Franci Demšar has a PhD from Physics at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He was a researcher in Slovenia for 15 years and two years in US. He has published multiple publications (more than 60 articles), which have received international and domestic acknowledgment. His second research field was public management. He has written several books in Slovenian on: scientific research, transparency and political appointments. The book on transparency from 2013 was translated to Serbian and Russian. He has extensive management experience: state Secretary of the Ministry for Science and Technology of Slovenia, minister for Defense of the Republic of Slovenia, ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to the Russian Federation, director of the Slovenian Research Agency (2004-2014) and director of the Slovenian Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (SQAA) (2017-). He was very active in international forums as a vice president of the European Science Foundation (2012-2014) and presidentof CEENQA (2020-) and consultant of the World Bank.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Why has science been of crucial importance for human development in the last centuries?.- Chapter 3. What about transparency in other areas of the public sector?.- Chapter 4. Proactive transparency.- Chapter 5. Transparency challenges for business and privacy.- Chapter 6. Appendix 1: Personal experiences of the author.- Chapter 7. Appendix 2: Political appointments in ex- communist countries (lack of autonomy in Slovene public sector).