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International organisations such as the EU, the OECD and the WBG have recommended that governments provide information to citizens about the sustainability of their public policies. Furthermore, previous studies have concluded that while stakeholders are demanding greater transparency from public entities about the sustainability of their actions, little research has been conducted into governmental information disclosure concerning sustainability. Accordingly, the aim of the present paper is to contribute to our understanding of sustainability practices and information transparency in this respect in governmental institutions, and thus enable improvements to be made in this field. In the view that e-government, based on information and communication technologies, is a key element in good governance aimed at achieving sustainable development, we identify factors that may promote the disclosure of information on the sustainability of public entities, by analysing the information content of regional governments' websites and its relationship with certain variables. Our main findings are that socio-economic factors such as education, population density and access to internet, and e-government factors such as the provision of public information online, the percentage of procedures completed after online start, the level of online services provided and broadband availability, are all relevant to the disclosure of sustainability information by regional governments.

This paper analyses the practices of disclosure of sustainability information by European local governments, with specific reference to the websites of major European cities, classed as Anglo-Saxon (English-speaking) or Nordic, according to the prevailing administrative culture. The empirical results obtained show that the local governments analysed are using their websites to disclose information regarding sustainability policies, a trend that is more pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon countries than in the Nordic ones. Our conclusions show that the respective traditions of these countries may influence their development of practices of transparency and accountability with respect to sustainability. We have identified some steps to improve the transparency about sustainability in local governments, and have designed a model sustainability report, identified the types of stakeholders and studied their information needs.