When we talk about accountability and anti-corruption, one word shows up again and again: transparency. But here’s the problem: for years, researchers have struggled to measure transparency in a meaningful, comparable way across countries. Laws may look good on paper, but what actually happens in practice can be very different.
That challenge is exactly what our team set out to tackle with the BridgeGap project.
Building on a Decade of Transparency Tools
BridgeGap doesn’t start from scratch. The T-Index, launched globally in 2021 and covering 140 countries, was an important milestone. But because it needed to work across very different political systems – including authoritarian regimes – it could not fully capture areas like political finance or lobbying transparency.
In democracies, however, these areas matter a lot. So BridgeGap takes the next step.
Looking at Both Law and Reality
Our approach measures transparency in two ways:
- De jure transparency – what the law requires
- De facto transparency – what citizens can actually find online
To do this, we combine regulatory coding with hands-on observation of government websites. The project covers:
- the EU-27
- EU-accession countries
- a selected group of non-EU states
In the European context, we also expand the dataset to include party finance and lobbying registers – areas especially relevant for mature democracies. An initial plan to add beneficial ownership transparency was paused after a ruling by the European Court of Justice affected the implementation of the relevant EU directive.
Turning Data into a Practical Resource
All of this work comes together in the BridgeGap Data Hub, a platform where users can:
- explore a country-by-country transparency benchmark
- access a structured data repository
- compare how transparency works in law and in practice
The goal isn’t just to produce another dataset. It’s to give researchers, journalists, policymakers, and civil society a tool they can actually use to understand and improve transparency across Europe.
Why This Matters
Transparency is more than a buzzword. It shapes trust in institutions, enables accountability, and helps prevent corruption. By looking beyond formal rules to what really happens online, BridgeGap offers a clearer, more realistic picture of how open governments truly are.
And that’s a gap worth bridging.