Di@vgeia – The Transparency Portal – Publication of Government Acts and Decisions

Openness dimension
Readily available government information can be accessed by every citizen or institution. Government transparency is enhanced by permitting the real time monitoring of all administrative decisions.

Collaboration dimension
Citizens and institutions monitor the publications of government decisions and can report potential maladministration issues. Controlling Bodies observe cases of illegality and maladministration in the public sector.

Management dimension
A network of action and results oriented Project Task Forces, one team within each public entity, execute the project and cooperate on solving common problems and sharing best practices.

Technology dimension
The implementation model is based on an agile strategy of “open data”, “open content” and “open architecture” that allows for the dissemination and re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI). Various applications have been built upon the Transparency open data access tools thus adding value to the programme.

The initial development in 2010 followed an innovative agile approach and was based upon the available human power and technical infrastructure of the Greek Public Sector. A total of 12 staff members worked for five months on the design, implementation, support and additional development of the system. In 2014, a new version of the portal has been implemented in cooperation with the private sector. Civil society observe legality and good administration and submit complaints and denouncements.

The beneficiaries of the Programme are all Greek citizens and business who need to exercise their constitutional right to be informed, as well as all public servants who need to use public acts and decisions on a daily basis as part of their work. A dynamic human network of project task forces has been activated nationwide during the implementation phase and are responsible for the efficient execution of the Programme.

Di@vgeia is regarded as the most extensively and widely used public value initiative. During the first ten years, 31 million acts and decisions have been uploaded by 4.729 public authorities. A total of 90.000 public servants have been involved as active users with an average of 16.500 uploads per working day. This has resulted to a rapid spread of the new values of transparency, responsibility, accountability, participation and collaboration.

Savings generated from the reduction of printed documents is a direct positive impact. By publishing the documents in an electronic format, public institutions directly reduce printing costs. The yearly savings for central government would amount to around € 5,000,000 (calculation method: measuring the savings in one Ministry and multiply for all Minitries). In addition, private companies re-use PSI and implement commercial solutions thus monetized benefits stem from the technology and openness dimensions leading to the opening-up of data.

- The main challenge was change management which addressed the resistance to change in the public sector. The project team, therefore, introduced an effective training and internal communication programme and focused on building a culture of trust and openness within the public sector.

- The agile development approach resulted in functionality problems and few technical issues during the first period of operation. These problems where effectively addressed with the use of an effective feedback mechanism supported by an online ticketing system for the project to run smoothly.

- No dissemination or communication campaign was introduced for the new initiative. It took time for the civil society to learn about the transparency portal and trust the new initiative. Word of mouth was the main means for communication of the portal.

- Coupling the implementation with a culture for change management in the public sector
- Giving no alternative route, all public sector institutions were forced to enter the Programme
- Finding the right balance for communication - avoiding too much, not enough or too late dissemination of information
- Involvement and listening to public servants and citizens was a key factor in the success of the project
- Clear vision and strategy from the senior hierarchy of the Greek Government
- Building on the talents and dedication of the public servants and providing autonomy to the project team

The initiative has been evaluated, adapted and replicated in the Greek Parliament in 2014 (https://diafaneia.hellenicparliament.gr/).

This programme can potentially be replicated to any governmental or non-governmental organisation aiming to enhance corporate and government transparency by permitting the monitoring of all administrative decisions. It is applicable to all types of organizations (Multinationals, Governments and NGO’s). It is suitable for large organizations that need internal or external transparency, which permits target communities of users to review all decisions. The platform operates as a transparent ‘middleware’ between an organization’s information systems and the external or internal stakeholders. All decisions are assigned to an organization wide unique transaction code.
For financial decisions, the transparency platform can monitor the life cycle of any expenditure, inter-operate with existing electronic procurement systems, ERP’s etc.

The most important strength of the Transparency programme is the combination of closely interrelated legal conditions, operational processes and technological strategies. It is considered that these factors should be carefully combined for the effective formulation and implementation of innovative public policies.

As far as the legal choices are concerned, Law 3861/2010 introduces for the first time in Greece the requirement to post all the actions of government and administrative bodies on the Internet, with special attention to acts concerning national defense and sensitive personal data. What makes the obligation innovative is that the acts and decisions of the entities may not be executed unless they are uploaded on the Programme web sites. Once the uploading has taken place, the act acquires a unique Internet Uploading Number (IUN) certifying that the act has been uploaded. Thus, unless the act is also published in the National Printing Office website, the acquisition of the unique Internet Uploading Number is a legal precondition that directly affects the executability of every decision.

The Transparency programme opens the Public Sector Information, sharing, as a result, the decision making power with citizens and leading to a new government model moving government from the hierarchical model to a network model. Open and free access to Public Sector Information constitutes a vital component to ensure citizens’ participation to social, economic and political life as well as the Information Society. The programme guarantees wide publicity and access to information, progressively contributing to a culture change in the whole of the Greek Public Administration. The implementation of the Di@vgeia (Clarity) programme will substantially contribute to the creation of a new model in the citizen's relationship with the State. From now on, the citizen has increased possibilities to enjoy his constitutional rights, such as the right to be informed and to participate in the Society of Information. At the same time, the compulsory uploading of the decisions and acts on the Internet leads to the reinforcement of responsibility and accountability on the part of the bodies exercising public authority

The above mentioned innovative legal choice of radical transparency is implemented and supported by equally innovative operational processes. Beyond the leadership and political will from the top, transparency and collaborative governance policies require culture changes that propagate from the bottom up. In this respect, the function of a dynamic nationwide human network of Project Task Forces that share strong authority to coordinate and educate their associates, as well as to communicate the merits of the programme, contributes to the rapid spread of the new values of transparency, accountability, participation and collaboration.

Last but not least is the technological implementation model that is based on an agile strategy of “open content” and “open architecture”. In this way, the interested citizens and enterprises will be able to “build” applications with added value using the programme’s content while at the same time the project will constantly evolve from a technological point of view in order to offer advanced possibilities to the citizens with the focus being on easy search for uploaded decisions and the customization of information (e.g. a given group of professionals searching for specific decisions).

Public Sector Information (PSI) re-use and access tools

Publishing acts of public entities on line is an important step which has been integrated into an “open service”, allowing re-use and further processing of public sector data, as well as the query of specific legal acts, by using a wide range of search criteria.

An open data API offers the opportunity to find decisions and administrative acts published under the Transparency portal, by using open data standards. All data acquired from the system are available under a Creative Commons License. This type of licensing means that anyone can use, reproduce or modify these data without any restrictions, except for the obligation to state their source and to explicitly state as different any secondary data, derived from the original data.