Openness, Transparency and Traceability of Public Policies

The meaning of transparency is seemingly obvious and simple, however, in political terms transparency is more  “the condition of being transparent”. It arises in opposition to corruption, secrecy and lack of clarity in the management of organizations and institutions. Today, it is more relevant than ever as a consequence of all kinds of recent scandals. Citizens of democratic societies demand a more open and transparent government.

This requisite of transparency is a political goal, which is supported by the possibilities for openness produced by the microelectronics revolution. This has modified the technological, social and political scenarios. It is more than the Internet; it is creating the global ICTs system where available information is increasing daily, as are the possibilities of accessing and processing data.

In this context this paper proposes, first, an analysis of public policies according to the principle of traceability of decisions. This means that it is possible to identify the full cycle of a public policy and its relationship with the different actors involved in the policymaking process. Second, imitating food processing traceability tools, it is possible to propose a “policies processing software” for recording all the traces of public decisions and an open system to retrieve and access this data. Third, it describes the theoretical conditions and prerequisites for a “barcode” to reveal who proposed an action and how it was designed, implemented and evaluated.