY AREA |
SURVEY WEIGHT in % |
| Access to Information |
27,0 |
| Public Procurement |
16,0 |
| Public Property Sales and Lease |
11,5 |
| Budgeting |
10,0 |
| Municipal Businesses, Organizations and Invesments |
10,0 |
| Public Participation |
8,0 |
| Professional Ethics and Conflict of Interests |
5,0 |
| Human Resources |
4,0 |
| Grants |
3,0 |
| Land Use |
3,0 |
| Social Services |
2,5 |
133 question were meticulously selected by team of Transparency experts. They reflect themes and recommendations of Anticorruption Minimum 2010: Recommendations for Municipalites (Slovak only) that contains 82 specific actions for self-governments wishing to become open and transparent. Recommendations were reviewed by the experts unaffiliated with Transparency Slovakia and published in September 2010.
Regions were assessed base on data obtained in three ways: official Freedom of Information Requests filed by Transparency, evaluation of the regions’ websites and Freedom of Information Requests filled by Transparency co-workers (“mystery shopping”).
Question answered by the Transparency’s request are worth total of 26,1 points, evaluation of the webpage 69,4 points and the request filled by the co-workers 4,5 points.
How many data had been collected?
The database contains 1463 answers to 133 questions(126 evaluated) in 11 policy areas.
Data were collected in November 2011.
How were the “grades” calculated??
TIS also chose to use a grade scale (see below) for better understanding and presentation of the point system. The maximum grade being A+ (100 points or 100%) and the lowest one being F (0 points or 0%).
| GRADE |
% |
| A+ | 80-100 |
| A | 75-79 |
| A- | 70-74 |
| B+ | 65-69 |
| B | 60-64 |
| B- | 55-59 |
| C+ | 50-54 |
| C | 45-49 |
| C- | 40-44 |
| D+ | 35-39 |
| D | 30-34 |
| D- | 25-29 |
| E+ | 20-24 |
| E | 15-19 |
| E- | 10-14 |
| F | 0-9 |
In the case of Freedom of Information requests, the municipalities are legally bound to provide true and precise answers. These had been altered only in cases of evident mistakes.
TIS employees spent maximum effort to provide precise information from website assessment. However, complex website structures could cause that certain data was hard to find and hence appeared non-existent. Furthermore, TIS set a 2 minute time limit rule used for online search of information in order to simulate an ordinary user
I like your work. How can I help?
If you like this project, please consider financial donation, share this page with your friends, or become our fan on Facebook.
Who are the authors?
Open Self-Government is a project of Transparency International Slovakia. Open Self Government: Regions 2011 is sponsored by Open Society Institute, the Embassy of the United States in Slovakia and UNDP Regional Centre, Bratislava to whom we express our gratitude. We would also like to thank our intern, Juraj Spišák.
I see Slovak text on the site. Why?
This should be only text comments provided by the regions. We are very sorry for being unable to provide full English translation. Please, consider using online translation tools or get in touch.