The article argues that the current Mexican administration is systematically dismantling autonomous bodies such as the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection (INAI) to eliminate mechanisms for accountability and transparency. The senator claims that this deliberate weakening of oversight institutions enables widespread corruption and shields government officials from public scrutiny, effectively reversing decades of progress in democratic transparency and open government practices. This erosion of institutional safeguards directly affects the availability and reliability of public data, as the entity responsible for guaranteeing access to information is being paralyzed. By prioritizing political loyalty over legal procedure, the government undermines the fundamental principle that citizens have a right to know how public resources are managed, creating an environment where opacity thrives and democratic checks and balances fail. The relevance to open data lies in the threat this political agenda poses to the very infrastructure that supports data-driven governance. When transparency institutions are attacked, the legal frameworks ensuring data accessibility collapse, making it more difficult to obtain reliable public information. This case illustrates how political decisions can directly compromise open data ecosystems, highlighting the critical need to defend institutional autonomy to maintain trust in public information and ensure citizen oversight.
Source:Published on 2023-04-19