The Madrid City Council celebrates the Open Administration Week from May 19 to 25 with various activities to make citizens aware of the information available on municipal websites, how some administrative centers work that will hold open house events, or to guess, through various games with open data on social networks, curiosities about the city.
The Deputy Mayor of Madrid, Inma Sanz, will kick off this week with the inauguration of the ‘Conference on transparency, clear communication, and artificial intelligence’ for local entities, which will take place on Monday, May 19 in the Cecilio Rodríguez gardens, organized by the City Council, along with the Community of Madrid and the Madrilenian Federation of Municipalities. The aim is for attendees, mostly officials from local entities in Madrid, to see transparency as an added value in their work and be able to improve the public service they provide.
Open Administration Week is an initiative promoted by the Open Government Partnership worldwide to disseminate its principles and practices and create a culture based on transparency, integrity, civic participation, and promotion of fundamental rights, as well as accountability. The Madrid City Council is the only Spanish municipality actively engaged in this alliance.
For this reason, a varied calendar of activities has been prepared. In addition to the conference aimed at local entities, the institutional advertising campaign for the promotion of transparency, open data, and access to public information will be displayed on the EMT Madrid marquees and other supports, a new gesture from the Madrid City Council in its commitment to this area.
Open house events are one of the most prominent activities, where Madrilenians can visit, by prior registration, the Madrid Calle 30 Data Center and the headquarters where the Air Quality Portal and meteorological data are managed, both on May 20. On May 22, a visit to the Judicial Traffic Police Station will be possible, where public data sets related to the Municipal Police will be explained, and finally, on May 23, a visit related to the Urban Facilities Control Center: public lighting, tunnels, and ornamental fountains will be organized, where public data sets on these facilities will be explained.
Distinctions in transparency and open data
The Deputy Mayor will also participate in the award ceremony for distinctions in transparency and open data, which will reward the best municipal units in three categories: active advertising, access to public information, and open data.
The submitted candidacies and projects are ambitious and go beyond legal obligations. For example, few public administrations carry out exercises in transparency and accountability in the economic field comparable to what the Madrid City Council’s Open Budgets Portal offers, which has organized an online public presentation this week. In fact, this platform will be awarded on May 22 as the best transparency practice in the AUDAZ 2025 awards, granted by the Spanish Open Government Academic Network, which has also recognized the Visualize Madrid Portal with Open Data. And the City Council will receive, for the seventh consecutive year, the prestigious Infoparticipa seal awarded by the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
The General Directorate of Transparency and Quality has also prepared a series of games with open data to be published on social networks, aiming for people to know what the longest street in Madrid is, what the temperature of their neighborhood is, or the most read books in libraries, among other relevant information about the city. A presentation and a test are also available for educational centers and children in 5th and 6th grade who have curriculum contents on democracy, human rights, and participation.
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