Methodology
Observation criteria, working process and principles that make the Observatory's results reproducible and independently verifiable.
Legal context — For readers arriving without prior knowledge
In Spain, Law 19/2013 of 9 December on transparency, access to public information and good governance establishes the right of any person to request information from public administrations. These bodies have a legal obligation to respond within one month of receiving the request. If they do not respond within that deadline, the law treats the request as having been rejected by administrative silence (silencio administrativo). The Observatory measures precisely this: how many administrations comply with this basic obligation under real conditions of use.
Principles
The Observatory does not evaluate the quality of transparency policies or issue judgements about intentions. It limits itself to recording observable facts: whether an administration responded or did not respond within the legal deadline.
This methodological restriction is a deliberate choice. It minimises the margin for interpretation and makes the results verifiable by anyone independently.
Inclusion of 100% of the universe. No municipality excluded or selected. No sampling bias.
Identical requests in content, form and channel. Results are comparable across the full universe.
Whether a response arrived or not is recorded. Contents are not assessed; intentions are not inferred.
Criteria are documented. The dataset is public. Any person can independently verify each record.
Process
The set of administrations included in the query is defined (in Query 1: all 106 municipalities of the province of Seville, without exception). A homogeneous request is drafted that activates the public information access procedure established by Law 19/2013.
The request is sent to every municipality in the universe through the channel established by each one. The submission date is recorded — it is the starting point for computing the legal one-month deadline.
All responses received within the legal deadline are recorded, including the date of receipt. Municipalities that do not respond within the deadline are recorded as administrative silence.
Once the observation period has closed, the dataset is closed and audited. The consistency and integrity of all records are verified before publication. The audited version carries an explicit version number (v4 for Query 1).
The report, dataset (CSV and XLSX), methodology and supporting documentation are published in full on Zenodo with a permanent DOI. Nothing is withheld. The dossier is indexed in OpenAIRE.
Observation criteria
Criteria are explicit, binary and verifiable. The table below describes the main fields of the dataset.
| Field | What it records | Possible values |
|---|---|---|
| Municipality | Name of the municipality receiving the request | Text · 106 entities |
| Submission date | Date on which the request was sent to each municipality | Date (ISO format) |
| Response in time | Whether the municipality responded within the legal one-month deadline | Yes / No |
| Response date | Date on which a response was received, if any | Date · Empty if silence |
| Notes | Observations about the process or the response where applicable | Free text · Optional |
Human–AI traceability
The Observatory's working process includes the use of AI-assisted support tools under explicit human supervision and responsibility. This practice is documented in the dossier of each query in accordance with the project's traceability principles. The responsible operator is the association Transparencia para la Ciudadanía (ORCID: 0009-0000-8891-7021).