The Guide includes:

• an overview of opportunities to use open data at different stages of the public policy process and anti-corruption activities;
• data standards describing what should be published and technical details on how to make the information available;
• key data sets necessary for shaping the openness of the state, describing their content and possibilities of application in the fight against corruption, the type of information they contain, the stage of the anti-corruption cycle for which they are relevant, references to examples of such data sets, related data sets, standards required for their development and attributes required to create a link between all data sets;
• practical cases on the use of open data in anti-corruption activities at different stages (prevention, detection, investigation, enforcement).

The analytical introduction to the Guide contains brief information on the main types of corruption ("grand", domestic, political), the most prominent international anti-corruption agreements and associations(OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, UN Convention against Corruption, G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group, World Anti-Corruption Summit in London), the stages of preparation of the Guide (analysis of reports, documents and initial discussions, development of the list of key datasets, research of existing practices, and the development of a set of case studies).

According to the Guidelines, for the comprehensive use of open data in anti-corruption activities, the state should ensure the formation and sharing of 30 key datasets, such as:

• register of officials;
• register of legal persons;
• open budget data;
• data on state contracts;
• register of unfair suppliers;
• database of asset/income declarations of officials and others.

As practical cases, the Guide provides examples of the use of the above-mentioned data sets at various stages of anti-corruption activities, such as the Ownership Disclosure Project, which was created to create a unified international database of beneficiaries, or public expenditure monitoring resources such as Datanest in Slovakia, Quién Es Quién Wiki in Latin America.

The Guide was developed based on the G20's 2015 G20 Principles of Openness to Fight Corruption and Transparency International 's recent report on the implementation of the Principles by individual countries, and is intended to serve as a support mechanism for creating an effective system of transparency to prevent and combat corruption. According to the Guide's developers, the next step is to test its approaches in several countries (negotiations have already begun with the Government of Mexico) to develop a framework for the implementation of the principles.