Agencia de Gobierno Electrónico y Sociedad de la Información y del Conocimiento

25 – Transparency and access to information in the health sector.

Brief description of the commitment: this commitment seeks to consolidate an institutional strategy to improve access to information in the health sector, with the aim of reinforcing transparency, guaranteeing citizens' right to information, and promoting more informed participation. It aims at developing a sustained process that allows for the planning, organization, and coherence of the publication of public information, ensuring its availability, comprehensibility, and usefulness for citizens, academia, civil society, and other relevant actors. In this context, the development of tools, such as internal catalogs, open data, and data visualization tools, contributes to achieving this objective by improving information traceability and making it more accessible and relevant to public interests.

Organization leading the commitment: Ministry of Public Health (MSP).

Supporting institutions/organizations: Agency for Electronic Government and the Information and Knowledge Society (Agesic).

Head of commitment: Rodrigo Márquez. Director General of the Secretariat. Contact: rmarquez@msp.gub.uy .

Technical Head: Regina Guzmán. Head of Information Systems and E-Government. Contact: rguzman@msp.gub.uy .

Actors

1. Government: Open data program of the Agency for Electronic Government and Information and Knowledge Society (Agesic), Digital Health of the Agency for Electronic Government and Information and Knowledge Society (Agesic).

Implementation period: October 2025 - June 2029.

Problem definition

What problem does the commitment intend to address?

There is a growing need for citizens, academia, civil society, and other actors to have easy, understandable, and structured access to public information regarding the health system. While the country has various datasets available, they are often not organized in a way that facilitate their location, interpretation, or effective reuse. This commitment seeks to boost access to open health data through a strategic and sustained approach that promotes transparency and the generation of public value, ensuring that the available information is truly useful and focused on people's needs.

What are the causes of the problem?

Despite the availability of public data on various platforms, this data is often not organized according to a common logic that facilitates its identification, understanding, and use by citizens. This hinders information traceability, the prioritization of new datasets, and collaboration with key actors in the open data ecosystem. This situation presents an opportunity to move towards a more coherent institutional approach, focused on transparency, citizen participation, and purposeful reuse.

Description of the commitment

What has been done so far to solve the problem?

The Ministry of Public Health has developed several open data initiatives, publishing datasets through platforms such as the National Open Data Catalog, the Ministry's website, and international repositories. These actions have contributed to improving transparency, expanding access to public information, and generating value for diverse audiences. Collaboration with Agesic's Open Data Program, a strategic partner in this process, has also been strengthened.

What solution does it propose?

• The commitment proposes moving forward towards an institutional policy of open health data, aimed at strengthening transparency, access to public information, and generating value for citizens. As part of this strategy, tools will be developed to plan, organize, and sustain the publication of open data in a coherent and accessible manner. These tools include the creation of an internal catalog that systematizes the datasets currently shared by the Ministry of Public Health, identifying their characteristics, update levels, and target audiences. Furthermore, awareness-raising and training activities are planned for staff members, with the goal of consolidating an institutional culture committed to open data.

• As part of the solution, citizen-oriented visualization tools will be strengthened and updated, such as “A Tu Servicio”, a widely used platform that is part of this strategy and will have specific areas for improvement. These tools will aim at facilitating access to, understanding of, and use of information by different audiences, promoting its use in decision-making processes, research, and service improvement.

What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment?

The goal is to establish an open data plan with clear criteria and monitoring mechanisms, enabling a progressive improvement in the quantity, quality, and accessibility of published data. This process aims at encouraging the use and reuse of data by citizens, academia, civil society, and other actors, promoting a more open, participatory, and people-centered public administration. It also seeks to build technical and cultural capacity within the Ministry of Public Health (MSP for its acronym in Spanish) to solidify open data as an ongoing institutional practice focused on transparency.

Commitment analysis

How will the commitment promote transparency?

Implementing an institutional open data policy, supported by an internal catalog and accessible visualization tools, will allow the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) to organize and systematize the information it already publishes, facilitating public access. By organizing datasets in a coherent and understandable way, greater clarity about the functioning of the health system is promoted, and trust in public institutions is strengthened. Based on the data identification and prioritization process, a progressive schedule for opening and publishing data in the National Open Data Catalog is also planned, ensuring that information of public interest is not only available internally, but also effectively accessible, reusable, and focused on people's needs.

How will the commitment help foster accountability?

By systematizing data publication and documenting its characteristics, frequency, and responsible parties, this commitment will allow citizens, the media, academia, and civil society to monitor policies, programs, and outcomes in the field of public health. The traceability and accessibility of this information will facilitate independent monitoring and critical analysis of government actions, enabling mechanisms for social oversight and strengthening accountability as an essential component of a healthy democracy.

How will the commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing, and monitoring solutions?

The commitment includes training, awareness-raising, and outreach initiatives for both public officials and external actors, promoting a culture of openness that fosters dialogue and collaboration between the government and society. Furthermore, it envisions the development of participatory spaces with academia, civil society, and other ecosystem actors, where perspectives can be exchanged, information needs to be identified, and the use of open data evaluated. In this way, citizen participation is boosted not only as users of information but also as co-producers of data-driven solutions.