Once open data initiatives are consolidated worldwide, it is important to find out if the Spanish regional open data portals are useful for active transparency. To this end, we developed an indicator to assess the existence of information and its reusable quality in three periods of time (2013, 2015 and 2018). Then, we inquired about the existence of differentiated groups of regional governments using, when necessary, cluster analysis. We found indications that there are two conglomerates of governments: advanced and lagged. These findings are in line with those offered by two opposing views on the dissemination of information from the public sector: agency and neo-institutional theories. Una vez consolidadas a nivel mundial las iniciativas de datos abiertos, nos parece relevante averiguar si los portales autonómicos españoles tienen utilidad para la transparencia activa, elaborando un indicador en tresperíodos de tiempo: 2013, 2015 y 2018. Este indicador valora tanto la existencia de información como su calidad reutilizadora. Tras valorar los resultados obtenidos, se indaga sobre la existencia de grupos diferenciados de autonomías empleando, cuando es pertinente, un análisis clúster. Los análisis efectuados encuentran indicios de que hay dos conglomerados de autonomías: avanzadas y rezagadas, hallazgos en línea con lo planteado por dos teorías contrapuestas sobre la divulgación de información del sector público: agencia y neoinstitucional.

Divulgación de información pública de las comunidades autónomas españolas (2013-2017): portal de datos abiertos, portal de transparencia y web institucional

Aquest article estudia el model de comunicació per a retre comptes mitjançant portals de dades obertes als governs regionals espanyols. Sobre la base de les teories de l’agència, neoinstitucional i legitimitat, proposem dos patrons de comportament que anomenem «transparència sincera» i «transparència aparent». Tot i que els conjunts de dades disponibles augmenten significativament en el període en estudi, els resultats relatius a transparència i a retre comptes són pobres. Conforme a l’anàlisi de comportament, quatre comunitats desenvoluparien clarament polítiques de transparència sincera, mentre que unes altres set tindrien un comportament manifest de transparència aparent en els seus portals de dades obertes.

Iniciativas de Gobierno Abierto y de reutilización de la información del sector público están implementadas en la mayor parte de los países. Los portales de open data, repositorios digitales que centralizan la información en manos de las administraciones públicas bajo las premisas de formatos abiertos y licencias libres, son el destino de estos datos. En España el desarrollo de los portales de datos abiertos autonómicos es innegable, pasando de 11 portales operativos y una oferta aproximada de 5.000 datasets en el año 2013, a 17 repositorios y más de 14.000 conjuntos de datos en 2019. Este estudio se ocupa de valorar estos portales de datos abiertos autonómicos considerando cuatro dimensiones complementarias: número de datasets, aplicaciones elaboradas en base a esos conjuntos de datos, opciones de interacción disponibles y funcionalidad observada en el portal, encontrando importantes diferencias intracomunitarias.

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of research analyzing open government initiatives that enable access to the information held by public bodies, promoting accountability and the fight against corruption. As there are few studies on intermediate governments to date, this research focuses on this level of government in Spain, one of the most decentralized countries in the world. The autonomous communities in Spain manage over 35% of consolidated public spending and are responsible for providing most social services, including health, education, and social services. To achieve this goal, the perceptions of the seventeen heads of open government in Spain’s autonomous communities were collected through a questionnaire. This approach fills a research gap as individuals outside of public administration have made the previous assessments. By allowing for a comparison with the conclusions reached by prior research, this study contributes to the creation of new knowledge. The study’s results are consistent with previous research and suggest that the open government in Spain is positively regarded, not falling below the European or global averages, and has a promising future despite significant obstacles, such as a resistance to change. Transparency is the most developed aspect of open government, while citizen collaboration ranks last. The autonomous communities of the Basque Country, Aragon, Castile Leon, and Catalonia have been identified as the most advanced in terms of open government. The analysis did not reveal any gender-based differences in opinion. Still, it did show variations based on age, the size of the autonomous community, or membership to the most developed group. Therefore, it is evident that promoting open government in the autonomous communities of Spain should continue.

In order to improve governments’ transparency and accountability a large volume of literature has been developed searching for the key factors that determine greater dissemination of public information. However, most of this research was focused on municipalities but almost none on the regional level. This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature related to the regional governments and to highlight the differences between key factors of dissemination and transparency in local and regional governments. For this comparison, the field of study for those key factors are the Spanish Autonomous Communities, what allows taking advantage on the rich literature focused on Spanish municipalities. To this end, a transparency index for governmental open data portals and another one for both transparency portals and institutional web sites are constructed as a weighted sum of 20 information items related to governments’ transparency and accountability. Weightings are based on the Tim Tim Berners-Lee open data scale; therefore, both indexes value not only the dissemination but also the openness and reutilization levels of the information. In order to figure out what key factors are associated with different levels in transparency, an analysis on the existing literature about the determinants of accountability and selection of the most common variables was conducted. In addition, a number of new variables were included summing up a total of 26 which are divided into six categories related to quality of governance, economic performance, social and demographic characteristics, fiscal and budgetary policies and regional specific identity features. Results show that absolute majority and political strength are associated with lower levels of transparency while the greater levels are related to existing regulation on transparency, economic competitiveness and budget expenditure on education and health. Nevertheless, the most outstanding finding is the positive link to regional specific identity features, which leads to conclude that the idiosyncrasy of each type of government are key to improve transparency and accountability.