What is Open Self-Government 2013?
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.
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Who are the authors?
I see Slovak text on the site. Why?
What is Open Self-Government 2013?
Open Self Government: Regions 2013 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 2013 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 125 questions and ranked in 11 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 |
24,9 |
| Public Procurement |
17,4 |
| Budgeting |
12,2 |
| Municipal Businesses, Organizations and Invesments |
9,2 |
| Public Property Sales and Lease |
8,3 |
| Public Participation |
7,7 |
| Professional Ethics and Conflict of Interests |
7,6 |
| Human Resources |
4,3 |
| Social Services |
3,1 |
| Media |
2,8 |
| Grants |
2,5 |
125 question were meticulously selected by team of Transparency experts. They reflect themes and recommendations of Anticorruption Minimum 2010 and 2012: 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 first published in September 2010.
Regions were assessed based on data obtained in several ways: official Freedom of Information Requests filed by Transparency (22,4%), evaluation of the regions’ websites (65%), Freedom of Information Requests filled by Transparency co-workers (“mystery shopping”) (5,4%), data from the Office for Public Procurement portal (1,1%), data from portal tender.sme.sk (3,3%), and information from regions’ print media (2.8%).
How many data had been collected?
The database contains 1531 answers to 125 questions in 11 policy areas.
Data were collected in July-September 2013.
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 5 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 2013 is sponsored by Datalan, a.s. to whom we express our gratitude. We would also like to thank our interns- Lucia Grajcarová, Laura Szabová, Ján Ivančík, Juraj Čokyna, and Tomáš Herda for their help with data gathering, and our experts Ivan Rončák and Vladimír Pirošík for their help with methodology.
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.