The plenary session of the Open Government Forum, consisting of 32 representatives of the public administrations and 32 others representing civil society, endorsed the IV Open Government Plan of Spain 2020-2024.

The IV Plan is the result of a common and shared strategy between the various public and private actors, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals set out in the 2030 Agenda and, in particular, its SDG 16, on the promotion of fair, peaceful and inclusive societies.

The IV Government Plan consists of ten commitments: nine of them, undertaken by the General Government of the State and another related to initiatives formulated by the regional and local administrations, through the EMFF.

The commitments of the State Administration under this Fourth Plan are as follows:

• Reform of the regulatory framework for transparency, which includes the reform of the Transparency Act and the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on access to public documents. The regulation of the existing law on transparency, access to information and good governance will also be adopted
• Plan to improve and strengthen transparency and accountability. This commitment will take the form of measures such as the improvement of the Transparency Portal, with the expansion of active publicity and accountability to citizens, facilitating the monitoring of public plans, informing about their compliance.

• Plan to improve citizen participation. This Plan includes the development of a Platform for Participation in the Transparency Portal and the evaluation and improvement of participation in public plans and programmes, through electronic and social media and in collegiate bodies. In addition, it provides for the creation of innovation laboratories to promote participation in public policies.
• Regulatory footprint. This commitment will result in the development of a system that improves the traceability of the process of developing standards and citizen participation in pre-consultation, public information and regulatory procedures.
• Public integrity system. This initiative is focused on the diagnosis and improvement of public integrity systems, through risk maps, codes of conduct, ethical climate surveys, self-assessment guides and training of public employees and employees.
• It also includes the regulation of a mandatory lobbies register, the amendment of the law on incompatibilities of staff in the service of public administrations and the strengthening of public integrity in specific sectoral areas such as artificial intelligence.
• Protection of whistleblowers. To comply with this commitment, the Directive on the protection of persons reporting infringements of EU law will be transposed into Spanish law. As a result, Spain will have a uniform legal framework to ensure the protection of persons providing information for the detection of offences or legal offences within an organisation, whether public or private.
• Education and training. It includes educational actions in Open Government aimed at the general public and the expert public, the elaboration of a guide on open government, as well as the training of public employees and employees. A specific action has also been programmed to reduce the digital divide, through the training and accreditation of competencies of rural women.
• Inclusive communication in Open Government. In order to publicize the values of open government, this eighth commitment includes an Inclusive Communication Plan, the promotion of the Open Government at international level, research and advanced debate in the Open Government and the dissemination of scientific production.
• Open Government Observatory, in which twelve ministries will initially participate, aims to recognise and disseminate the best practices developed by them AA.PP. over the next four years.

The IV Open Government Plan is the result of an intensive participatory process that takes as a reference a Framework Document, agreed in 2019, within the Sectoral Open Government Commission involving all Spanish public administrations and the standing committee of the Open Government Forum in which civil society is represented.

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