Promoting the transparency of municipalities through the internet

In March this year, the Government of Galicia has introduced a web portal that promotes transparency and good governance. The platform www.eidolocal.gal is a place where Galician municipalities can publish their activities and services, and more importantly fulfill the transparency criteria set by the legislation.

In meeting this criteria they will be enjoying the help and collaboration of the University of Vigo. According to the contract between the University and the Galician institutions the project will be funded by 40000 euros, which will be provided between 2016 and 2017. The collaboration comes as no surprise since this is not the first time the university is contributing to the local community in the area of law implementation and development, with Red Localis, a network based on Public Local Administration developed by GEN.

The research group GEN of the University of Vigo will have the honor of performing this task and providing expert advice and support to all municipalities that have to exhibit transparency in their work. By using the platform, the citizens will be able to access relevant information of the local administrations and councils.

The full newspaper article on this topic is available at the following link:

http://www.farodevigo.es/galicia/2016/06/16/xunta-potencia-transparencia-concellos-traves/1481055.html

Further than GDP

Albino Prada and Patricio Sánchez, researchers from GEN, have made a study where they show how some of the richest countries of the world are at the same time some of the worst when it comes to transforming growth into social development.

The study was recently published in the Social Indicators Research journal (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11205-015-1206-0). It takes a look at the rich countries of the world and their rankings in terms of material wealth and it analyses the relationship between wealth levels and estimates of social development, using United Nations Development Programme indicators, which are related to health, education, environment, employment and social welfare.

Among some peculiar cases, they found Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia, which all appear on the top of the ranking if we measure their wealth by GDP. However, when the human development index (HDI) is analysed, they descend over 100 positions. On the opposite side, they find that the countries that are worst placed in wealth ranking, increase their positions when analysing progress in welfare or social cohesion. For example, China makes an ascending leap of 62 places in the ranking of social development.

The study shows that the larger the value of an indicator gets, the difference in the opposite ranking will be more pronounced. Finally, they conclude that the results allow them to identify which countries transform economic growth into social development in a better way than the others.

Further than GDP