Bratislava’s quest for transparency

The city is digitizing and storing all voting in the municipal council so that citizens can better keep track of the work of their representatives

In a bid for its local government to become even more transparent, the Slovakian capital of Bratislava has moved to make it mandatory to disclose how all members of the city council have voted on each item on the agenda. The decision will also be in effect retroactively, covering all votes up to 2014.

The results of the votes and how each member and party in the City Council has voted will be compiled into data sets that will be published in Bratislava’s open data portal. By making all this information freely available to all, local officials believe that this will drive up confidence in the city’s government and will make authorities more accountable to their constituents.

Transparency and technology going hand in hand

This latest decision to digitize the votes in the City Council going as far back as 2014 will result in the creation of a multitude of PDF and XSL files that will be readily available to citizens who will then easily be able to track voting patterns and behaviours and draw their own conclusions about the work of their local representatives.

The move by the Bratislava City Council is part of an overarching push for more transparency on the local level, spearheaded by national authorities – and more specifically by the country’s Minister for Investment and Informatization Veronika Remišová. The first step in the journey taken by Bratislava in becoming more digitized was the initial creation of the city’s open data portal which has given authorities – and citizens, plenty of opportunities to experiment and tinker around with the data collected by municipal authorities.

By embracing technology and linking it with transparency, the city of Bratislava is providing all other municipalities in Slovakia with a perfect blueprint of how better to engage the local population with the democratic and decision-making process.