Transparency International Latvia (Delna), the United States Embassy in Latvia and Transparency Fund invite to participate in an online expert forum and roundtable discussion “Access to information and protection of personal data” on November 25 (10:00-12:00, EET) via Zoom (with registration). The event will be streamlined on Delna’s Facebook account. The language of the event will be Latvian. This is the final meeting in a series of four events in 2022, dedicated to international recommendations and Latvia’s progress in preventing corruption, promoting political integrity and transparency.
How to find a balance between the use of data for the prevention and detection of corruption and the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)? In which direction should transparency be encouraged? What is stopping us from being more open?
The aim of the event is to raise awareness of the use of data in the fight against corruption and the restrictions imposed by the protection of personal data. The availability and transparency of information and data facilitates the detection of violations, cases of corruption, conflicts of interest and other criminal and dishonest conduct. By improving the availability of information and publishing it in an open data format, new digital tools can be developed, visualisations – created and data-driven explanations – disseminated to target groups.
Latvia does not have an anti-corruption data strategy and experts suggested measures to prevent and combat corruption have not been agreed among responsible institutions in the KNAB Anti-Corruption Plan 2021-2025. More information on the use of data is agreed and disclosed only in the Latvia’s Fifth National Open Government Action Plan 2022-2025.
Delna suggests to disclose the additional data: the full list of public officials, supplementation of relatives of public officials (indicated in the asset declarations) with unique identifiers to avoid misunderstandings regarding persons with the same names and surnames, data on the composition of public procurement commissions, municipal councils’ votes, land register data on landowners and data from the register of members of political parties.
Main target audience: Members of the 14th Saeima, the Data State Inspectorate, the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (in Latvian KNAB), the State Revenue Service, the Enterprise Register, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development, the Open Data Portal of Latvia, researchers, investigative journalists, media and public.
This event is held online and is open to the public.
The full agenda of the event in PDF.
The event is supported by the United States Embassy in Latvia and Transparency Fund.