Open Government in the EU

An earlier summary of the EUI seminar of transparency, posted on this website some time ago, has been picked up by Moscow-based archivist and blogger Natasha Hramtsovsky. Her blog features a full translation of the summary in Russian. In an introduction, Ms Hramtsovky remarks:

The described event attracted the attention of several Russian colleagues (see http://svdrokov.blogspot.ru/2013/02/blog-post_11.html), who [...] noted the lack of transparency of the seminar on transparency. This blog by Maarten Hillebrandt is therefore proposed to the reader [...] published [...]on the “Open Government in the European Union» blog.

Anoeska Buijze of the Utrecht Law School defended her doctoral dissertation entitled “The Principle of Transparency in EU Law” at Utrecht’s Academy Building on Friday 15 March. She was awarded cum laude for her considerable efforts at structuring a complex legal concept of EU law.

In her dissertation, Buijze uses a triple concept of the European citizen in order to disentangle the several rationales that underpin transparency at the European level. She recognises the citoyen (the participating citizen in the classical Greek sense), the homo dignus (a rights-bearing individual in the private sphere) and the homo economicus (the individual in pursuit of material welfare). Each of these citizen types, Buijze argues, provides a different rationale for certain types of access to information. She comes to this conclusion through a detailed analysis of a number of fields of law (public access to information, public procurement, electronic communications law, and state aid).  

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A seminar was held at the European Union Institute in Florence on 25 January 2013 with the title: “Transparency and Access to the Records and Archives of the EU Institutions”.

The subject of EU transparency enjoys, it seems, never-ending attention from both EU civil servants and politicians, as well as academics. This time, the discussion was connected to developing rules and practices in the related areas of archiving and classification. Archivists, transparency specialists, and academics were invited for an exchange of views that was wide-ranging both in terms of substance as opinion.

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E-transparency is currently one the fastest-growing branches of transparency research. As Albert Meijer of the Open Government research group argues: “Modern day transparency is Internet transparency.” The special workshop Legitimacy 2.0: Transparency Online allows participants to discuss this topic in the context of the philosophy of (social) rights.

The workshop is introduced as follows:

“Transparency is everywhere, or at least talk of it is everywhere. The mainstream view is that transparency furthers accountability and offers an antidote against corruption, both in the private and the public sector. It is not any specific right or principle, rather a feature of institutions embedded in the ideal of open society and often considered a requirement for efficiency and good governance. As essential to guarantee authority and effectiveness of rules, but also democratic participation, it is fundamental to assure obedience to the law and trust in institutions. Conversely, the lack of transparency might contribute to arbitrary power. Does the introduction of ICTs higher the quality of epistemic processes and outputs into the legal and political system? Does greater transparency of the network, e.g., through e-government tools, lead to increased participation, more active and responsible citizen involvement in decision-making, on local, national and supranational levels? What impact does web 2.0 technologies have? What could be the effects of information overload in the long run?

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This short article was originally posted on the blog of the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG).

Kadi is back in Luxembourg and with a vengeance! The timing is interesting both for the case itself and more generally for highlighting the use of secret intelligence and evidence to justify detention and other sanctions.

By Deirdre Curtin

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In the 1980s, a committee was set up to deal with the subject of institutional reform. As Ireland was just assuming the presidency (1984), former minister of foreign affairs and senator Jim Dooge was appointed chair of this committee. The Dooge Committee on Institutional Affairs expendiently set out to make a number of recommendations for institutional improvements of the European Community.The Doodge report, which appeared within a few months, laid the foundations for the Single European Act, and after that the Maastricht Treaty, apparently with much of the report’s language being carried over verbatim.  

At the Dooge lecture, professor of European governance Helen Wallace goes back to the committee’s work which ”was made to seem as boring as possible” but in her opinion marks a watershed in the history of European integration. She praises the dexterity and expediency of the committee and its chair, but also argues that its working method marked the end of an era. She compares the SEA and Maastricht Treaty with the language andobjectives of more recent European Treaties, and concludes by addressing the UK’s recent stance in the process of European integration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAng6aga_Qw -MH

On 8 and 9 June the Transatlantic Conference on Transparency Research (TCTR) was held in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It was organised by members of the Open Government in the EU research group Albert Meijer and Deirdre Curtin. Researchers came from four continents and presented over 50 papers on all sorts of transparency related issues, ranging from transparency in the EU, to conceptualisation, to accountability, to developing countries. Attendants came from various disciplines, among them public administration, law, political science, psychology, as well as from various professional backgrounds such as the European Ombudsman’s office, the civil service, and NGOs. Keynote addresses were given by the European Ombudsman, Mr. Diamandouros, and prof. Paul ‘t Hart of the Utrecht School of Governance.

In his concluding address, Alasdair Roberts compared the emerging transparency community to his own children: it is now in the age where it starts talking back to you intelligently, but does not yet refuse to talk to you. In other words, transparency as a research field is going through an intellectually exciting time.

Held around a year after the transparency conference in Newark, Utrecht’s TCTR was the second international conference on transparency. The research community hopes to make this a regularly returning event, and invites all members to consider hosting a follow-up. -MH

All papers can be found here. News coverage from Freedom Info can be found here.

Last Monday, Erna Scholtes defended a thesis on the emerging understanding of the idea of transparency over the past decades.

Scholte works as senior consultant at Dutch public consultancy firm Twynstra & Gudde. Over the past years she worked on her research project as an  external researcher at Tilburg University. For this research, she analysed over 5000 parliamentary documents from the period between 1995 and 2010, to see how debates about transparency among Dutch MP . has evolved over the years. Her reseach reveals the multi-faceted understanding that politicians have of transparency, and the inherently positive semantic load that the term carries.

Click here to read a press release about the PhD thesis (in Dutch, entitled: “Transparentie, icoon van een dolende overheid”).

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Dr. Albert Meijer of the Open Government in the EU research team has edited the latest edition of the International Review of Administrative Sciences which goes by the title: “Government transparency: creating clarity in a confusing conceptual debate”.

The IRAS special issue is the fruit of a symposium on government transparency that was held at the Utrecht School of Governance in November 2010. It contains various articles by leading transparency researchers such as David Heald (Aberdeen, Scotland), Alasdair Roberts (Suffolk, USA), and Eric Welch (Chicago), but also holds contributions from an active community of transparency researchers at the Utrecht School of Governance.

The special issue approaches transparency research from various angles such as through a conceptual meta-analysis (Meijer, Curtin, Hillebrandt), experimental results (Grimmelikhuijsen), participative government (Welch), public expenditure (Heald), and parliamentary oversight (Brandsma). It can be viewed here, or through your institution’s online library.

This morning, Utrecht School of Government researcher Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen was awarded a doctorate for his dissertation on transparency and trust.

In his dissertation, Grimmelikhuijsen delved into the complexities of a widely held expectation of transparency: that citizens will trust their government more if they have more information about it. In order to study this question, Grimmelikhuijsen chose for the methodological interesting angle of an experimental setting, working with self-designed transparency websites as templates. The research was co-supervised by Open Government in the EU team member dr. Albert Meijer, while prof. Deirdre Curtin of our team was on the reading committee. The Ministry of Home Affairs has already shown interest in the dissertation and will be discussing its implications for policy during its next ministerial meeting. Grimmelikhuijsen will continue to investigate the impact of government transparency in a post-doctoral programme at the USG.

A press statement about the dissertation can be found here.