The Council of Transparency and Good Governance participates this week in Vitoria in the IX edition of the Global Summit of the Open Government Alliance. It is a meeting at the highest level organized by the Executive Committee of the Alliance for Open Government, which for a year has co-chaired Spain. The meeting will address crucial issues related to the open state, public participation, digital governance, transparency, integrity and the fight against corruption, from the perspective that openness should generate better governance and greater equity, not just appearance.
The Council participates in the IX Global Open Government Summit in Vitoria
06/10/2025
At this meeting, which brings together more than 2,000 attendees from 100 countries from 6 to 10 October in Vitoria, the President of the Council will speak at a high-level panel on public integrity, transparency and ethics, and the Deputy Director of Transparency and Good Governance at a session on algorithmic transparency, in which he will defend the right of citizens to access the source code of the applications used by the Administration as a basic element of guarantee against possible arbitrariness and discriminatory biases.
High-level panel on public integrity, transparency and ethics
The President of the Council, José Luis Rodríguez Álvarez, will speak on Thursday 9 October at 9 a.m. in one of the eight high-level panels that will take place during the summit. Entitled “Public Integrity, Transparency and Ethics”, the session will bring together public officials from various countries, as well as civil society organizations, to discuss progress made in these key areas to build public confidence, ensure accountability and combat corruption.
Participating in the session, in addition to the President of the Council, Manuel Villoria Mendieta, president of the Independent Authority for the Protection of the Informant; Zukiswa Kota, Program Manager at Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM), a civil society organization based in South Africa; Adea Pirdeni, Minister of Public Administration and Anti-Corruption of Albania; Mariam Galstyan, Chief Commissioner of the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption of Armenia; Viktor Pavlushchyk, director of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption of Ukraine; Olusoji Apampa, executive director of The Convention on Business Integrity; Rueben Lifuka, director of the Chandler Foundation in Zambia; Danella NewmanHead of Civil Society Participation Projects in the UNCAC Coalition (United Nations Convention against Corruption); and Jorge Arturo Reina García, Director of Transparency and Prevention of Corruption (Secretariat for Transparency and Fight against Corruption) of Honduras.
Algorithmic transparency
For his part, the Deputy Director-General for Transparency and Good Governance of the Council, Gonzalo Gómez de Villalobos, will speak on Tuesday, October 7 at 5:15 p.m. in the session “Algorithmic transparency for democratic accountability”, coordinated by the Scottish Government and the AI Citizen coalition.
As the organization of the Summit recalls, algorithms increasingly define public decisions that directly affect people’s lives—from eligibility for social benefits to policing and access to public services. However, in many cases, the functioning of these systems remains opaque for citizens, policy makers and even other public institutions.
Gómez de Villalobos will explain in the session the position maintained by the Council in favor of algorithmic transparency and access to the source code of the applications used by the Administrations as an essential safeguard against possible arbitrariness or discriminatory biases in the decision-making totally or partially automated.
It will review the main resolutions issued since 2021, when the Council established the new criterion that has been applied since then and that has been supported by the recent and transcendental ruling of the Supreme Court that obliges the State Administration to provide the Fundación Ciudad-Civio with access to the source code of the BOSCO computer application, developed by the Ministry for Ecological Transition so that companies commercializing electricity can verify whether the applicants for the social bond comply with the legal requirements to be considered a vulnerable consumer.
It should also be noted that the Supreme Court has just admitted a cassation appeal lodged by the Council against a ruling of the National High Court that considers that access to the source code of a computer application used by the Community of Madrid for the drawing of courts associated with selective processes for access to the public service should not be facilitated.
The session on algorithmic transparency of the Summit will also take part Doreen Grove, Director of Open Government of the Scottish Government; Thai Jungpanich, Director of Strategic Alliances at Polítical Watch, member of the IA Ciudadanos coalition; María Paz Hermosilla, director of GobLab UAI at Adolfo Ibáñez University (Chile); and Sofia Paes, Data Policy Advisor at the Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs of Estonia.
On the Open Government Partnership and the 9th Open Government Summit
La Alliance for Open Government (OGP) was born within the United Nations in 2011, on the initiative of former US President Barack Obama. It is configured as a global community of government leaders and civil society advocates to promote transparent, participatory, inclusive and accountable governance.
A total of 74 countries, 150 local governments and thousands of civil society organizations are part of this initiative. Spain has been a member of the Alliance since its inception and is one of the countries with the largest number of regional and local representatives within it.
The programme of the 9th OGP summit, to be held in Vitoria, includes 4 high-level plenary sessions, 8 high-level panels, 5 global dialogues, 40 sessions and more than 30 parallel events. More than 60 high-level national representatives from 32 countries, as well as 42 high-level local representatives, will participate as panellists.