SUSTAINABILITY AND TRANSFERABILITY
The sustainability of the project anticipates a political will coming from the public interest that protects the project. As the project introduced anticorruption measures that go way above the mandatory legislature, their acceptance was voluntary. It was made possible by freedom of the decision making – voting by the elected town officials. Just like to cancel all changes the project has brought, a will of elected officials would be enough. They would thus have to express their decision again by voting in a town council meeting, with which they would practically cancel the “transparent town” project and its anticorruption package. This is a theory, however. If the elected representatives decided for such steps, in reality it would mean a political suicide. The needed steps would have to be done – thanks to measures that the projects brought on – transparently, publicly. On top of that the uniqueness, success and real positive results of the project have gained a lot of attention and popularity among the public and the media. The project is becoming a better and better example for other municipalities from local level to the very top one, including the ministries and governmental institutions. The project does not restrict any time limits for changes and measures introduced into everyday life. That is why we can justly suspect that the sustainability of the project is assured up until the time when the public services still understand the concepts like transparency, corruption or responsibility.
Transferability of the project, generally in the public sector but also on other levels and other institutions, is ensured by mechanisms that the project encounters. The fundamentals of the decision making in the public sector are basically the same on all levels. In them, elected officials and employees of public institutions make selections that determine public resources and tangible assets they govern. Space thus created for possible corruption is directly proportional to the level of transparency with which the decisions are made. This further sets the level of public’s interest and a level of responsibility and trust that the public places in hands of their elected representatives and employees of public organizations.
Here we must also add that every week the municipality of Martin is contacted by representatives of other municipalities because of the “transparent town” project. It has understandably gained a high publicity and popularity with general public. Logically, public demand arises and with it a pressure on other municipalities on various levels to also realizes a similar project. In many cases, an information exchange has been ongoing. There already are initiatives that are trying to implement some of the measures realized with our project into the revisions of legislature the municipalities must obey by. These initiatives require changes in legislature on national level mainly in the field of procurement. It is a big thing for us that this changes on national level through our government and changes in legislature are already taking place also thanks to our project. This is partly but unmistakably caused by our almost three-year initiative: the project Transparent Town.