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TransparenCEE Network

TransparenCEE Network

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TransparenCEE is a community of civic tech practitioners working on transparency and accountability for good governance and citizens’ engagement. We believe that smart and responsible use of technology empowers social change. The TransparenCEE Network, in its current format, includes 20 organisations from 16 EU member states that share a common sense of values and have collaborated in various projects and formats in the past.

TransparenCEE stands for an effort to build a strong civic tech community in Central and Eastern Europe around transparency and civic participation. The network has been functioning since 2013. It is led by ePaństwo Foundation (Poland), Techsoup Europe, Funky Citizens (Romania), K-Monitor (Hungary), Citizen Network OPORA (Ukraine) and Zasto Ne? (BiH) with active involvement of different local partners. The network gathers CSOs’ from Central Eastern European countries, both within and outside the European Union. Member organizations are true democracy practitioners, understanding that protection of human rights and securing citizens' engagement in the decision making processes has to be approached using online and offline methods.

Despite significant differences between CEE countries' transition experiences, we are sharing similar challenges which cannot be solved on the national level only. Furthermore, these challenges cannot be effectively addressed on the basis of single projects and everyday policy battles we are forced into. To overcome our national burdens regarding ambition and capacity, we truly believe that our endeavours have to be backed by stronger regional coordination, communication, fundraising and building of new professional capacities.

The TransparenCEE Network’s experience gained so far showed that this model is effective for the development of CSOs and protection of democratic values. Our experiences are also helpful for CSO in “old EU” countries, because of the constant rise of populism and decrease of trust towards public institutions. For this reason, TransparenCEE Network is also expanding to share competencies, knowledge and experiences with similar organizations across the EU and coordinate around measures to foster participation and transparency. This “expansion” would also allow - by conducting common projects - to gather data on important topics for democracy in Europe - such as media ownership transparency, effectiveness of anti corruption measures, or openness of financial data of electoral committees.

We are more and more aware of the fact that on the same level that technology supports pluralism and liberties, it may help authoritarian regimes and non-democratic forces to reach their goals. Therefore, civil society needs to expand its digital capacities, in order to allow broader participation of citizens in decision making processes and also, to hold the powerful accountable, be it governments, corporations or big tech. Furthermore, we also experience that civil society from the CEE region is underrepresented in EU policy debates. We have the strong ambition to represent a regional voice in front of the EU institutions and take a more active role in shaping EU policies, taking into account the unique experiences of new Member States.

Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) of the EU is a new tool to support Civil society networks active at EU level in the area of - among others - citizens’ engagement and participation by joint policy action, capacity building, networking, knowledge sharing and thematic collaboration. We see the current call for partnership agreements as a great opportunity to realize our plans to better connect our community on the European level.

Members

Planned activities within the network

(subject to change based on partners needs)

  • Elaboration of policy papers (based on practical use/human centered perspective) on the state of civic engagement and participation in CEE and selected MS from the “old EU” to suggest how EU institutions and MS should reform laws and practices of citizens-gov relations.
  • Engagement to foster transparency and civic participation in the planning and monitoring of EU funds.
  • A hub for fostering civic engagement and collective advocacy at EU-level for organisations active in the area (shaping new legislation, but also maybe looking at the enforcement/ transposition side of EU legislation at national level)
  • Cooperation around the creation of digital tools fostering citizens engagement and participation (opening data on procurement, political finances, assets declarations, company registers, media ownership, participativa platforms, etc). By cooperation we mean: scaling tools, measuring their impact, learning from deployments in other countries.
  • Joint fundraising to support members activities, joint projects.
  • Trainings on EU level legislation, fundraising, communication, etc for members
  • Coordinated strategic litigation in topics of EU or regional relevance (access to information, privacy, digital rights, etc)
  • Possibility to create joint capacities for EU level work that would not be sustainable on the organisational level of members (eg. legal, advocacy, IT).
  • Building an understanding of rule of law and EU values among civic tech community (panels, articles, etc)
  • Building competencies of non tech CSOs’ around technological solutions that may foster citizen’s engagement and participation.