The Interoperable Europe Academy has released a new policy brief on Stad Gent’s Public Processing Register, a pioneering approach to transparent digital governance.
Stad Gent (City of Ghent) has gone beyond GDPR requirements by making its Record of Processing Activities (RoPA) publicly accessible, setting a benchmark for accountability and citizen engagement. The initiative addresses common challenges in public administration, such as fragmented data management and limited transparency, by creating a unified, public-facing register that documents over 500 processing activities, including purposes, legal bases, and responsible departments.
This proactive approach strengthens both internal governance and public trust. Internally, it improves audit readiness, reduces compliance risks, and embeds a culture of accountability. Externally, it empowers citizens to understand how their personal data is used, fostering confidence in local government services. Stad Gent’s initiative also leverages semantic interoperability standards and open data principles, ensuring that the register is both human-readable and machine-processable, and can serve as a model for other local governments aiming to modernize data management.
In this policy brief, the Interoperable Europe Academy highlights how Stad Gent demonstrates that proactive transparency and innovative digital tools can make public administration more efficient, accountable, and citizen centric.
🔗 Read the full policy brief here