The UAB awards its Infoparticipa Seal to 122 administrations around Catalonia

12/06/2020

A total of 113 city halls, 6 county councils and 3 provincial councils in Catalonia received the Infoparticipa Seal, an award conferred onto them by the new research group in Comunicació Sonora, Estratègica i Transparència (ComSET) of the UAB in recoginition for the information transparency of the institutions websites. In addition, the UAB awarded an extraordinary prize to four town councils (Centelles, Viladecavalls, L'Aldea and Llagostera) in recognition of their communicative quality and efficiency and to the accountability of the Santa Coloma de Gramenet City Council. ComSET, the research group created by the fusion of LPCCP (group which originally launched "Infoparticipa") and Publiradio, recently also conducted evaluations of the administrations in Madrid and Murcia: five councils in Madrid and eight in Mursia were also awarded the Infoparticipa Seal. When the situation allows for it, the Infoparticipa Seal will officially be awarded to the administrations in an institutional event.

In addition to the 48 indicators established by ComSET, based on the 2013 Law of Transparency, the Infoparticipa Seal is awarded to populations in which the greatest amount of positive indicators are obtained in relation to their number of inhabitants (for example, towns with more than 50,000 inhabitants are required to obtain 95% of positive indicators, and in the case of towns with less than 1,000 inhabitants, only 75% of positive indicators is required). With regard to county and provincial councils, the Infoparticipa Seal is awarded to those which obtain a minimum of 85% of the positive indicators, regardless of the number of inhabitants. 

This year the seal was awarded to 113 city councils (fifteen more than last year). Of these, 36 obtained 100% of positive indicators (up four from 2019's 32 city councils). And of these, Esplugues de Llobregat is the only city council to have obtained 100% in all seven editions organised until now. And, for a sixth consecutive year, the town of Vilanova de Sau in Osona), with only 299 inhabitants, is the smallest town to have recieved the Infoparticipa Seal. The second smallest town, Tavèrnoles, with only 316 inhabitants, has also received the seal in all seven editions.

In the case of county councils, six of them have received the seal: Alt Penedès, Baix Llobregat, Gironès, Moianès, Vallès Occidental and Vallès Oriental. With regard to provincial councils, the seal was awarded to the same institutions as in the past three editions: Barcelona, Girona and Tarragona.

Women Mayors Are More Transparent

This year data confirms an ongoing, albeit slow positive evolution in the seven years in which this evaluation has taken place: only 12% of Catalonia's 947 municiplaties receive this distinction. General problems are detected in aspects such as frequency in updates or clarity in the information provided, while there are also generalised improvements in issues such as the organisation of agendas according to information criteria and common sense.

The team at ComSET also noted two aspects which should be highlighted. Firstly, 29% of city councils receiving the seal are led by a woman mayor, and this percentage is higher than the total of municipalities of Catalonia led by a woman (23%): therefore, women mayors proportionately obtain better results in transparency. Secondly, the remarkable effort demonstrated by 10.6y% of the towns with less than 10,000 inhabitants in obtaining the Infoparticipa Seal, given that they have less resources available than larger towns and cities.

The latest report was prepared with data gathered from the end of December 2019 and 10 March 2020. It represents the seventh edition of analysis of the city council websites of Catalonia. In the case of the 41 county councils and the Conselh Generau d'Aran, this is the fifth evaluation they have undergone, And with regard to the four provincial councils of Catalonia, this is the fourth edition of evaluations. With the help of this data, the Certifying Council of the Infoparticipa Seal decide to whom the awards will go.

Five Extraordinary Prizes

ComSET also created an extraordinary prize that highlights the results obtained by city and town websites in two categories. On the one hand, the award in communicative efficiency goes to portals which are particularly accessible, intelligible and readable. In this category, positive discrimination is applied to towns with less than 10,000 inhabitants in recognition of administrations which take great efforts without having the human and technological resources other municiplaities have. This first edition awards the websites of the town councils of Centelles (7,404 inhabitants), Viladecavalls (7,512), L’Aldea (4,160) and Llagostera (8,453).

On the other hand, the award in updated information on accountability included the creation of a specific category in which key elements of efficient public management and informative transparency are evaluated. In this case, positive discrimination was applied in the other sense, favouring municipalities with over 100,000 inhabitants which, given their larger amount of resources, should be the ones with more tools and contents devoted to continuous accountability and based on intelligibility, transparency and good governance. The city council awarded this distinction this year is Santa Coloma de Gramenet (119,215 inhabitants).

Five Seals in Madrid and Eight in Murcia

This year, the Infoparticipa Seal has also been awarded to five city councils in the autonomous region of Madrid and eight in the region of Murcia. This is the second edition of the awards in Madrid, with destinctions awarded to the following city councils: Madrid (100% positive indicators), Alcobendas (96%), Getafe (96%), Pozuelo de Alarcón (96%) and Torrelodones (92%). In the case of Murcia, this is the fourth edition of the Infoparticipa Seals, and the city councils awarded are Águilas (100%), Alcantarilla (100%), Cartagena (100%), Las Torres de Cotillas (100%), San Pedro del Pinatar (100%), Lorquí (94%), Caravaca de la Cruz (92%) and Torre-Pacheco (92%).

L'avaluació dels 179 webs madrilenys i dels 45 webs murcians ha estat feta entre els mesos de març i maig a partir dels mateixos criteris que es segueixen amb les administracions catalanes. Properament es coneixeran també els resultats assolits al País Valencià, on l’avaluació dels webs municipals es tancarà el 30 de juny.

Evaluation Criteria

The Infoparticipa Map was launched by the Laboratory of Journalism and Communication for a Plural Citizenship (Laboratori de Periodisme i Comunicació per a la Ciutadania Plural, LPCCP) at the UAB in 2012, when it decided to analyse the information provided by websites of the 947 town councils of Catalonia, with the aim of fostering the transparency and quality of the information provided by local administrations. In 2013, the LPCCP decided to award the Infoparticipa Seal and finally, the Certifying Council was created with the aim of contrasting the evaluations made by the team, which is made up of members of different associations.

Now, the LPCCP has come together with the Publiràdio research group to form the new Comunicació Sonora, Estratègica i Transparència (ComSET), in charge of the Infoparticipa Map. The indicators used by ComSET to evaluate information published on the administrations' websites correspond to the following basic questions:

• Who are the political representatives?
• How do they manage council resources?
• How do they manage economic resources?
• What information do they provide about the municiplaity and the management of council resources?
• What citizen participation tools are there?

In the case of city councils, there are 48 indicators that have been modified in this seventh edition (versus 52 last year) in order to raise the level of exigency in qualitative terms. With regard to county and provincial councils, 45 of the indicators are adapted to their competences. In this year's edition, more quality of information and level of transparency were demanded in these four key aspects:

• Individualised and comprehensible visualisation of politicians' salaries
• Declaration of assets and activities of politicians
• Salaries and curriculum vitae of those in posts of confidene and management personnel
• Detailed explanation of the competences of governing bodies

The results of the analysis are introduced into the platform through a content management system which automatically publishes the results, georeferenced on a Google map, with the percentage reached by each website and translated into a tonality which corresponds to the "infometre": white if it is lower than 25%, yellow if it is between 25% and 49%, green if it is between 50% and 74%, and dark green if its percentage is equal to or higher than 75%.

More information: Infoparticipa Map

This information is related to the following SDG

• Peace, justice and strong institutions
• Sustainable cities and communities