Fundación Ciudadana Civio (Civio) is a Spanish non-profit organization established in February of 2012.
Its strategy is to increase transparency and accountability through the use of information technologies and data journalism.
Their commitment is to promote transparency and the recognition and democratization of the right to access to information.
Civio’s ultimate goal is to increase citizens’ participation and awareness and to achieve significant cultural and legislative changes fostering a stronger democracy.
Civio’s combine web applications and data journalism to develop innovative digital tools that facilitate access and interpretation of public information.
Through the use of data mining, scraping, analysis and visualization, as well as the generation of quality content, Civio addresses fields such as public budgets, governmental pardons, access to information and conflicts of interest.
Facebook: Fundación Ciudadana Civio • Twitter: @Civio
#YoCo is a Mexican network of CSOs, citizens and public officials concerned about corruption. It works for the development of anti-corruption initiatives maintaining a focus on the prevention of corruption in the public sector.
The project is structured by a model based on four measures:
1. Diagnostic of work processes to identify risks of corruption in public agencies and private actors.
2. To raise public awareness on the existence of acts and behaviors to detect corruption risk maps.
3. Identifying corrective measures.
4. Identification and punishment of corruption acts.
These concrete actions seek to effectively prevent acts of corruption by public servants and citizens.
By August 2015 #YoCo will present a legislative initiative that will focus on prevention and citizen participation in the fight against corruption.
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Organizations leading #YoCo :
- Aportes Contraloría, A.C.
- CIMTRA: Ciudadanos por Municipios Transparentes
- Desarrollo Institucional de la Vida Pública A.C
- Instituto para la Defensa del Interés Público, A.C. (IDIP)
- ONG Contraloría Ciudadana para la Rendición de Cuentas, A.C
The project consisted in the preparation and publishing of brochures for the Tax Police officers with comments and explanations to the newly adopted anti-corruption legislation. It also included the drafting of a code of ethics for Tax Police.
The project was designed to monitor the use of EU funds by the Slovak Government: it consisted of an analysis of information published by Slovak ministries with regards to distribution of EU money e.g. requesting CVs of evaluators of proposals, evaluation sheets for projects; it was based on the Freedom of Information Act.
Goals of the project: To monitor spending of allocated budget and grant funds for road rehabilitation, to make legislative, economic and technical expertise of grant agreements, tender procedures and etc. Focus was placed on the Tbilisi-Senaki-Leselidze highway, Adjara domestic roads and a 10 mln. Grant Program.
The project main objective is to make an evaluation of the procedures, related to the drawing up and spending the state budget and budget surplus, and to work out recommendations for enhanced transparency and efficiency of the budgetary process. Project implementation tools include: 1. expert studying of the budgetary process; 2. legal framework analysis; 3. of the practices for the last three years; 4. identification of strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities (SWOT analysis); 5. focus group, consisting of representatives of the executive power (Ministry of Finance, a Ministry, Agency for Economic Analysis and Forecasting, National Audit Office, a member of parliament); 6. drawing up recommendations for: legislative changes; improvement of the institutional coordination within the process; 7. conference presenting the results of the study and the recommendations on the budgetary process to interested persons and institutions.
The project sought to:
– Undertake a survey regarding the basic state pillars and bring recommendations how to reduce corruption in this institutions;
– Publish the survey in National Integrity System Study in English language;
– Promote results of National Integrity System Study through mass media;
– Stimulate broader public discussion on anti-corruption issues;
– Strength the rule of the law;
– Improve accountability and transparency of the public sector.
Activites of the project included:
– Investigation of the corruption phenomenon on the ground i.e. in 11 basic state pillars (Government, Parliament, Judiciary, Prosecutors, Police,);
– Printing of the National Integrity System Study;
– Media presentation;
– Distribution of the Study.
The project aimed at improving administrative structures, mechanisms and skills, to identify and suggest rectification of loopholes in public procurement legislation.
The project was realized under the Coalition 2000 and USAID initiative: “Civil Society Against Corruption”” Small Grants Program. Its primary goal was the legitimization of the school mediator as a possibility for resolution of conflicts in the sphere of secondary education.”
The UPAC Project aimed at strengthening Ukrainian institutions’ capacities in their anti-corruption efforts. It comprised three components: 1. Support to the creation of the strategic and institutional framework against corruption; 2. Strengthening of capacities for the prevention of corruption. 3. Strengthening of the legal framework and the enforcement of anti-corruption legislation. Although this was a project implemented by the Council of Europe office in Kyiv, it did involve NGOs into their activities.
The overall goal of the project, The Price of the State, is to improve general public and especially young generation’s general knowledge of the basic mechanisms and proportions of public finance. We consider it as an important step in increasing the public awareness and pressure on the transparency and fiscal responsibility of the government. Since the knowledge of public finance issues is very poor not only among general public, but also among graduates from high schools and even universities, the voter lacks information necessary for rational decisions and effective civic engagement. The Price of the State concentrates detailed data on revenues and expenditures for public administration. With the help of our portal it’s possible to get a comprehensive overview of how much the state takes in and spends and how these quantities are changing over time. In order to visualize the dimensions of individual state expenditures we use indicators which convert individual items into per-capita or per-working person costs. We go over some of the numbers in more detail, briefly commenting on them under the heading Number of the Day. The Universe of Public Expenditures offers a graphical image of the dimensions of public finance. Those hunting bargains in the public sphere are invited to Buy Your Own State.
The project aims at consolidating a systematic approach to the civil monitoring and control over budgetary process. Its activities include: drawing up reports on the implementation of budget 2006; comments and evaluations, provoked by specific information occasions, related to budget proposals for 2007; drawing up a report on the status of health insurance system; drawing up a report on the readiness for absorption of European Structural funds; making of sector analysis of the expenses in the field of education; analysis of the efficiency of the existing system for education funding and the opportunities for its enhancement.
The project intended to support of the Global Impact Initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina through trainings given to business sector with topic of anti-corruption. The project methodology helped the businesses to create a climate of no tolerance for corruption. Ideally, after the training each company should be able to create and implement its own Business Principles for Countering Bribery, with the content tailored to its organization and scope of activities.
Neither trainings in Sarajevo and Banja Luka exceeded more than thirty participants in order to maintain active participation and discussion.
The content of the trainings covers the following topics:
– Definitions, forms and consequences of corruption;
– Law on free access to information;
– Conflict of interest Law;
– Law on public procurement and TI Integrity Pact.
During each session participants had the opportunity to ask questions and openly discuss about their own experiences. This approach was strongly stimulated.
For each session TI BiH delivered appropriate training materials consist of laws, summary presentations, model Code of Conduct for business sector, model TI Integrity Pact, etc. Also, TI BiH will be at disposal to continue cooperation and provide concrete assistance in companies’ future work on business principles that promote transparency, accountability and anti-corruption.
The goal of the project was to assess the executive, legislative, and independent institutions.
The project aimed to: reduce the prerequisites for corruption in the Tax administration; to develop a program for fighting corruption in the tax administration; provide a system of indicators for evaluation of the progress in improving the service of the tax payers. Some of the project tools included: 1. a sociological survey; 2. in-depth interviews with officials form the tax administration; 3. developing Indexes for Measuring the Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Measures in the Tax Administration and in drafting a hypothetical scheme of VAT frauds with a view to designing better prevention measures for the latter. A preliminary presentation of the findings and proposed anti-corruption measures was delivered to an audience of experts in the area.
The project consisted in a study of real estate management by the Municipality of Riga.
The main goal of this watchdog project was to strengthen citizen control of public administration by means of providing comprehensive, complete and easy-to-understand information on ineffective and non-transparent public spending at one place. This can be achieved via collecting and processing cases where the media document the ineffective spending of public funds by public officials followed by broad communication of these complete collection towards both media and general public. It sought to contribute to public awareness about the governance problems and to answer the question “How much of our money do they waste?” for common people. The project also expected to increase the public pressure on ministries, mayors and various regional and local public officials to act more transparently, honestly, responsibly and effectively. A complete and easily accessible internet database of all in print media reported cases of corrupt, nontransparent or ineffective public spending was created.
Monitoring of the implementation of the law on conflict of interest focusing on particular cases including publishing the cases, taking part in the administrative procedures, court rulings and involving media into the coverage of the issues and cases. Monitoring targeted mainly deputies and senators – how they comply with the obligaton to publish all gainful activities and incomes. A substantial part was cooperation with the media (assisting them with publishing a list of those who did not comply every year). The organization also provided support to the media and background information on the interpretation of the law. Regular press conferences took place, later on in the Senate. The project changed the culture connected to the publishing of the incomes, related to the law on the conflict of interests and raised awareness of the media on the issue; after the termination of the project, the media keep continuing monitoring the obligation to comply. In the third year of running project (2004), all deputies and senators complied. The only shortcomming would be the focus on the parliamentary level only due to the capacity of the organization.
The creation of the Center for Advocacy and Legal Advice addressed the need to raise the public awareness of the challenges confronting the Bulgarian society in fighting corruption and to provoke public interest in the ways and mechanisms of fighting the phenomenon. The purpose of the Center was and still is to allow citizens to play an active role in fighting corruption by providing them with free legal assistance in their efforts to deal with corruption-related crimes by public institutions and civil servants. The Center also aims to raise the capacity and readiness of state institutions to work with citizens regarding corruption complaints.
This was a research and advocacy project aiming to promote public access to budget information and accountable budget-drafting procedures and institutions.
The grantee investigated how FOI law was applied in practice, by making requests for information to around 200 state and municipal organizations. The results of the survey were compiled in a report which was made available to the press and discussed at a number of public forums. The survey was carried out by ten students under the supervision of a project manager.
The aim of the project was to present the ways of restraining corruption in Estonian Radio (Vikerraadio). Eight broadcasts about corruption were leaded by Mr Tarmu Tammerk (director of by the Estonian Newspaper Association). The representatives of public institutions and nonprofit associations were invited quests of the broadcast to introduce their experiences of restraing corruption.
Project aiming at involvement of particular regional socio-economic conditions as a criterion within the public procurement and public contracting tenders when the companies from disadvatnaged regions would receive additional points within the tender evaluation. The project was implemented in cooperation with a businessman from one of the Czech disadvantaged regions (Jesenicko). The seminars on the method took place and an agreement with Ministry of Defence on including the new criterion was reached.
