1. What is transparency?

The Transparency is a quality and an obligation of an entity regulated by the General Act of Transparency and Access to Public Information (General Act) to put at people’s disposal the information about the activities such entity performs and the use of the public resources.

2. How has transparency in Mexico evolved?

3. Products of Transparency

4. What is Proactive Transparency?

Proactive transparency is a set of activities promoting the identification, generation, publication, and diffusion of information, additional to the information determined as mandatory by the General Act, allowing the generation of useful public knowledge with a clear purpose focused on the needs of determined and determinable sectors of the society. ¹

5. What is Proactive Transparency for?

Proactive transparency is useful for:

• Reducing the asymmetric information.
• Promoting horizontal relationships among social groups and between such social groups and the authorities.
• Improving access to government procedures and services.
• Optimizing the decision making of authorities and citizens.
• Spurring effective accountability mechanisms.

6. Guidelines to determine the catalogs and publication of public interest information, as well as to issue and assess proactive transparency policies.

The Guidelines to determine the catalogs and publication of public interest information, as well as to issue and assess proactive transparency policies were issued by the National Transparency System (SNT), ². Their goal is to set the guiding principles for regulated entities to publish public interest information in a proactive manner. In deciding what information shall be published in a proactive manner, the identification proceedings shall be set, considering the following objectives ³:

• Detecting information that reduces information asymmetries means that the understanding and egalitarian access to information generated by the regulated entities must be easy, considering the characteristics of the target population, in order to increase the potential use of such information.
• Detecting information that improves the access to government procedures and services reduces administrative loads for citizens, helps regulated entities to provide their services, and increases the quality and coverage thereof.
• Detecting information that optimizes the decision making of the authorities and/or citizens, improves the understanding of the rights and/or tools to exercise such rights, it also allows or facilitates informed development of activities to the citizens.
• Detecting information that elicits accountability favoring the legitimacy of the regulated entity activities by means of useful information that limits acts of corruption, promotes the examination by citizens, and allows to detect and penalize irregularities in the public administration.

The information identified above will produce useful knowledge to meet the needs of the target population. The generation of proactive information shall include the following steps ⁴:

7. Proactive Transparency at Federal Context

Considering the agreements made between the Institute and the Minister of Public Administration (SFP), derived from the publication of the “Agreement to issue the General Provisions on the subjects of Archives and Open Government regulating the Federal Public Administration and its Single Exhibit” (General Provisions), the General Head Office of Open Government and Transparency (DGGAT) hold different meetings with the Unit of Open Government and International Cooperation Policies (UPAGCI) of SFP with the purposes of unifying perspectives and points of view regarding open government and proactive transparency to consolidate a standardized tool. From this collaboration, the second edition of the Government Guide was developed in order to comply with the General Provisions.

¹ Agreement of the National Council of the National Transparency System, Access to the Public Information and Personal Data Protection, through which the Guidelines to determine the catalogs and publication of the public interest information are approved.
² Agreement published on April 15, 2016 in the Official Gazette of the Federation, consult it in: http://www.dof.gob.mx/DOFmobile/nota_detalle_popup.php?codigo=5433279.
Modification agreement, consult it in: http://www.dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5513940&fecha=21/02/2018
³ Exhibit 1 of the Guidelines to determine the catalogs and publication of public interest information; as well as to issue and assess proactive transparency policies.
⁴ Idem