Madrid, 11 February 2020 – The Anticorruption City Toolkit (ACT!) is a project designed to prevent corruption at local level by providing municipalities with policies and digital tools for improving the detection and reporting of corruption, for receiving information requests, and for controlling public procurement and budgeting.
The project is being carried out by a pan-European consortium comprising Access Info Europe in Spain, Transparency International Italia, Avviso Pubblico, Ondata, and Openpolis in Italy, and Vouliwatch in Greece, together with the municipalities of Athens, Madrid, and Milan.
During the first phase of the project, in-depth surveys were conducted to map the current legislative framework for each municipality and to identify the existing tools that they have for combatting corruption and guaranteeing transparency and open data.
One of these surveys was directed at public officials to determine their perceptions of the levels of corruption inside each municipality. It is important to note that Spain, Italy and Greece are among the European Countries with the worst scores in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index.
The ACT! project partners are currently developing an online platform for the municipalities, which will contain the digital solutions as well as guidelines and recommendations on how to improve implementation of anti-corruption policies and hence advance the quality of democracy at the local level.
The platform has five sections:
- Whistleblowers protection
- Access to Information
- Open Government
- Public Procurement
- Risk Analysis
Access Info met with the project partners and representatives of the three municipalities in Athens on 13-14 January 2020. During the meetings, we discussed and agreed on the development of the digital tools to ensure that they meet the municipalities’ real needs.
During a second phase of the project, the ACT! Toolkit platform will be open to other municipalities across the European Union so that they can both benefit from the package of tools and give feedback on functionality. After the testing and evaluation phases are completed, the platform will be open to any municipality interested in using it.
ACT! Is a project funded by the European Commission’s Internal Security Fund-Police.
For more information, please contact:
Helen Darbishire, Executive Director | Access Info Europe
helen@access-info.org +34 637 226 609
Paula Domínguez, Communications Officer | Access Info Europe
paula@access-info.org +34 913 656 558
