Last May I wrote a bit about Civio's initial achievements and, in "Tangible progress", I also mentioned that things often take a lot more time and effort than we would want them to before they do crystalize.
This week we received the good news of winning the Open Knowledge Foundation's (Spanish Chapter) 2014 award to the "Best non public pro transparency initiative", another strong signal of being on the right track to achieve our objectives.
On the stage, collecting the award, I tried to convey a message that I consider key: We will only bring about the change we all long for to the extent we can collectively create a healthy ecosystem.
What does this mean, in practice? For starters a healthy ecosystem demands a plurality of actors. This –a distant wish not long ago– is now becoming a reality in Spain. The projects, institutions and CSOs involved in the aforementioned award process –together with many others– are carrying out invaluable work tackling the issues at hand from different angles.
But a healthy ecosystem, both nationally and internationally, also entails professionalism, good faith and a considerable degree of generosity. Amateurism, through lack of focus, has short legs in the long run. Bad faith hides behind subtle –and no so subtle– conflicts of interests as well as opaque personal agendas. And voraciousness involves deploying random land grab strategies for no other reason than trying to ensure self-preservation.
None of that should be acceptable, really. I feel we all –us too– need to improve the ways in which we contribute to the effort of creating a more transparent and democratic country.
