In the opinion of the Council for Transparency, improvements have been made in the data that citizens can access from the www.gob.cl/coronavirus.cl page in recent weeks, but gaps remain to raise levels of transparency and access to information to disaggregated statistics. The shortcomings lie in the figures on hospitalization according to sector – public and private – and information on the deceased – there are no data by commune, gender or pre-existing diseases – among others.
Outside of these observations, the opacity may be even greater when such data is requested from public bodies through the Request for Access to Public Information. On 24 April, the El Mostrador requested the Civil Registry to know the number of deaths and the cause of death, in a specific period of time and for several years, in order to compare whether or not it recorded in this year an increase in death for any specific cause.
One month after that request, the Civil Registry reported that it should postpone the delivery of the information for 10 more business days.
Lack of transparency, for example in the management of the state of the pandemic, occurs not only when information is hidden or not delivered, but also when it is dilated. Information that is not timely, does not work.
