You're reading: Kropyvnytsky tops ranking of Ukraine’s transparent cities

Kropyvnytsky, a central Ukrainian city located 300 kilometres south of Kyiv, became the most transparent and open city in Ukraine according to a report compiled by Transparency International – Ukraine.

Transparency International assessed Ukraine’s 25 biggest cities by how open their local governments are, looking at how available data was on procurement, social services, land use information, and usage of public money in each of the towns.

The ranking also assesses how involved citizens are in their local councils. That includes whether Ukrainians were able to participate in decision-making about public money and whether the government would, in turn, allocate money on civil projects.

Kropyvnytsky topped the ranking, getting 54.9 points for transparency out of 100. Kyiv and Ivano-Frankivsk, a city of around 230,000 people in western Ukraine, were ranked second and third, respectively, achieving almost the same score as Kropyvnytsky. Mykolaiv and Lviv also made it into the top five.

Kropyvnytsky got the highest score in the areas of public property, budgeting, contracts, and education. There, citizens can enroll their children into kindergarten using open forms with open lists. They can also see all state-owned real estate available for rent online.

However, the city still has some gaps, such as the absence of annual reports as well as no audits of public enterprises. There is also no public information about what ties the mayor had to commercial and nonprofit organizations before election. There is also no way for citizens to apply for social security over the internet.

Ukraine’s capital gained high marks in areas such as access to information on the work of local authorities, citizen’s involvement, and government procurement. Kyiv allocates money for the projects of citizens and allows them to attend city council meetings.

However, the Kyiv city council also did not publish information about potential conflicts of interest regarding the mayor. The city has also neglected to publish details on how people working for the executive and supervisory boards of lucrative state-owned enterprises are compensated. However, citizens have open access to meetings deciding how to spend Kyiv city finances.

Ivano-Frankivsk gained the biggest score for information about the work of local authorities, procurement, and land use and construction policies. The city has an online list of land lots and documents needed for privatization. The lowest score was for grants for citizens and public enterprises.

In general, 15 out of 25 cities had a non-transparent process of procurement. In 17 of the chosen cities Ukrainians are not allowed to visit council meetings on budget allocation and only five have online lists for placing kids in kindergarten or school.

“The ranking of transparency doesn’t measure the corruption in the cities directly,” the research reads.  “But we believe that the higher score in the rating and the higher transparency is, the less opportunities for corruption (local government) have.”