On May 13, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law on strengthening transparency in local self-government bodies, according to the data on the Verkhovna Rada portal.

The Transparent Cities team has already recommended implementing some of these provisions as good practices of municipal management.

In particular, we are talking about:

• streaming/publishing of videos of the council's plenary meetings and meetings of standing commissions of the council;
• publication of draft agendas, opinions, recommendations, and minutes of meetings of the councils’ standing commissions, which contain the results of a roll-call vote;
• disclosure of public information about objects of ownership on the Unified Open Data 

Web Portal and on official websites of local self-government bodies.

Recently, the Transparent Cities program (Transparency International Ukraine) has presented the results of the second study of city transparency during a full-scale war. Representatives of the program analyzed approaches to municipal management, which, in particular, are reflected in the adopted law. 

Thus,

• 37 out of 80 cities were able to provide online streaming of 90% or more of plenary meetings; 60 cities did not stream the meetings of all standing commissions;
• only 30 municipalities published lists of all real estate objects of municipal form of ownership and 25 cities published a list of land plots or rights to them, in respect of which a decision was made to hold land plot bidding;
• 80% of the cities under study did not publish lists of all objects of movable property in municipal ownership;
• in 61 municipalities, there were no announcements about the meeting of the city council and its bodies, with information about the date of the meeting, a link to the draft agenda and a stream;
• in 43 cities, the authorities did not inform residents about the removal of greenery, in accordance with the issued certificates of greenery inspection.

According to the law, local self-government bodies shall bring their regulations in line with this law within three months from the date of entry into force. That is, this year, citizens shall have more information and reports on the operation of the city council and its representatives.

We also remind local self-government bodies of our other recommendations:

•     include citizens in advisory bodies (IDP Councils, commissions to consider applications for compensation for destroyed property, and public commissions on housing issues);
•     publish lists of persons appointed to positions outside the competition;
•     update the lists of structures intended for sheltering the population;
•     ensure transparent accounting and management of municipal property and land, as well as humanitarian aid received;
•     avoid restricting access to datasets (unless otherwise required by applicable regulatory acts); ensure they are in a machine-readable format;

In wartime, the transparency and openness of municipalities are of paramount importance because they have a positive effect on the efficiency of communities, help cities overcome the challenges caused by the invasion, and contribute to increased security for citizens. Transparency is also a must for the successful post-war recovery of Ukraine and future European integration.

In 2023, five cities were recognized as transparent: Dnipro, Drohobych, Lviv, Mukachevo, and Ternopil. 23 cities were granted the status of partially transparent, and the remaining 52 cities were recognized as non-transparent. The overall level of transparency in 2023 reached 42.3% (50 indicators for 80 local self-government bodies).