On May 17, 2023, Bukhara became a venue for the Central Asia Forum on Transparency of Government Agencies Activities, organized by the Anti-Corruption Agency, together with the Representative Office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Uzbekistan.This international conference, organized for the first time, brought together representatives of the responsible government bodies of the Central Asian countries and leading experts from international organizations and NGOs in order to exchange experience and expand areas of cooperation to ensure the transparency of the activities of government bodies.

The Chairperson of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis, Chairperson of the National Anti-Corruption Council Tanzila Narbayeva delivered an opening speech.

After the welcoming ceremony, presentation was made on the reforms implemented in Uzbekistan at the initiative of the head of state to ensure the openness of the activities of government bodies and their effectiveness.

The presentation noted that 64 legal acts, adopted in 2021 and 2022, identified 175 tasks and instructions aimed at ensuring openness and introducing transparency mechanisms in various areas.

47 of these tasks are aimed at improving existing procedures on the principles of openness, and 94 of them provide for the introduction of new mechanisms.

In particular, a strict List of socially significant information to be posted as open data by government bodies and organizations is approved, the resources on which this information should be posted, the update period and responsible executors are clearly defined in the Decree of the President No.6247 of June 16, 2021.

By the Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan ‘On measures to introduce a system to increase and assess the level of openness of the activities of government bodies and organizations’ No.154 of June 14, 2022, the Openness Index was introduced assessing the effectiveness of the work done on openness in government bodies and organizations.

The Law No.786 of 3 August 2022, provided for the amendments and supplements to the Administrative Responsibility Code, which establishes liability for violation of the law on the openness of the activities of public authorities and administration.

Another important point is that with the widespread use of digital technologies in Uzbekistan, information is openly published on several online platforms, including data.gov.uz, my.gov.uz, regulation.gov.uz, d.xarid.uz, e-qaror.uz, etc.

In addition, the practice has been established of live broadcasting of sessions of the Senate and the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis, Councils of People’s Representatives of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, regions, Tashkent city, as well as districts and cities. The processes of entrance examinations (tests and creative examinations) of higher educational institutions and presidential educational institutions are fully broadcast live.

These systemic reforms have led to an increase in Uzbekistan’s positions. For instance, scoring 66 points in the Open Data Inventory (ODIN) by Open Data Watch, Uzbekistan ranked 40th in the world and 1st in Central Asia. In 2020, the country with 63 points, ranked 44th).

Currently, according to Open Data Inception, Uzbekistan ranks 4th in the world in terms of the number of open data sources (124 open data sources).

After the presentation, the Forum continued its work in the discussion session format covering several topics, including ‘The role of government bodies transparency in the fight against corruption’, ‘Topical issues of building an open data ecosystem’, ‘Cooperation mechanisms with civil society institutions in ensuring transparency and accountability’.

Within the framework of these sessions, the panelists made focus on the introduction of advanced mechanisms for ensuring the openness of the activities of government bodies in the field of combating corruption and its prevention, familiarization with national and international experience in this area, ensuring openness and transparency of the public service, as well as issues of further improvement of the legal and institutional framework in the area.

In addition to representatives of the countries of Central Asia, the Forum also brought together international experts from France, Germany, Slovenia and Argentina, who shared their best practices.

During the dialogues, the participants shared views on the development of an effective anti-corruption policy and ensuring openness, assessing the effectiveness of measures in this area and improving their quality.

Within the framework of the Forum, another important project of the Anti-Corruption Agency was also presented - Open Data electronic platform. This platform was developed to further improve the systematic work to enhance the skills of employees responsible for ensuring openness in government bodies and organizations, and which allows employees to learn online without leaving their workplace.

At the end of each training module, the platform introduces a system for testing the knowledge of the listener using tests and other interactive methods, who have their rating based on the points scored, as well as material incentives are given for those who have achieved high results.

Ending the Forum, the Recommendations of the Central Asia Forum on Transparency of Government Agencies Activities were adopted based on the proposals and opinions of the participants.

Press Office

The Anti-Corruption Agency