Rodríguez Álvarez urged that the transparency law be reformed without further delay in order to correct its shortcomings and technical shortcomings. Among the issues to be addressed in the reform, he stressed the need to increase active advertising obligations and enhance proactive advertising by institutions. It also called for a more complete and precise regulation of the procedures for exercising the right of access to information and for complaining to the Council. At the same time, it called for the Council to be given the necessary powers to carry out its functions effectively, including requiring the files affected by the claims, and to examine the content of the information claimed when the obligated subjects invoke limits on access. In this same vein, he stressed the urgency of providing the Council with coercive powers to ensure compliance with its resolutions and put an end to “the most serious pathology of the Spanish system of transparency”: that there are firm and fully binding resolutions that, however, are not executed.

In addition to the reform of the Law, the President of the Council called for decisive public measures and policies that strengthen both the transparency control and guarantee bodies and the administrative structures responsible for complying with the obligations of the transparency law, since both are “still weak”.

On the first day, the Deputy Director General of Transparency and Good Governance, Gonzalo Gómez de Villalobos, spoke of the importance of active publicity for accountability. He advocated transparency from the design and recalled that “a good investment in active advertising avoids lost time and resources for both organizations and the citizen.”

For its part, Ana María Ruiz, advisory member of the Council, detailed the Council’s assessment of active advertising obligations using the MESTA methodology. He stressed that it is detected, twelve years after the approval of the law, a lack of knowledge about the obligations that it imposes in this matter, and a certain “laziness” on the part of those who must apply it. “There must be a real willingness to comply and transparency and accountability must be included in our administrative culture and practice,” he recalled that administrations must be aware that the recipients of active advertising “are the citizens, not the officials,” so the information provided must be understandable and easily accessible to them.

Julian Prior, Deputy Deputy Director of Transparency and Good Governance, spoke of document management as the “backbone” not only of transparency, but of open government, called for the future reform of the transparency law to include express reference to document management, and recalled the obligation to properly document any administrative action as a basis for transparency.

The first day ended a round table in which transparency and access to information were analyzed as a link of trust between the Administration and the citizens. Participated Olga Agüero, dean of the College of Journalists of Cantabria, David Cabo, co-director of the Civio Foundation, Safira Cantos, General Director of the Hay Derecho Foundation, and Eloisa Paredes, Deputy Director-General for Transparency and Citizen Care of the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service. Moderó Isabel Lombardero, general secretary of the CTBG. Representatives of civil society organizations also called for the reform of the transparency law to be addressed now and for the Transparency Council to be given the necessary powers to enforce its resolutions.

On the second day, the Deputy Director General of State Level Claims of the CTBG, Marta Timón Herrero, outlined the contours and scope of the right of access to public information in a digital context such as the current one, in which an effort must be made so that vulnerable groups are not left behind, “focusing on the holders of the right of access”. He also recalled that the right of access to public information “has an empowering effect on fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression and information, participation in public affairs and effective judicial protection.”

For its part, Isabel Jiménez Plaza, advisory member of the Council, analyzed the justification of the causes of inadmission and the legal limits to the right of access, which the Administration must motivate “with surgical precision” avoiding an abusive practice to prevent access.

José Santiago Fernández del Valle, Deputy Assistant Director of State Level Complaints of the Council made a detailed tour of the right of access procedure, pointing out good and bad practices.

The guarantee of access to public information at the regional and local level focused the intervention of José Manuel Jover Lorente, Deputy Director General of Regional and Local Claims.

The main jurisprudential milestones of the Supreme Court were analyzed by the magistrate Eduardo Calvo Rojas, which also recalled the cases in this field pending judgment in that court, such as access to the source code of the computer applications used by the Administration or to what public employees receive in terms of productivity.

The President of the newly created Independent Authority for the Protection of the Informant, Manuel Villoria Mendieta, spoke of transparency and good governance policies. He recalled that transparency “allows to detect not only corruption, but also waste and unethical behavior” and increase the effectiveness of public policies, defended a collaborative transparency between the Administration and the citizen and recalled that transparency “does not consist in approving a law; financial and political support is needed to make it work”.

Joaquín Meseguer Yebra, coordinator of the Working Group on Transparency and Access to Public Information of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and who was part of the sub-working group for the reform of the transparency law, analyzed in detail the pending legal reforms that are necessary to strengthen the transparency system and end its pathologies: expand the subjective scope of the law, enhance the obligations of active publicity, empower the guarantor bodies to impose coercive fines to enforce their resolutions, a sanctioning regime with personal responsibility or the establishment of a mediation procedure that can avoid in many cases the interposition of a preferential access to summary information.

Precisely the nature of the right of access to public information and if there are legal-constitutional arguments that cement its potential consideration as a fundamental right, focused the last presentation of the meeting, by the judge of the Constitutional Court Laura Díez Bueso.

The course was closed by the Secretary of State for Public Service, Clara Mapelli Marchena, with a conference in which he defended a holistic approach to open government policies, among which is transparency, and showed his confidence that the processing of the Open Administration Act, in which legal reforms in the field of transparency are expected to be incorporated, will soon begin. On the other hand, he announced that work is being done on a new conception of the Transparency Portal of the General Administration of the State, more focused on the "right to know, to understand and to participate" of citizens.