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Conference AIDEA 2012
Track 5
Public Management. Organizational and Inter-Institutional performance management in Public Administration for sustainable growth
Transparency as a vehicle for accountability and trust:
the discrepancy between formal and useful transparency
TRANSPARENCY AS A VEHICLE FOR ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRUST:
THE DISCREPANCY BETWEEN FORMAL AND USEFUL TRANSPARENCY
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Abstract
Transparency promises to heal governments by enhancing their relationships with constituents and improving their capacity to meet their objectives. Some studies show that the practice of transparency is still limited to some policy areas or to comply with law requirements (Heald 2006). Information and communication technologies (ICT) promise to enhance governments' accessibility and openness. However, due to ICT, in most cases, government produce too much information that does not necessarily meet their constituents' needs. As a consequence to enhance transparency and to make governments work better and more efficiently (Norris, 2001; Northrop et al, 1990), they would have to embed in their transparency strategy citizens' preferences for government information. This should contribute to reach further levels of tangible rather than formal transparency and might eventually contribute to facilitate government-constituents relations.
1. Introduction
The claim for a transparent government is embedded with the birth of the modern idea of democracy (Madison, 1822) and the openness of the public sector is considered, still today, as a critical condition for an efficient policy making and an equitable distribution of resources (Stiglitz, 2002).
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) applied to the public sector, better known as e-government, have multiplied the possibilities for increasing transparency in the public sector. Although the great part of the studies on the e-government during the last two decades has focused the attention on the efficiency gains (Protti and Peel, 1998; Birkmeyer et al, 2002), and on the
effectiveness impacts (Bates et al, 2003; Abdelhak, 1996) an emerging branch of studies is exploring the effect of ICT on government’s openness and transparency (Demchak, Friis e La Porte, 2000; La Porte, de Jong, e Demchak, 2002; McIvor, McHuge and Cadden, 2002; Reichard, 1998; Welch and Wong 1998, 2001). The review of this growing literature drives to two main considerations.
Despite these different concepts, most studies operate on a common underlying assumption: that transparency in government is a critical ingredient for efficient and well-functioning economic and political markets. More generally, transparency is seen as a cornerstone of democracy.
However to enhance transparency and to make governments work better and more efficiently (Norris, 2001; Northrop et al, 1990), governments would have to embed in their transparency strategy citizens' preferences for government information. This should contribute to reach further levels of tangible rather than formal transparency and eventually contribute to facilitate government-constituents relations.
The paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents and discusses why transparency is a so relevant topic; section 3, based on the literature review, highlights the relevance for government to embed citizens’ preferences in their strategy; section 4 present the Italian context and section 5 briefly presemts the assessment framework used to measure the degree of transparency of Italian municipalities. Lastly section 6 presents the preliminary results about citizens preferencesconcerning the information published by governments on their own website and discusses evidence from the Italian trial setting based on the results arising from a previous paper concerning the degree of transparency, accessibility and interactivity of Government website.
The final section draws some conclusions, highlighting some of the general managerial implications for governing transparency and citizens engagement.
2. Background
The principle of transparency is regarded as having great value in governmentas a means to enhance and reinforce the relationship between publicadministrations and their external stakeholders. Many researchers have beenfocusing on this topic, adopting different disciplinary approaches and investigatingdifferent steams of research. Some main considerations derive froma review of the growing body of literature about transparency in government.
Although there is no common transparency defition, most government are adopting free of information in laws and disclosing information. This based on the assumption that ICT enhances accessibility whilst reducing barriers of space and time ((Stevens and McGowan, 1985). However, although many studies state that governments are enhancing their transparency at various degrees of extension and deepness (Pina, Torres, and Acerete, 2010; La Porte, Demchak, and De Jong, 2002) the call is for how effective transparency is. In cat, transparency s necessary but not sufficient for greater involvment.
Some scholars point out that governments, through their own web sites, should make use of several transparency and accountability features to enhance the level of public trust and legitimacy(Gant and Gant, 2002). According to Ndou, if websites are designed carefully and openly, they can be valuable resources for transparency, for citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders should be able to see political and governmental information, rules, and policies.(Ndou, 2004). West, (2004) by analyzing e-government usage and the exposure of managers to egovernment questions, found that those who visited federal government websites experienced a significant increase in their belief that government is effective.This study suggests that in some respects, e-government has the potential to transform service delivery as well as citizens’ attitudes.
However, many researches, using measures to assess the degree of websitetransparency, only partially explain its impact on stakeholders (citizens, businesses,and so forth) who daily interact with local governments. (La Porte, Demchak, and De Jong, 2002). However even if governments tried in several ways to measure and assess transparency, this do not imply they can reach the desired objectives.
In a previous paper on the basis of an extensive literature review, we drafted some considerations that led to the definition of a comprehensive assessment framework (it will be further explained in section 5). As stated in the literature, governments publish information mainly about their institutional mission and the use of financial resources. In some countries they might be required to make public certain types of information about their functioning and performance.
However, we also took into account the evidence from other studies showing that transparency of government operations and performance might contribute to higher trust in government and, eventually, to a more participatory democracy.As a consequence, we drafted a framework to monitor the degree of transparency, one based on four different dimensions; institutional, political, financial, and service delivery (Cucciniello, Nasi et al. 2011)
However in this paper we would focus more on the topic of citizens’ engagement in government’s “transparency” by assessing which types of information citizens are keen to evaluate their government performance. Based on the results arising from previous researches we carried out that offered a clear and complete picture of Italian larger municipalities in terms of degree of transparency as we know the level of interactivity and accessibility of published information the paper assesses governments’ levels of transparency and citizens’ need for government information, in order to assess whether there is a gap and it offers recommendations to reduce it.
3. The relevance for governments to embed citizens’ preferences in their transparency strategy: previous studies
Citizens participations embeds the capacity of Government to understand the needs of their users and citizens and allow for the creation of customer value. Citizen-oriented organization are aware of who their users and potential users are, and how they should be served. This has three main implications. Firstly, public managers who learn about the needs of their citizens should share this information with other individuals and departments immediately in order to safeguard the public organization’s capacity to govern them by making consistent strategic decisions. Secondly, this requires the implementation of systematic relationship management tools to identify, track and forecast citizen needs and the criteria of performance perception (Grönroos, 1999). Thirdly, it requires adequate information management to ensure effective support at all organization levels.
However, most public organizations do not have the collective culture needed for citizen-orientation; instead, some are still developing a service-efficiency oriented culture. In addition, evidence shows that relationship management has been explored, but not systematically introduced and promoted in the public sector (Schellong, 2008).
Today, Governments strategy has to be formulated to face external pressures and organizational priorities, jockeying among a complex decision making system in which the administration, the political bodies and citizens express their interests and positions; an evolving governance system that has to take into account traditional and new forms of collaboration and a given organizational structure and operative mechanisms (Lega, 2005). Theoretically, goals settings in public organizations should occur by prioritizing objectives, services and policies that best suit citizens’ needs, given resources and administration capabilities, taking into account the pressures that arise from the external context. Among them we can mention socio-demographics characteristics, political orientation, the technological issues and the competitive climate.
This means that governments have to manage many stakeholders external to the organization that controls political consensus and it appears extremely relevant to include them in the decision-making process.
Even if at all level of government citizens-participation programs have been launched since the 1950s(Day, 1997), based on the assumption that if citizens become actively involved as participants in their democracy the governance that emerges from this process will be more democratic and more effective,
Although there is theoretical and practical recognition that the public must be more involved in public decisions, many administrators are, at best, ambivalent about public involvement or, at worst, they find it problematic (King et al 1998). For this reason in many cases citizens are not really involved in the definition of government’s decision making processand these happen without taking into consideration preferences and required trajectories, whereas they are usually driven by criteria of efficiency and cost containments.
However the argument in favor of enhancing citizen participation highlights several advantages, both for government and citizens. (Irvin and Stransbury, 2004).
Beierle (1999) and Thomas (1995) emphasize that citizens involvement in strategic decision process can improve the decision process and produce efficiency benefits for the rest of society because it reduces the probability of litigation (Randolph and Bauer, 1999).
Furthermore citizens participation in governmental decision making process can produce effect also in terms of better policy and implementation process, since in this way the implementation process will appear less costly and it will happen in a more cooperative way ( Thomas, 1995).
Evidence show that in some cases the contribution of citizens engagement to the quality decision may be explicit (Beierle, 1999).
Some authors also emphasize the role of citizens participation to the strategic decision process as a way of teaching citizens to interact with other group in society, gaining legitimacy as political players (Valadez, 2001).
A mentioned before transparency in government have been encompassed by a number of important countries (US, UK, New Zealand) that adopted legislation or other regulatory initiatives to enforce public agencies to make their data available online in open format and to promote their (re)use. For example, the data.gov.uk website make available a large number of UK government data and is collecting ideas and applications, developed by individuals, that make use of such data.
Meanwhile, the approach to openness and transparency is also the basis of the “open declaration on European public services” presented at the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference in Sweden (November 2009). The declaration is built on the three core principles of transparency, participation and engagement to “ask the European governments and the European Commission to incorporate these principles in their eGovernment action plans and ensure that Europe’s citizens enjoy the benefits of transparent, participative, empowering government as soon as possible” (Open Declaration, 2009).
Transparency in Government seems to have at its heart the recognition of the high potential that users (citizens) represent in term of knowledge and willingness to participate in the improvement of public services. In fact, the emerging interest in trasparency is also due to the dramatic growth in sophistication and use of the so called social-computing applications (Osimo, 2008¸ Huijboom et al. 2009) that open augmented possibilities of collective efforts in expressing need and finding answers to social issues.
Fort this reasons after having measured the degree of transparency in government, based on the multiple dimensions identified in our assessment model (Cucciniello, Nasi et al. 2011) we decided to investigate citizens’ preferences for government information since governments would have to embed these in their transparency strategies to reach further level of tangible transparency and to contribute to facilitate governments’ citizens relations.which information people prefer to find on their municipality’s website.
According to this, we drafted a questionnaire, based on 4 main dimensions (institutional dimension, political dimension, financial dimension and service delivery dimension), to ascertain citizens preferences concerning information published on their Municipality’s website.
4. The Italian Context
The transparency process affecting Italian municipalities is based on Constitutional law. However, the modernization process that started in the early Nineties, whose aim was to make public agencies perform better while improving the relationship with their constituents, embedded transparency as a tool to achieve such reform objectives. In particular, some of the laws in the Nineties aiming to introduce New Public Management principles, refer to transparency as a fundamental rule for public agencies to govern their relationships with external stakeholders in order to safeguard impartiality and democracy. This led to the establishment of a one-stop front office in all public agencies in 1993 to manage relationships with citizens (called the “Ufficio Relazioni con il Pubblico”) and subsequently to the passing of a law in 2000 that sets out guidelines for external communications. In 2009, the Minister for Innovation and Public Administration passed a law that rationalized existing regulations on government transparency and enhanced its role with government performance.
Furthermore, this law forms the basis for the mandatory publication of information on all aspects of the operations of the public agency using all possible channels, emphasizing the role of information and communication technology. It requires public agencies to provide their constituents with information about public officials, including their salary, professional background and performance, and information on how effectively the government delivers public services. This was the starting point for the categorization of transparency linked to holding public agencies and their personnel accountable for the results they achieve. Furthermore, this law requires public agencies to have a section on their website dedicated to “Transparency, Performance and Meritocracy” (Trasparenza, Valutazione e Merito), which provides information they are obliged to disclose to external stakeholders.
All public agencies, including municipalities, were required to gradually include this section based on a set schedule, which, for instance, requires public agencies to publish information about individual and organisation performance by early 2011. They have all added the section to their website by now, but not all publish the mandatory information in this section or in other parts of their institutional website. In the following sections, we present the methodology and the results of our analysis.
5. The Assessment Framework used to measure the degree of transparency of Italian municipalities: previous analysis
Some studies show that the transparency of government operations and performance may contribute to greater trust in government (Gant and Gant, 2002) and possibly to a more participatory democracy. However, as stated in literature (Pina, Torres et al 2007a, 2007b, 2010; Reichard, 1998; Heald, 2006; Margetts, 2006), governments publish information mainly about their institutional mission and their use of financial resources. Additionally, legal requirements in specific country settings may oblige them to publish certain types of information about their operations and performance. However, the information that could be of interest to external stakeholders is much wider and is not necessarily limited to how the agency operates, but may encompass its political mandate, its priorities and its capacity to fulfil its goals.
Although many studies and much research have attempted to identify frameworks for assessing the degree of accessibility and interactivity, there is scant evidence with regard to the actual practice of government transparency and it is often tested on single case studies or limited to single types of information, mainly mission-related and financial. Based on this, we have drafted some considerations leading to the definition of a comprehensive framework that has been tested on some Italian municipalities.
As a result, we drafted a framework to monitor the degree of transparency based on four different dimensions: institutional, political, financial and service delivery. The assessment model was designed to measure government transparency based on the information published on their institutional websites.
The institutional dimension aims to capture the degree of transparency with regard to the government’s mission and operations, its institutional activities and the information it is obliged to publish by law.
The political dimension aims to capture the degree of accessibility of information on political representatives, their political mandate and activities and other information, such as absenteeism at council meetings and salary.
The financial dimension aims to assess the degree of transparency with regard to the use of financial resources, the solvability of governments and other financial issues.
The service delivery dimension aims to assess the degree of transparency concerning the performance of governments in the delivery of services to citizens and businesses.
This assessment framework has been used to measure the degree of transparency of the institutional websites of municipalities.
Previous studies (Cucciniello, Nasi and Saporito 2011) show the results of analysis carried out on Italian provincial capital municipalities. These analysis show low degree of transparency in some relevant dimensions of government operations as service delivery and financial-related dimension. Not only that but it seems like the information available on line and focused on the general boundaries of government operations that rarely evolve (i.e. functions, types of services etc) and, although well-maintained, does not provide much added-value about on-going operations and programs, their performance and relative feedbacks.