According to the annual report of the Costa Rican Public Sector Transparency Index (ITSP), The Judiciary Investigative Police (OIJ) is the most transparent public institution in the country.

The ITSP evaluated a total of 254 institutions, out of which 23 managed a result of 70 points -in a scale of 1 to 100-.

This is an initiative of the Costa Rica’s Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoria de los Habitantes) along with the Center of Investigation and Training in Public Administration of the University of Costa Rica (Cicap-UCR), this is the fourth year the institutions are evaluated, and they have registered since the first-year significant improvements.

“ITSP is developed scientifically and based in the best international practices to measure the result of the situation of transparency that, in a given moment, is offered on the websites of the public institutions. It considers Access to Public Information, Accountability, Citizen Participation and Open Government Data, with the purpose of ensuring they comply with the human right of access to information and to contribute with a more informed society”, explains the report.

OIJ scored 97.43% , followed by the Fire Department with a score of 94.8% and the Judiciary Branch took the third place with a score of 84.6%. On the other hand, the institutions with the lowest scores were local governments.

“In this edition 23 institutions evaluated scored over 70, and the average score of the total number of websites evaluated was of only 34.5; however, this is an improvement since the first evaluation”.