Failed Integrity Test: Ternopil Loses Transparent City Status

The Transparent Cities program deprived Ternopil of the status and position in the 2024 Transparency Ranking. During the assessment, the program’s analysts found that Ternopil City Council deliberately provided false information, and the content of publications on the city council’s website was swapped, evidently to gain additional points.

Made-up hackathon and news swapping: data manipulations

In December 2024, the Transparent Cities program sent two letters to the official email address of the Ternopil City Council (like to all the studied cities) with a request to fill in questionnaires as part of the groundwork for the Open Data Pulse Ranking and the Transparency Ranking of 100 Cities. On December 17, the program received a response from the city council, as well as an official letter informing about the completion of the Open Data Pulse questionnaire.

Letter from the Ternopil City Council to Transparency International Ukraine informing about the completion of the Open Data Pulse questionnaire, dated December 17, 2024.

While conducting research and verifying the answers provided by the city council, analysts noticed that the completed questionnaire contained information about an Open Data Hackathon in August 2024 with a link to a corresponding news article on the Ternopil City Council website (https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/80783.html).

Screenshot of the news article “Open Data Hackathon took place in Ternopil: new services based on communities’ open data,” dated August 12, 2024, accessed via the link provided by the Ternopil City Council.

However, despite an additional verification, no confirmation of the event was found, such as announcements with the date of the event, the program, photo reports, information about the participants (names of universities, NGOs), winners, or results.

Analysts checked the webpage using the Wayback Machine service and found that the link provided by the city council had previously contained news about the schedule of classes for older individuals at the Ternopil City Territorial Center for Social Services.

Screenshot of the news article “Schedule of classes for this week for older individuals in the Tercenter [Territorial Center],” dated August 12, 2024, accessed through Wayback Machine – August 12, 2024 timestamp.

Holding a hackathon would have provided the city with points for fulfilling the indicator that reads “availability of news about the city council’s initiatives in the field of open data use (publication of datasets, operation of services, implementation of training projects, hackathons, etc.),” which the program checked as part of the Open Data Pulse assessment. In other words, the news about leisure activities for the older persons was replaced with the “news” about the hackathon, and this link was provided in the official response of the city council.

How did the city council employees “make an unfortunate mistake,” and what does the City Transparency Ranking have to do with it?

On February 7, 2025, we sent a letter to the official email address of the city council requesting clarification of this discrepancy. In its response No. 87/16 of February 12, 2025, the Ternopil City Council informed us that in 2024, employees made a mistake by providing incorrect links to some publications in the completed questionnaires.

Excerpt from the Ternopil City Council’s response letter No. 87/16 of February 12, 2025: “Sadly, in 2024, employees made an unfortunate mistake by providing incorrect links to some publications. Due to this, please disregard lines 2, 17, and 19 in the Impact section of the Open Data Pulse ranking. Also, following the review of the questionnaires, we ask you not to take into account the points in the Transparency Ranking 2024 that contain references to news, namely items 48 and 62.”

In the letter, it was also requested that, when assessing the city within the Transparency Ranking, two items from the questionnaire filled out by the city council, which contain references to news, be disregarded. These are the indicators from the questionnaire for the Transparency Ranking of 100 Cities that relate to:

holding special training events for local government officials on transparency, accountability, and integrity issues;
promotion by the city council of its work with the DREAM system on its official website by: 1) integrating the community’s public profile widget; 2) publishing at least four news items on the work of local authorities with the DREAM system.

In the questionnaire for the Transparency Ranking of 100 Cities, when asked about special training events for officials, the city council answered that several such trainings were held during the year and added the following links to support its answer:

As of the end of April 2025, three out of four links no longer work, while at the time of the publication of this material, one is still available (https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/80312.html).

Screenshot of the news article “Training for city council employees on corruption reporting mechanisms,” dated July 29, 2024.

According to the Wayback Machine service (https://web.archive.org/web/20240729193001/https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/80312.html, webarchive as of 29.07.2024), the news about the weekly class schedule for older persons has also been replaced.

Screenshot of the news article “Schedule of classes for this week for older individuals in the Tercenter [Territorial Center],” dated July 29, 2024, accessed through Wayback Machine – July 29, 2024 timestamp.

Additionally, our analysts used the Wayback Machine service to find out that the other two links provided also contained news about “Schedule of classes for older individuals in the Tercenter [Territorial Center]”:

https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/66471.html → https://web.archive.org/web/20230320141609/https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/66471.html (webarchive as of 20.03.2023)

https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/81995.html → https://web.archive.org/web/20241001011001/https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/81995.html (webarchive as of 1.10.2024)

The fourth link was not preserved in the web archive, so it cannot be determined which information was there before.

The situation is similar for the indicator on the city council’s promotion of the DREAM system. In the completed questionnaire, Ternopil City Council provided examples of news that were supposed to ensure the completion of this indicator:

However, using the Wayback Machine service, the analysts found out that all the news about the DREAM system had been published in place of other messages.

https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/83460.html → https://web.archive.org/web/20241115075937/https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/83460.html (webarchive as of 15.11.2024)

https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/73558.html → https://web.archive.org/web/20231212192234/https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/73558.html (webarchive as of 12.12.2023)

https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/75301.html → https://web.archive.org/web/20240208133933/https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/75301.html (webarchive as of 8.02.2024)

https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/76160.html → https://web.archive.org/web/20240308080757/https://ternopilcity.gov.ua/news/76160.html (webarchive as of 8.03.2024)

Thus, it became clear that due to the desire to rank high in the Transparency Ranking, the city council again provided the news on its official website that had been changed in advance.

These facts indicate not an accidental mistake, but a deliberate and systematic manipulation of information and publications on the official website of the city council for better positions in TI Ukraine’s Rankings.

What consequences will Ternopil face for the identified violations?

On April 3, 2025, we sent another request to clarify whether the city council had conducted an internal investigation and identified those responsible for submitting the false information. In addition, we asked for information on measures planned to prevent similar cases of dissemination of false information in the future.

In its letter of April 9, 2025, the Ternopil City Council informed us that a meeting was held to clarify the circumstances, and it was discovered “that it was precisely improper control over the performance of tasks and functions, improper management of cooperation with the structural units of the city council that led to the publication/dissemination of information that was not verified for its compliance with the actual circumstances.”

Excerpt from the Ternopil City Council’s response letter of April 9, 2025: “As a result of the conducted meeting, the collected information was studied and analysed, explanations from the Head of the Digital Transformation and Media Relations Department and employees responsible for ensuring the implementation of the Transparent Cities program were heard.”

(in blue) “It was established that it was precisely improper control over the performance of tasks and functions, improper management of cooperation with the structural units of the city council that led to the publication/dissemination of information that was not verified for its compliance with the actual circumstances.”

The Ternopil City Council also indicated that during the discussion of this situation, “persons involved in the implementation of public relations, information policy of the Ternopil City Council, as well as the formation of local policy in the field of digitalization, digital development, and digital innovations were informed of the need to strictly comply with labor discipline and were warned of disciplinary consequences for non-performance or improper performance by an employee of the duties assigned to them by the employment contract.”

Such actions of the City Council of Ternopil bear characteristics of violations of Article 5 of the Law of Ukraine On Information, which provides for the possibility of free access to information, and Article 2, which establishes the principle of accuracy and completeness of information. In addition, such actions violate the principles of integrity in the conduct of affairs in the public sector, which contradicts the Rules of Ethical Conduct for Public Officials.

Transparency International Ukraine has held a series of internal discussions on the actions of the Ternopil City Council. One of the most discussed issues within the team was how to get the city council to respond appropriately, protect the principles of integrity and legality, and at the same time not harm the residents and the city as a whole.

The organization provided the city council with the opportunity to take measures to eliminate violations and prevent such actions in the future. We hoped that this “approach” to participation in research was an internal malfunction, and that the city council would react properly – acknowledge that it had violated the law and principles of integrity, conduct an appropriate internal investigation, and bring those responsible to justice. Ideally, it would communicate this case itself and report on the crisis measures. Instead, the city council calls it “providing incorrect links,” “holding a ‘meeting’ and “discussing this situation,” and “reminding about labor discipline.” In other words, it all came down to a formal response without any real legal consequences.

TI Ukraine believes that everyone can make a mistake. But the system must react appropriately and correct the wrongdoings. And such weak actions of the Ternopil City Council can be explained by a conscious (political?) decision to support falsifications for the sake of high positions in the study.

Researching transparency is not only about the availability of information and documents on official resources, but, above all, about adherence to the principles of legality and integrity in governance. This is why TI Ukraine has decided not to grant Ternopil any status or place in the Transparency Ranking of 100 Cities this year for crossing red lines, manipulation, and outright deception. However, we will publish the results of Ternopil’s assessment.

Can the research results be trusted after all?

TI Ukraine uses a complex evaluation model in its research:

official requests + analysis of responses;
own monitoring of websites, open databases, documents;
cross-checking of analysts’ evaluations at different stages.

Thanks to this, the analysts noticed that the information provided by Ternopil contained signs of fake news, so they reacted accordingly.

Moreover, the analytical team created a separate register and checked all “transparent” and “partially transparent” cities, as well as Ternopil’s last year’s indicators for similar manipulations. No such actions were detected.

At the same time, the program decided to change its approach to measuring government openness, in particular, to automate a part of the assessment, to include data from registers, open platforms and analytical tools, and to add the results of secret inspections of city councils, in order to deprive local authorities of the opportunity to influence the results of the research in a dishonest way in the future.

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Failed Integrity Test: Ternopil Loses Transparent City Status

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