[open-government] Opening asset declarations in Argentina -- more than a decade of struggle

Tue Oct 29 15:24:14 UTC 2013

Great post and an inspiring story from Maria Baron on the joint effort of
Argentinian open government advocates to open up the financial statements
of national legislators in Argentina.

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/28/opengov-voices-opening-asset-declarations-in-argentina-more-than-a-decade-of-struggle/

OpenGov Voices: Opening asset declarations in Argentina -- more than a
decade of struggle<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/28/opengov-voices-opening-asset-declarations-in-argentina-more-than-a-decade-of-struggle/>
by guest author María BaronOct. 28, 2013, 1:42 p.m.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing
comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight
Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not [image:
Maria Baron]responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within
the guest blog.

*María Baron is the Executive Director of Directorio
Legislativo<http://www.directoriolegislativo.org/> --
a nonpartisan organization, which promotes the strengthening of legislative
branches of government and the consolidation of the democratic system
through dialogue, transparency and access to public information in
Argentina. She can be reached on mbaron at directoriolegislativo.org.*

*"The struggle itself [...] is enough to fill a man's heart. One must
imagine Sisyphus happy." Albert Camus*

[image: Asset declaration files]It seemed like the myth of Sisyphus, who
repeatedly and meaninglessly pushed a boulder up the mountain just to see
it roll down again and again for 12 years. That is how long it tookDirectorio
Legislativo <http://www.directoriolegislativo.org/> to access nearly 2,000
financial statements of national legislators in Argentina.

It took us 12 years to beat Sisyphus. Now everyone can easily see
representatives who declare false information, undervalue their patrimony,
have conflict of interest in certain votes in Congress, or own guns, yachts
and jewelry.

At the beginning it was chaos. Obscurity. No one in Congress would release
the documents so we had to individually ask each of the 329 members of both
Chambers. There were other times when together with other organizations, we
litigated against the Argentine Chamber of
Deputies<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_Chamber_of_Deputies>
and
the case was in the Supreme Court for four years. In 2003, we organized 100
volunteers to ask the Argentine Senate to release financial statements of
all Senators. We trained them with these recommendations on how to contact
Senators<http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTGOVANTICORR/Resources/3035863-1285093935613/VoiceEyesEars1.pdf>
(page
33 Annex A). The campaign, which lasted 4 months, ended with a presidential
Senatorial Decree (419/02) signed by Dr. Juan Carlos Maqueda, Acting
President of the Senate -- who declared that the documents must be made
available “to the citizens who have made this demand and to any person who
should request them in the future”.

In 2003, among other organizations across the world who recognized the
case<http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTGOVANTICORR/Resources/3035863-1285093935613/VoiceEyesEars1.pdf>,
was the World Bank. Additionally, during the next five or six years, the
asset declarations were also released -- nearly 15 months after they were
formally required by law.

After years of collecting the information a new question arose. What should
we do with the  2000 documents we had?

Other international organizations had not been interested in the documents
in the beginning and we figured they would not be interested in the future
either. Looking for ways to make use of the information, our Colombian
friends of Congreso Visible <http://www.congresovisible.org/> showed
us how  their
alliance with local leading newspaper El Espectador in
2012<http://www.elespectador.com/politica/proyecto-de-ley/7013/por-la-cual-se-expide>
had
increased their web users enormously.

A little bit more than a year ago, the leading newspaper La
Nación<http://www.lanacion.com.ar/> of
Argentina got interested in using all the data we had. We signed an
agreement and reached out to sister organizations Poder
Ciudadano<http://www.poderciudadano.org/>
 andACIJ <http://www.acij.org.ar/> -- who had also been collecting the same
data on public officials within the Executive and Federal Judges
respectively.

After the agreement, we started working on a platform that could show in an
interactive way, the enormous amount of information we had collected. In a
year, we systematized all the data (documents are released in paper format)
into excel documents. We organized "check-a-thons" (tech events for
developers to find differences between paper documents and the entered
data) at La Nación <http://www.lanacion.com.ar/> and awarded the winners
with ice-cream, candy or coffee coupons at Starbucks.
[image: Check-a-thons]*check-a-thons at La Nación newspaper during 2013.*

After a year of work, meetings and discussions we arrived at an
interesting tool
that shows in a simple and easy way, asset declarations of public officers,
judges and legislators<http://interactivos.lanacion.com.ar/declaraciones-juradas/index#pd=0>
.
[image: Search engine]*This platform will stay online and be constantly
upgraded. From now on, financial statement of public officers, judges and
legislators will be found here and made public. They won't be staying in
closed envelopes any more.*

So… have we beaten Sisyphus?

One never knows. But for a little while, we have persuaded him and all
public officials, MPs and judges that this time, the boulder would stay up
the mountain. We still need to show them that we are convinced that this
accomplishment is permanent and push Sisyphus over to another mountain.
This one has been climbed for a long, long time.

*Interested in writing a guest blog for Sunlight? Email us at
guestblog at sunlightfoundation.com.*
Tags:

-- 
Júlia Keserű
International Program Coordinator

1818 N Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
(1) 202-742-1520 *280

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