The Open Government Model of the Junta de Castilla y León (Regional Council of Castilla y León) has won the prize “Benchmark Open-Government and Citizen Participation Project (Proyecto referente en Participación y Gobiernos Abiertos en las Administraciones Públicas), awarded by the National Interoperability and Security Congress (Congreso Nacional de Interoperabilidad y Seguridad: CNIS).

The Junta de Castilla y León is one of the keenest supporters and advocates of the “Open Government” movement as a direct communication channel between the regional government and its citizens, using new information and communication technologies and under the guiding principles of transparency, collaboration and citizen participation.

GMV has played a key role in technical aspects of the project, taking on responsibility for developing and maintaining the “open government” and “open data” portals.It has also collaborated in the creation of the open government blog, one of the aspects that most impressed the prize-giving jury. This blog has been designed as a participation forum allowing any citizen to give his or her opinion and make suggestions about the regional authority’s main projects. 

Another point highly regarded by the jury was implementation of the Open Government in Social Networking Sites model, where GMV carried out integration tasks with the multi-site platform and also streamlining work for statistical monitoring of portal use.

The Junta de Castilla y León now boasts one of the most complete Open Government projects at national level with transparency to the fore. Its outstanding score of 9 points outperforms the average score of 7.9 points for other regional authorities. All this makes it a role model for these other government authorities to follow.