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José Luis Rodríguez: “Access to public information is essential for the participation of citizens in public affairs”

09/10/2025
José Luis Rodríguez, President of the Transparency Council, during his speech in the panel Integrity, Transparency and Public Ethics of the IX Global Summit of Open Government

The Chair of the Transparency Council spoke today at a high-level panel on “Public Integrity, Transparency and Ethics” at the Open Government Summit in Vitoria, where he highlighted the Council’s role in ensuring transparency and the right of access to public information.

The President of the Council, José Luis Rodríguez Álvarez, has spoken today in the IX Global Open Government Partnership Summit, which brings together in the Basque capital more than 2,000 government representatives, civil society leaders and public policy experts to exchange experiences and promote improvements in open government initiatives.

At this important international meeting, he stressed that access to public information is essential to enable the effective participation of people and social groups in public affairs. “It is a necessary condition that acquires even greater relevance in the current context of the proliferation of disinformation, which must be combated with verified and reliable public information,” he stressed.

Rodríguez participated in the high-level panel “Integrity, transparency and public ethics”, together with public officials and civil society organizations from several countries, to discuss the progress made in these key areas to promote public confidence, ensure accountability and combat corruption. He recalled that “illicit practices nest and grow in spaces of opacity” and stressed that transparency “limits the opportunities of corruption and irregular practices and contributes to generating decision-making environments presided over by integrity and ethics.”

To ensure transparency, he stressed, it is essential that there are independent bodies such as the Transparency Council, which ensure that transparency obligations are met and which guarantee the right of access to public information through a flexible and free procedure, at no cost to the claimants.

In this regard, he highlighted the role played by the Council, despite being an institution still young and with few resources, to help strengthen the scrutiny of public activity and thus improve the possibilities of participation of citizens in public life. In 2024 alone, the Council assessed compliance with the transparency obligations of 291 agencies and entities and resolved 2,230 complaints from individuals who had been denied the right of access to public information by the Administration, 65 per cent of which the Council decided in favour of the claimant.

In Spain, he recalled, there are civil society organizations that are very active and try to advance the right of access to public information, and when they do not get a positive response from the Administration to their requests for information, they seek the protection of the Transparency Council.

On the panel, moderated by Zukiswa Kota, Program Manager of the South African Public Service Accountability Observatory, also participated Viktor Pavlushchyk, director of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption of Ukraine; Mariam Galstyan, Chief Commissioner of the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption of Armenia; Olusoji Apampa, executive director of The Convention on Business Integrity; Danella NewmanHead of Civil Society Participation Projects in the UNCAC Coalition (United Nations Convention against Corruption); and Gary Pienaar, member of civil society of the OGP Steering Committee in South Africa.

Participants in the Public Integrity, Transparency and Ethics panel of the 9th Global Open Government Summit

Algorithmic transparency

During the summit, the Deputy Director-General for Transparency and Good Governance of the Council also spoke, Gonzalo Gómez de Villalobos, which presented during the session “Algorithmic transparency for democratic accountability”, held on Tuesday, October 7, the position maintained by the Council since 2021 in favor of 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.

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 programming of the ninth OGP summit has included 4 high-level plenary sessions, 8 high-level panels, 5 global dialogues, 40 sessions and more than 30 parallel events. More than 2,000 people attend and more than 60 high-level national representatives from 32 countries participate as speakers, as well as 42 high-level local representatives.