Transparency in Czech Regions: Evaluation of Open Data Availability for Public Awareness

Open Government Data, Smart City, sustainability, regional council, government transparency

Innovations in information technology have created opportunities to improve living conditions for citizens and residents. One key development is the smart city concept, which offers benefits like ambient-assisted living. However, residents need to express their needs and evaluate whether legislators take meaningful steps to address them. Effective monitoring of policy decisions is necessary not only at the city level, but also for larger administrative units such as regions or the entire state. Effective monitoring requires leveraging open government data with appropriate tools to prevent misinformation and empty political promises. Assessing the availability and quality of these data is the key to achieving these objectives. The regional elections in autumn 2024 were an impulse for us to assess the transparency of Czech regional councils-specifically, how easily citizens can access and understand information about policy decisions that affect them. In addition to analysis of the available data and assessment of the transparency of the regions, our results include a process to achieve this goal, applicable to other OGDs, and unified datasets and visualizations confirming the universality of the tools we have developed.