It is one of the five cities got more than 50 points. The research was conducted by the Ukrainian representatives of the global movement Transparency International with the Institute of Political Education. Top cities were identified according to 91 criteria in 13 spheres, such as budget process, the use of lands, human resource issues, public procurement, social services (and their accessibility online) etc.
60 points were enough for Lviv to become the leader among other Ukrainian cities in the ranking. However, there is still much to be improved according to European standards. For example, leading cities in a similar rating in Slovakia had at least 70 points to reach the top.
Lviv has got the highest points in such spheres as the use of lands – 8 points, access to information and public
Participation – 7,3 points and communal enterprises-7,2 points. It means that the list of lands, proposals for investors, general city plan, and detailed territory plans can be assessed for free. The city website provides almost all the necessary information about authority’s activity and budget process, and visitors can file an appeal to a particular committee online. Additionally, there is a list of all communal enterprises, contact information and description of the available services, documents, financial reports and audits of a number of enterprises provided on the website. The information about the performance of local government authorities (5,2 points) and public procurement (4,5 points) is quite transparent.
“The top city in the transparency ranking uses a great number of effective practices that may be adopted by other cities. For instance, it has a suitable council website, visually presented budget, thematic supplements to the general city plan, pictures of the estate property, samples of the documents, schedule of the tendering on the webpage of the communal ownership administration, the ability to submit an inquiry to particular committee. At the same time, 59,7 points out of 100 is a relative transparency indicator, and we encourage the authorities of the city to improve their index using our recommendations,” says Kateryna Tsybenko, the coordinator of the project Building Transparent Cities in Ukraine.
It has been detected that contrasting factors influence the characteristics of conducting biddings in Lviv.
“Introducing below threshold bidding by Lviv proves the city aspiration for openness, but there is the opposite tendency which lies in amplification of exceptions these below threshold bidding fall on. The level of conducting biddings is quite high and there are definitely no systematic or large-scale violations in biddings. On the other hand, there is no real competition and interest of entrepreneurs to cooperate with the council. Also, we admit the important role of communal enterprises-monopolists in the city economy, and, at the same time, we can say they do everything possible to make the information about their activity publicly available,” mentions Myroslav Simka, the coordinator of the Center for government monitoring and research.
“The experts of Transparency International Ukraine have conducted the evaluation of the transparency level of the Ukrainian councils’ activity. The ranking results are not only the outcomes of the performed work, but also the plan of events and projects that should be introduced in the nearest future in order to provide the highest level of openness and transparency of the local government authorities performance,” states Andrii Moskaelnko, the deputy head of the Lviv council for development issues.
Transparency International Ukraine and the Institute of political education are ready to cooperate with the authorities and local activists of Lviv and provide the recommendations and pieces of advice concerning improving the transparency level. It is known that nowadays the process of decentralization of power is being implemented. At the same time, we shouldn’t allow the process of corruption decentralization to take place.
The project “Building Transparent Cities in Ukraine” is funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund.
