Ternopil is one of the most transparent cities in Ukraine. For the past three years, it has been among the top ten in the Transparency Ranking.

At the same time, compared to last year, Ternopil has slightly worsened its performance. The city failed to stay in the top three and took the fifth place in terms of transparency. It is significant that the situation has remained almost unchanged in terms of points — 76 points in 2019 and 75.1 in 2020. What does it mean? It points out the growth of competition between cities at the top of the Ranking. Leading cities should constantly improve, offer the community new innovative online resources, services, and make access to public information as convenient as possible for citizens. Otherwise, they will lose their positions.

While Ternopil is a good role model in terms of transparency, accountability has less to boast of. The city took the sixth place, but received only 19 points out of 100.

The most transparent spheres of work of the Ternopil City Council are education and HR issues, for which the city received the maximum points. Ternopil is also among the top three in Ukraine in terms of implementing such spheres as “Investments and Economic Development.” In turn, “Procurement,” “Social Services,” and “Housing Policy” need to be improved.  

In the Accountability Ranking in nine spheres at once, the city received zero points. The highest level of implementation has such spheres as “Anti-Corruption Policy and Ethics” and “Land Use and Construction Policy.”

Interesting examples of transparency and accountability of Ternopil, which should be implemented in other cities as well:

Children are enrolled in pre-school educational institutions of Ternopil on the basis of an open queue.

Minutes of meetings of the selection commission to determine the winners for openings in the executive bodies of the city council are published on the official website in the “Openings” section.

The city council holds calls for the allocation of funds between civil society institutions. Official protocols are published based on the results of such calls.

The city council adopted budget regulations that define the procedure for citizens' access to budget hearings. Hearings are announced in advance and a protocol is published based on their results.

The official website of the City Council publishes the current credit rating of the city.

The City Council of Ternopil is one of the few that engages public and charitable organizations to provide social services by conducting a social procurement.

The city declares the creation of anonymous channels through which citizens can report corruption offenses or unethical behavior of local authorities.

Up-to-date information about the location of parking spheres, as well as parking rates, is published.

How does the situation with transparency and accountability look like with the winners of the two ratings? We have gathered for you 10 best practices of Mariupol and Lviv.

More about the results of the 2020 City Rankings here.