R068 - Radical Transparency, with Eva Belmonte

What are your values? What are the values of the company you work for? Honesty. Loyalty. Effort. Courage. Transparency. Listing them, posting them on the wall doesn't make them true. A government talking a lot about transparency or sustainability means nothing. Or at least it matters very little, because what matters is what it does, how it legislates and for whom, what it commits to, how it behaves. Our values are defined by our behavior. We are what we do even when no one is watching. The truth is what we do and how we do it. And today, among other things, we will talk about transparency with Eva Belmonte, journalist, activist, and Director of the Fundación Ciudadana Civio.

What is the real world to you?

The real world is what is published in the BOE and affects us. For me, it's almost an obsession. Everything published in the BOE that affects us is real. It will change your paycheck next month. It will change your aid. And it's somewhat in contrast to the politics that are sold, the politics we see in the media all the time, the politics on social networks, the politics in Congress, even shouting to get on the news and say the biggest nonsense. All that is not real. All that is a lie. None of that affects you at all. It doesn't matter what was said that day and what opinion or how they reached that agreement or another. What matters in the end is what reaches the BOE. And that is what will affect your daily life. So for me, this is real, and that's why I want to focus on that part, the part that is studying policies, but not politics. I'm not interested in politics, I'm not interested in what was said today, what nonsense someone said, or who made a deal with whom. I'm interested in knowing what is finally approved, and for me, it's very important because in the end, many people get stuck with these endless discussions, these agreements, or even with what is promised to be done. What is real is what is already there, on paper, and comes into effect. And the rest is a bluff that interests me less and less.

R068 - Radical Transparency, with Eva Belmonte

Are there consequences?

Corruption in this country is not discreet. No one is watching.

It's very hard for me to demonstrate the impact. Because I uncover all the emergency contracts that are at least suspicious, or the split contracts, which are suspicious. I create a database and pass it on to all the anti-corruption agencies, the CNMC, everyone, and the CNMC has told me in some cases "we are investigating and have opened a file, but we can't tell you anything more." So I know they have been seen, they have been looked at, things happen. I know some contracts have been overturned. I know there have been some rules that were poorly made and we exposed them, and they have been reformed. Then if I see a contract that I know is illegal, that is wrong, I can publish an article, but I can't take it to court because I'm not an interested party.

Moreover, corruption in this country is not discreet. No one is watching. You don't even have to try hard to hide it, no one will see it.

Are you receiving support from the tech community, the developer community?

We are. Today, a good percentage of our partners are from the developer community, and many offer us help and have helped us, especially at the beginning when we were more inexperienced. The first blog of the BOE every day that I did in WordPress, a partner who was a big fan came and revamped it. They always help us and give us many ideas. I value very much that, considering how picky and rigorous we are, a very important part of our partners come from the tech world and say everything is fine.

It's very dangerous that we don't even know what algorithms are making decisions that affect us and how they work. It's crazy.

What is really being legislated in Spain in the field of technology, in the digital field?

Very little. This is the clearest example of what we talked about at the beginning. A lot is announced and nothing has been done. Everything that has been done from the Secretary of State for digitization has been to announce things. Right now, the most important thing is going to come from Europe, which is the Artificial Intelligence Regulation, which will be very relevant for many things, but from my point of view, to see what happens with the algorithms used in public administration, and for me, that is the most relevant. How that is applied. Because right now we are in court with the Ministry of Ecological Transition, because they don't want to give us the code of the application that decides who receives the social bonus, or not.

We want to see the code because we want to know if there are more errors, because there might be a lot of people in this country who have the right, who are not receiving it or vice versa. They don't give us the code. We've been in court for over two years because they don't want to give us the code. But there's a problem. We have high officials saying that Spain is ultra-modern and ultra-technological and is leading the transition in Europe, and I can't even know what applications each ministry is using because they aren't even answering that. If there's something that's a bluff, and then it's empty, if there's something that's being sold a lot and there's nothing in the public sector right now in technology.

There have been changes in the obligation to communicate digitally with the administration, as more and more people apply and that's a problem. That's not good. We are forcing all the kids who want the cultural bonus to apply online. So, those who don't have access to the Internet or don't know how the web works or don't have a computer, well, they don't have the money to spend on culture, because here the money will be spent on culture by those who don't need it. If anything is being legislated, it's in putting up digital barriers. That technology is a digital bureaucracy and a digital barrier for people who are worse off. But in terms of advancing in technology, artificial intelligence, algorithms that are more transparent, that we know what those algorithms do in administrations, which we don't know, a lot is announced, many things have been created, many commissions, many groups of experts, nothing has moved, there has been no real progress.

It's very dangerous that we don't even know what algorithms are making decisions that affect us and how they work. It's crazy.

It's as if there were laws we can't read, but they affect you 100%. It's very scary.

What is the most opaque information?

Lobbying. For sure. We've been fighting for the regulation of lobbying and the legislative footprint since the birth of Civio, more than ten years. I want to know who influenced this law in the end, what reports were read, who gave them to you, who you met with, who you didn't meet with, which is also relevant. And that, government after government, there's no way. It's practically impossible.

I have a couple of questions from Paco, from the Realworld community on WhatsApp.

Have you ever been pressured?

Yes, but for me, they are a bit of a joke. I mean, I think I have many journalist colleagues in Mexico, in other countries, and those are pressures. From the public, the main pressure is that the communication offices scold you. I'm going to say two types of pressure that come to us from public administrations and companies. And what saddens me the most about all this is that if they do it, it's because it works. It doesn't work for me, but it must work elsewhere, and that's what makes me a little sad. Fear. The public administration communication tools scold you.

And then from companies that threaten to sue you, but they never do. They have never sued us. We are in court against the administration and companies to get information, but they have never sued us. So just with the threat, it's working elsewhere, just with the scolding, it's working elsewhere. But they are not real pressures. There are journalists who are having a very hard time in the world.

Another question from Paco: has your work had a cost for you in your personal life?

Yes. Imagine during the pandemic I was working non-stop for three months, sleeping five hours a day, and at that time I was locked up with a boyfriend I had (spoiler: it went wrong). It has affected me, and especially in the end, it's this thing that there's never a total disconnection, because the BOE is from Monday to Saturday always. In summer I stop for two weeks, but that's it. So. You're at your best friend's birthday, wedding, and you wake up in the morning... In the end, people getting mad at you is normal. But well, it's not very serious. It's more that I take everything very seriously.

It affects me a lot when things are done wrong or when I see that there are people who don't receive help or are mistreated by the administrations... Then I get very upset and it affects me too much. It's a feeling that all the bad things that happen in the world are your fault or are on your shoulders, wanting to fix everything that's wrong in the world. And I ended up breaking down, I was on sick leave for four months.

What are you most proud of?

It's true that there's a part of journalistic ego. Especially when you publish that an institutional advertising contract is illegal and you overturn it, when something reaches Congress because you discovered it, corruption cases, the ego inflates a bit, but what I'm really proud of is when I manage to get people who think they don't have the right to aid or have been told they don't have the right, to get it in the end. I mean, with the social bonus it was crazy. And they would call you during the week and say they gave me the social bonus or the minimum vital income or thanks to you telling me something I got this.

That inflates me like a peacock, because suddenly you feel useful. Explaining to people what they can do, how the rules change every day, is useful. It can give peace to many people and provide a bit of tranquility.

Can technology help us?

A lot. We use a lot of visualizations. For me, the most important work Civio does in terms of journalism, beyond investigations, is to explain very simply things that are complex. And then I think it's important that journalism becomes more personalized. And the aid applications, we did the one for the bonus, we already have the one for the minimum vital income. We did another during the pandemic with all the pandemic aid. In the end, it's much more personalized journalism because I can write an article explaining the conditions to access the minimum vital income, but you reading it, even if I explain it as clearly as possible, how do you know if it applies to your specific case? Technology helps us a lot to make something very complicated simple and also personalized, and we do it more and more. It helps me a lot to provide something much more personalized, because it's impossible to explain the 27,000 scenarios of aid.

And then it helps me get information that I can't get otherwise. We have David, who is the other director of Civio, who is a computer engineer, who manages to create data where there is none, because in the end, many times we ask for data from administrations, but it is almost never successful. So many times we have to push a little, scrape here, move there, convert a database, something that doesn't exist, combine things. What technology helps me the most with is getting data, information that no one else has, but that is there, you just have to hack the system a bit.

For me, that's very relevant because in the end, I don't depend on anyone.

Transparency law

How is the Transparency Law in this country?

Very bad. It's horrible. I hate it very much. There's something very important in the transparency law, which is: worse is not having it. We were the last in Europe, except Cyprus, to have a transparency law, and at least we have a legal basis. Now, when they don't respond, I can go to court. At least we have a law, but the law is very bad. First, because there are limits that are too broad. And then there's something very important, which is that the transparency law is a flat law. A standard law, not an organic law. So any other law prior to it of the normal ones, or if it's organic, like data protection, goes above it. So anything goes above it. And then there's something very important about the law, besides that there are many things it doesn't oblige to publish, like who they meet with, which affects a law, which is very important to me, which is that not complying with it has no consequences. That is, the body that has to oversee it is not independent, it really has no resources. It is appointed by the Government itself and cannot sanction. If you don't publish things that the law obliges you to or don't respond to a question they ask you, nothing can happen to you. There are no consequences. So let's hope that with the reform that changes, because right now it's a bit of a joke.

Then there are things a government can do without passing a law. For example, years ago the PSOE Government said We are going to publish the complete work agendas of the ministers, to know who they meet with, which is very relevant. They still haven't published the real work agenda and it's been many years. So this legislature in the previous one, there has been no progress in transparency, not even one.

It has been said that the Transparency Law would be reformed, that a lobby law would be passed, that something would be published, that it was the most transparent government in history. They say it very loudly. But then they have done nothing. The reality is that they have done absolutely nothing. So in that, we are not advancing.

The robots txt of the BOE is incredibly long. Tens of thousands of lines in the robot TXT and almost all contents are disabled for indexing.

There are many things inside the BOE's robots file that make sense to be there and others don't. For me, the nuance is that I think you can't deindex everything by default, that in the case of all companies and people of public interest, I don't accept the we have to cover, I accept in the case of people with zero public interest, there is no reason why when looking for a job, someone finds information about a crime better pardoned 20 years ago, first of all.

Language of the BOE

Sometimes I've entered and I find it hard to understand. I think you've managed to master that language very well.

Not completely. There are still things when there are, for example, issues related to reforms of the electricity sector, starting to put in 207,000 graphs of things I don't understand at all. It's like and I have to call people who know the subject and say can you please tell me if there's something interesting here or not? And you don't have to explain it to me, let's not go deep. But it's true that there's a very important part that I understand, but because it's been more than ten years. At first, it was very hard for me and at first, I spent all day reading the BOE of the day and understanding if something was relevant or not. And it's true that it's another language; administrative language is another way of speaking.

A person who writes a rule in the BOE is writing it for their peers.

For me, that language is useful because it's always the same and it helps us structure data. But it's true that it's a different language. And understanding it gives you a certain power. When I have to claim before an administration, I use the language and name the laws by their number. And it's very useful. And not only does it give you a certain power because you understand what is not really made for you to understand, and at the same time using it gives you a certain power.

It can give a lot of power to know what your rights are, how to claim certain things, what things if you say them like this will make them pay more attention to you. Words don't mean the same, there are words, they have a super specific meaning. Honorability in the BOE is not what you think being honorable is, it's that you haven't been convicted of certain crimes to be a banker. In other laws, it means something else. I mean, it's a totally different language.

I get the feeling that everything is getting worse, that it's being written worse and worse, that it's understood less and less.

It has always been quite poorly understood, because in fact, there's a very important problem with the BOE and all administrative language, which is that it's a continuous copy & paste. That is, if the pardon decrees are the same for 100 years, the only thing that changes in each one is the name of the person, the crime, the years, and what they are pardoned for. But it's the same structure, the same phrase. For me, it's very useful because we convert that into a database, but you see rules that are copy-pasted from a rule that is so many years old that it actually refers to non-existent, pre-democratic organizations. There's a part of laziness, of well, I copy and paste and keep going. So it's getting worse written. That old thing of weird language is still the same, it's getting more confusing.

There's something very important to me. The advisors of political parties in Congress, the advisors of normal parties, the government, before most were technicians: people who knew the sector or knew how to write laws. Now most are communication people, because what matters is the narrative, what is said, not what is done. It doesn't matter what is done. So they say everything is wonderful and then a mess of a rule is made, a decree law that contradicts itself. A person who writes a rule in the BOE is writing it for their peers. From state lawyer to state lawyer. They are not writing it for normal people to understand.

I really liked what you said about being a bit of a hacker. At Civio, besides doing journalism and being in court because we fight for everything, we also do lobbying. When I lobby to change the Transparency Law and make it better, or to make the Contracts Law require more things to be published so we can monitor corrupt practices, I disguise myself as a lobbyist. I read the law and present amendments to political parties and I think sometimes activism, when trying to change things, lacks a bit of that.
Instead of making a statement saying this should be better, do like Endesa does, bring the written amendments and do the work for the deputy. And we have inserted in the Public Sector Contracts Law, imagine on the other side was OHL, amendments written by my own hand, whole like articles. It's not enough to just say this is wrong, it should be better. You have to understand what the rules are. You can't play against OHL, against Ferrovial, against Iberdrola with the rules of a hippie camp. You have to go with the same.

Surely in your sector, there's a rule that will affect you and you can do a very specific lobby because you control it better than anyone.

Why doesn't the public administration itself do this?

The basic problem is that the aid is very complex to understand and process, which is amazing. I mean, how can it be complex to process the minimum vital income? We are talking about people who don't have 500 € a month.

I think the problem with aid is that they are designed from the point of view that everyone wants to cheat. And it's not true. They should be much simpler to grant. It should be a much easier process. And then the laws are written by people who write among themselves, not to be understood.

They are not centered on the person, they are not centered on the user.

This happens with everything, but in the case of aid to people who are very bad off, it's crazy. It's not normal that when we made the first application, which is the social bonus one, which is the one you mentioned with the CNMC people, energy experts, experts in understanding laws, we talked to very smart people. We were. I knew that rule by heart. The technical part is not complicated, it was to understand what orders had to be given to the application. I think the problem is that, that they are made from the point of view of they are going to cheat us and not from the point of view we have to help.

When aid is presented, in the reports made it says "This could benefit 1 million people, but we know it will reach 400,000" and this is in the report and everyone thinks it's normal. You already know in advance that half will get it, because the other half won't even reach it. It's crazy. It's something I will never understand. That they take for granted that something they are doing will not work well. And nothing happens. 40% is fine. How is it fine? Is it fine that 60% of people who need money to live starve? Something I never quite understand.

In 2012 you start combing through the BOE regularly. What did you discover at that time and why did it hook you?

My first surprise was that I had no competition, there was no one doing a daily follow-up. I started reading the BOE and had 50 followers on Twitter and didn't think it would work at all. At no time did I think it would work. But the first thing I discovered is that there were many truly relevant, real, and relevant news that no one was publishing anywhere and I said: let's tell them!

Respecting the public, the common good goes beyond our individual interest or our privileges largely depends on the education we have received. Protecting it, defending it, reinforcing it, is our responsibility. It's easy to confuse authority and power. Power is the ability I have to make others do what I want. Authority I earn or lose. As citizens, we have the authority to defend the common good, to defend it on many occasions from the greed for power. If you enjoyed listening to Eva as much as I did in today's episode, leave us a comment giving us your opinion. Oh, and in case you hadn't heard, there's a Realworld community on WhatsApp, so check out the description and click on the invitation link to join if you're interested. A big hug and I'll see you in the real world.

Can't large language models, generative artificial intelligence, GPTs help you?

I wish. From the beginning, almost since I started with the BOE and I joined Civio, we've given a lot of thought to what technology can do to take parts away from me. There are many things that technology does for me with the BOE. We have a fairly sophisticated alert system. We have a robot that calls me when the BOE comes out at odd hours. There can be an extraordinary BOE on a Sunday or a day at 4:00 PM. There's a lot of information from the BOE that I no longer analyze one by one because I know we're going to analyze it in bulk. Since the language is always the same, I know that in letters of nature, in pardons, I look at the pardon that day, just in case it was someone very important, but I know that at the end of the year I will have a database of pardons with a percentage of pardoned with a lot of data. With that, I go, so I don't need to look at it in depth.

It helps me with the most recurring topics, having them in bulk and automatically treated without having to do it one by one, it helps me with an alert system that is increasingly sophisticated. But I still think there are things it can't do yet. That database that is in my head is not there yet.

The day it is more structured and works better, maybe I'll just get up in the morning and instead of having to look at everything, it will tell me "watch out for this and this" and I'll look at two little pages. That would be great. I would appreciate it very much. Right now it helps us very little, but I hope it goes further because I can't do this all my life. I'm a bit exhausted. It's been more than ten years already. I think it's very useful and someone has to do it, but I hope that more and more technology takes parts away from me.