Representatives of 21 civil society organizations carried out a midterm independent assessment of the accountability of city councils, which would make it possible to conclude a new Accountability Ranking of 50 cities in Ukraine. For two months, activists collected the information needed for the assessment and, along with explanations, they left public feedback. All feedback is available in the Cards of the cities participating in the ranking.
Meanwhile, cities still have time to improve its performance. All city councils that have registered profiles on the online platform can confirm or refute the published information.
What do the interim results of civil society organizations engagement say?
As of November, the most accountable spheres in terms of percentage of implementation are:
- Anti-corruption policy and conflict of interest
- Access and participation
- Education
The results are due to a relatively simple procedure for implementing the indicators. Basically, a city council should adopt and publish relevant regulations and/or financial documents in order to score points.
The lowest percentage of implementation accounts for the following spheres:
- Financial and material assistance, grants
- Procurement
- HR matters
The results are due to the fact that cities did not hold competitions for the distribution of funds among civil society organizations (or did not report on the distribution of these funds), and did not respond to procurement requests on the Dozorro monitoring portal. In addition, in most cases, there were recorded cases of MPs having second jobs as heads of municipal enterprises or positions in executive bodies of a city council.
How to join the assessment of your city's accountability?
Active residents and representatives of civil society organizations have the opportunity to directly participate in the assessment.
To do this, it is necessary to:
- Create a personal account on the transparentcities.in.ua online platform.
- Choose one of the 50 cities participating in the Accountability Ranking (list of cities at the link).
- Choose a sphere and evaluate it using an indicator.
- Leave feedback in the city card about the (non)-implementation of the indicator.
- Learn more about the possibility of engagement in the material.
How will the City Accountability Ranking be formed in 2021?
The assessment will be based on 48 indicators of methodology in 14 spheres of local authorities, such as “Information on the work of the local authorities,” “Access and Participation,” “Procurement,” etc.
Feedback on the online platform will be considered when concluding the Accountability Ranking. Registered users can leave general or detailed feedback on the status of indicator performance and add supporting materials, while representatives of local authorities can create personal accounts and respond to feedback from residents.
To ensure reliable results and a consistent approach, the Transparent Cities team monitors the information published on the online platform and provides advisory support to registered users at all stages of their work.
Civil society organizations engagement took place within the framework of the project “Transparent Cities: electronic platform of interaction between citizens and local authorities to ensure accountability and proper governance,” implemented with the financial support of the European Union Delegation to Ukraine