On May 14th, blomeyer & sanz hosted at the European Commission Representation in Madrid a national stakeholders meeting in light of the TACOD project. The meeting was organised in collaboration with the University Institute Ortega y Gasset and incorporated in their XXV Permanent Seminar on Public Administration and Economy. The seminar was titled: ‘Open Government, Limits and Possibilities’. 18 speakers were invited representing business and public sector, academia and civil society. Three panel debates respectively focused on: the theoretical framework of open government: practitioners views on the use of open data against corruption; and best practices from public authorities. During the first panel, Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubi (specialist in political communication) presented three ingredients for open government: 1) dedication to transparency; 2) institutional reforms; and 3) civil participation. Helen Darbishire (Director Access Info Europe) as practitioner commented that the latter (civil participation) needs to be underlined in a national strategy on open data and that the challenge is to achieve greater participation in the ICT-side of open data, primarily to increase quality of data. During the final panel, Manuel Arenilla (Director of the National Institute for Public Administration – INAP) concluded that in search of openness, the State needs to promote good practices by, for example, providing training to civil servants on how transparency can increase quality and integrity of the public administration.

Find here the agenda of the meeting.