Government Spending Transparency On The Internet: An Assessment Of Greek Bottom-Up Initiatives Over The Diavgeia Project

The objective of this article is to present four civil society initiatives that attempt to scrutinize government spending using open data from the Greek government OpenGov initiative Diavgeia project ("diavgeia", in Greek, standing for lucidity). In a period of strong economic recession, Greece is facing one of the most intense social and political crisis of its history, with citizens characterized by substantial disenchantment with politics and a cynical stance about their government and representatives. The Diavgeia project was launched in 2010 by the Greek government with the objective to bring back transparency and trust in the political process, enabling online insights into government spending. By reviewing current bottom-up initiatives in Greece that are using data from Diavgeia in an effort to serve the principles of transparency, openness, and offering public data in a manner easy to understand, evaluate and re-use, we discuss the role of open government mechanisms in introducing a new relation between citizens and policy-makers, tackling contemporary political challenges of democratic societies and reconnecting ordinary people with politics and policy-making.