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How transparent are state governments in the United States? This Article explores the functioning of important, but often underappreciated, actors in the American constitutional system - state administrative agencies - and examines variation in the existence and implementation of transparency regimes across and within all 50 states. This Article first highlights differences that exist among state freedom of information ("FOI") laws, focusing on three components: who can submit requests; the requirements for and exemptions to public release; and the process for appeal of agency decisions not to disclose information. Because FOI laws require the public to request access to information and permit state agencies to refuse release of records, these laws constitute "passive" transparency and have little effect without a strong administrative apparatus to facilitate implementation. Simply, FOI laws rely on administrators to interpret statutory language in ways that provide access to government information. Because passive transparency regimes like state FOI laws require high-quality administration in order to be effective, this Article presents a novel exploratory field experiment of administrative performance across all 50 states. Specifically, this Article evaluates state implementation of FOI laws using an original empirical study of 248 state agencies' fulfillment of the same FOI request. This study illustrates that agency-level factors such as administrative function, policy mission, and leadership influence information disclosure. As a whole, this Article suggests the stringency of transparency law in the states only partially explains government provision of information to the public. Instead, how administrators react to internal and external pressures as they utilize their discretion to fill FOI requests constitutes a key aspect of open government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Many governments aim for transparency for accountability. Transparency and its processes contribute to governing climate. The transparency agenda focuses on sharing records to inform the public. In the United States, accessible records also add to decision‐making processes since records are useful to contest decisions. Few people put together the two kinds of transparency, sharing and challenging. Analyzing both is critical as calls for acting on climate‐related disasters grow. Method: In the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) shares records. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is one route to access FEMA's records. To assess transparency, I coded FEMA's 2019 FOIA log for requester and record requested. Years of damaging, notable disasters preceded 2019, but 2019 precedes pandemic disruptions. Result: Requesters can make requests likely to be useful instrumentally, concerning assistance and insurance. Journalists and scholars request records useful to conceptualizing governing disaster to include both individual political officials and aggregate bureaucratic policy. Instrumental requests dominate, as they do for other agencies. Conclusion: This article answers the call in recent studies of transparency, policy, and of disaster governance to track how policies embed power. Assessing record requests contributes to understanding the accountability in freedom of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the court case Alternatives v. Department of Human Services, wherein the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania considered government transparency and access to third-party records via the Right to Know Law (RTKL). It reviews RTKL provisions and statues and analyzes the dispute over access to invoices, receipts, expenditure documentation and agreements between Real Alternatives and its predecessor groups, and infringement of due process, privacy and property protection rights.

Freedom of information (FOI) policymaking in Brazil is portrayed as a "successful story." Data on adherence of the Brazilian legislation to international standards indicates its FOI institutions are in the top-ten group in the substantive dimension of FOI but are the last when it comes to the procedural dimension. What mechanism has driven this process to produce such ambivalence? This study assumes that FOI policymaking in Brazil represented an ambiguous legitimacy-based emulation process, oriented toward homogenization to the international field, but without breaking the governmental control over information. It draws on theoretical work on policy diffusion focusing on emulation and uses theories on conflicts and negotiation for power as drivers of policymaking. The results suggest this process was forged by political dynamics of disputes and compromises, and its outcomes derived from political trade-offs between key actors on controversial issues. Thus, the results materialized the preferences of non-governmental actors for a larger scope and no "eternal secrecy" and assured government offices' prerogatives on implementation and their final decision on appeals. This case may represent a broader phenomenon, considering that comparative data indicates that this ambivalence in adherence between substantive and procedural dimensions is more significant in Latin America than in other regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since democracy is the only political system that considers the views of the general populace, most states have switched over to democratic political systems over time. The right to vote allows citizens to directly or indirectly elect the representatives of their choice in democracies; Good governance is a term that is only applied to this one system, a transparent, participatory, and accountable government. The phrase "good governance" refers to a system of government that upholds the rights of its citizens, gives them equal access to opportunities, considers the views of the general public, and makes its policies clear to the general populace and refrains from engaging in dishonest practices. It is referred to as a government that values participation, accountability, and transparency and ensures that all citizens are treated equally under the law. As time goes on, laws are made to increase government accountability and transparency; for this reason, the right to information is included in the constitutions of the vast majority of states. Through the exercise of this right, the public will have access to information about public matters, enabling them to monitor the government. As a result, corruption will be reduced and a more accountable system of government will be established; in addition, it will make corruption and the abuse of power more difficult. The constitution of 1973 was amended in April of 2010 to include 19-A Article regarding the RTI in order to design a more explicit, participatory, and accountable structure. Pakistan is a democratic country with a separate chapter on fundamental rights and this research paper aims to examine how Pakistan's RTI can put up good governance. This study looks at the regulatory structures of Pakistan's right-to-information laws and asks if the intended goals of openness and good governance have been met? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the proposed anti-managerial information commission can effectively address the modern challenges of government transparency in the era of information age using anti- or post-managerial tools in the U.S. Also cited are the right of every American to access government information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and how individual rights can serve as mechanisms for social progress.

This paper analyzes the passive transparency which is one of the open government principles. To measure the degree of use of the right of access to public information, the portals for citizens' information requests are explored. Data corresponds to 2017-2019 among the capital states together with Buenos Aires (caba) and Bahía Blanca. The aggregation by themes criteria of caba is used as a baseline to compare among cities. Besides, passive transparency indicators from the governments' side are exposed. Together with caba and Bahía Blanca, only Córdoba and Santa Fe accomplish the principle. The best positioned city is caba, followed by Bahía Blanca, Córdoba and Santa Fe. Three types of municipalities are distinguished, and differences are explained by claims and evaluation of the right to access to public information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores is the property of Dilemas Contemporaneos: Educacion, Politica y Valores and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Across the globe, 'old' open government is gradually transforming into 'new' open government. While freedom of information (FOI) legislation is usually associated with old open government, this legislation itself is also on the move. This country report discusses to what extent the Dutch Open Government Act, that has been enacted very recently, reflects this shift from old to new open government. While certainly incorporating features of modern open government, such as the emphasis on machine-readable formats of government documents, traditional elements of FOI legislation, such as the right to request for information without stating an interest, are preserved to ensure adequate access to government information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2019 Directive on Open Data and the Re-use of Public Sector Information draws together two traditions in ensuring proactive access to government data. On one hand, it embraces the concept of 'open data', a concept rooted in government accountability and transparency for citizen participation. On the other hand, the directive covers the re-use of non-sensitive public sector information, which is deemed crucial for the internal market and realisation of the European data economy. Indeed, the directive itself is a further iteration of an earlier 2003 directive on the re-use of public sector information. Yet, despite the appearance of a seamless fusion of the different concepts, it is important to interrogate critically to what extent open data is actually incorporated. While the shorthand title for directive the Open Data Directive (ODD), there is a risk that much of the open data movement's demands fall outside of its purview. Hence, the present paper undertakes a careful analysis of the ODD. It asks firstly, how does the directive align with and diverge from the rationale and requirements of the movement for open data? And secondly, what are the implications of this for citizen participation? The findings show that the original largely technical principles of open data are somewhat respected and incorporated into the ODD but are disjointed from the rationale behind them. References to citizen participation in the directive and supporting documentation, while welcome, risk being little more than window dressing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorizes and analyzes the relationship between populist leaders and government transparency. Employing a paired comparison of leaders in Brazil and the United States before and during the pandemic, it illuminates three interlocking tactics: (a) the weakening of transparency institutions, (b) erasure and suppression of transparency, and (c) corruption of transparency via misuse and misinformation. Populist efforts to subvert pandemic transparency elicited a striking response in both countries: the emergence of "compensatory transparency initiatives" (CTIs). By collating and disclosing subnational pandemic data to fill transparency gaps at the federal level, CTIs drew attention to populist failings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) have become one of the popular tools implemented by governments to ensure transparency on a global scale. This research evaluates the contribution of control mechanisms to the reliability of public financial and accounting information in the era of IPSAS adoption and introduces the new guidelines to be put in place in order to achieve a higher level of transparency and hence reliable public financial information that is comparable with previous years and with information from other governments in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, democratic principles revolve around transparency, accountability and greater involvement of the citizens in government programmes and activities for sustainable development. This can only be achieved if the people have access to government information and this is why agitations for freedom of information continue to heighten. Open government data (OGD) play major roles in democratization of information and a propeller of transparency and open governance. This paper adopted descriptive informatics and literature review approach to examine the websites of major government ministries and agencies in Nigeria including Nigeria Data Portal to determine the availability and status of open government data. Findings reveal that while some websites have presence of OGD, over 60% are yet to provide such data in the website. Also the data portal has several government data but they are hardly updated. The paper also identified several challenges of OGD in Nigeria and proposed recommendations to mitigate the challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Direito Internacional is the property of Revista de Direito Internacional and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Study about LC 131/09 in Maranhão. It aims to verify if the largest municipalities of Maranhão are complying with LC 131/09 regarding the availability, in real time, of detailed information on the budgetary and financial execution of the municipality, thus investigating the level of transparency of municipal public fiscal management in these municipalities. counties. The research was descriptive with an approach of content analysis of documents, programming, budget execution, financial revenue, public expenses and other documents in electronic means of public access, based on INESC questionnaire (2018). The object of study and sample was the six most populous municipalities of the state of Maranhão. The results showed that there was a heterogeneity in the disclosure, with considerable variability of levels of transparency of municipal public management within the analyzed municipalities, as well as heterogeneity in the levels of transparency of municipal fiscal management among the municipalities investigated, since the level of transparency of Municipal public fiscal management was related to the size in terms of population and the level of economic and social development of municipalities. It is concluded that the municipalities investigated did not comply with all the provisions of LC 131/09, since it was verified after analysis that there is some outdated information, with no details and difficult location and understanding of the information, so the analyzed municipalities do not meet the requirements of LC 131/09. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Derecho del Estado is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: This article examines political cartoon depictions of access to information and freedom of information appearing in Canadian newspapers published between 2005 and 2019. Analysis: It focuses on three dimensions of these cartoons. First, many of these cartoons mirror the categories of political cartoons devised by Ray Morris. Second, several spatial metaphors regarding blockages, walls, and locked doors are used to represent government information control. Third, many of the cartoons suggest secrecy is germane to government across Canada and that transparency and secrecy are imbricated. Conclusion and implications: The implication of the findings for literatures on freedom of information, transparency, and political cartoons is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Article 18 of the Constitution of Georgia defines good governance as the right to fair administrative proceedings, the right to access public information, the right to informational self-determination, and compensation for damages caused by public authorities. The right to “Good Governance” means an impartial, fair, and timely decision-making process. Also, it implies transparency and full involvement of the interested party in the decision-making process. In 2011 Georgia joined the Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) initiative. The Government of Georgia undertook to ensure the openness of governance, transparency, and accountability to the public, as fundamental values for a democratic society, as well as to continue establishing the founding principles of open governance partnership in public administration. This article presents the whole range of issues of public administration transparency, considering the forms of its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reform to establish a democratic, citizen-centered government is an important orientation in the world and in Vietnam today. For Vietnam, how to promote and strengthen democratic governance must be one of the most crucial issues in order to achieve sustainable development goals. Based on the theoretical framework and survey results, this study evaluates citizen participation in local governance in Vietnam on seven main dimensions, including: (i) Transparency aims to ensure citizens' right to know; (ii) Participation in elections; (iii) Outlining of policy initiatives; (iv) Policy discussion, social criticism and referendums; (v) Voluntary contributions and cooperation with the government in public-service delivery; (vi) Social self-governance; (vii) Supervision of the social realm. Research shows that the dominance of local government is very evident in the process of citizen participation. The policy implications for countries in transition like Vietnam are that, in order to increase citizen participation in local governance, the openness of local government should be enhanced. Of course, doing this well needs a certain social basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social tenancy fraud is believed to cost UK taxpayers an estimated £1.8 billion annually, based upon estimates of prevalence and cost from over 5 years ago. Despite this, there is currently no centrally collected or published data on social tenancy fraud. The aim of this research was to investigate the amount of social tenancy frauds investigated, detected and prosecuted by local authorities in England. This was undertaken by means of documentary analysis, following Freedom of Information requests to the 198 local authorities who hold social housing stock. The research confirmed the findings of previous studies, that social tenancy fraud is a particular problem within London, as well as being increasingly detected in other urban areas. It was found that the amount of social tenancy fraud detected nationally has increased significantly in recent years, doubling since 2009. It is unclear, however, whether this indicates that social tenancy fraud is a growing problem or if the response has improved. This research has also identified a myriad of avenues in which further research would be of value, especially with respect to local government transparency which this research has found, despite recent initiatives, to be lacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese foreign affairs have become more transparent over the past decade. This trend, initially and largely, was induced by external pressures—especially China's World Trade Organization accession negotiations—and China is expected to exhibit, in conducting foreign affairs, greater transparency as it exerts growing international influences. It is also enhanced by the improved rule of law and national governance in China, including the Open Government Information Regulation, China's first freedom of information (FOI) law, adopted in 2007 and amended in 2019. The rising nationalism in China also has played a growing role in this regard. The records of FOI applications and FOI applications-related litigation indicate that, although the public has considerably increased their concerns over how China's government conducts foreign affairs, especially those that rouse bitter historical memories among the Chinese people, they are not active in using legal means to push Chinese foreign affairs to be more transparent. Furthermore, they are frustrated by the courts in China, which tend to broadly interpret the meaning of 'acts of state' and therefore dismiss the relevant cases. In addition, the Chinese Community Party, an overarching political accountability mechanism in China, while having the potential to ensure that the Chinese government conducts itself in an accountable manner, often constitutes a major hindrance to the greater transparency of Chinese foreign affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National governments regularly balance concerns of transparency and access to information against the need for information security and confidentiality. Increased government transparency can inform the public of the reasons underlying government decisions and can promote the participation of outside parties and actors. However, increased transparency can uncover wrongdoing that can lead to embarrassment or legal action against government actors. This project explores the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and analyzes how politicization affects aggregate federal executive branch transparency. Utilizing FOIA initial disposition data across the Bush II and Obama administrations, I find a complex relationship between politicization, as indicated by aggregate appointee presence within an agency, and FOIA requests outcomes. I find that increased politicization is associated with a higher proportion of responses, noting that agencies were not able to locate responsive FOIA records. However, I find less evidence that politicization affects the aggregate amount of information released to requesters from retrieved records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freedom of Information (FOI) laws are essential for democratic transparency and accountability of government. FOI, in theory, creates rights to access planning information held by governments, including records about land, resources, infrastructure, policy, and decision-making. FOI often escapes the full understanding of students, researchers, professionals, and advocates who may benefit from employing it. To bridge this gap, we profile FOI in Australia, reflecting on issues of accessibility, responsiveness, and integrity. Practical pitfalls in using FOI are illustrated through three examples. We conclude with proposals for reform, outlining a research agenda for how planning may be made more open and accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the transparency of the regulatory framework under which ministerial advisors exist within the politicized context of a Central and Eastern European perspective. We compare profiles and career paths of ministerial advisers under five different types of coalition governments and examine if variance across government types can be explained by type of party – established vs. new parties. Empirically, the article draws on a cohort of 162 ministerial advisers in Slovakia across five governments from 2010 to 2020. We arrive at multiple findings. Firstly, we suggest the limitation in the availability and reporting of data is an important finding as it highlights accountability gaps and lack of government transparency irrespective of the party in power. Secondly, within the low regulatory environment, ministers appoint multiple types of staff including both formal "visible" ministerial advisers and "invisible" ministerial agents that, if one could accurately measure, would likely demonstrate that the ministerial advisory system is more inflated than we currently present. The ad-hoc nature of the advisory system also creates fluctuations in the size of the ministerial adviser cohort across governments and across different ministries. This would also help to explain the next finding, which is that, contrary to the experience in many countries, the overall size of the advisor population does not grow, probably because executive politicians have other avenues of appointing advisory agents. Fourthly, the advisers have a fairly equal distribution of prior employment from both the public sector and the private sector, but we do see some evidence of more established political parties preferring to recruit from the public sector and newer parties preferring to recruit from the private sector. Lastly, the appointment process appears to be highly controlled by individual ministers, suggesting personal ties are essential (link between ministerial and advisor education) and party-political criteria are a low consideration. The research is conducted using a biographical approach in which freedom of information requests and open source data is scrapped and then triangulated via a dozen interviews with current and former advisers. It argues that regulation is weak, lacking public scrutiny, which provides loopholes for employing ministerial agents in informal ways that could create, at worst, the opportunity for corrupt behavior, or at least, lead to poor practices in good governance. Therefore, future research should focus on both the formal "visible" and informal "invisible" ways that ministers recruit their advisory agents, how their agents function, and whether existing regulatory measures create a transparent and accountable governance framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, the Philippine president signed the Executive Order no. 2 that required government agencies under the executive branch to implement Freedom of Information (FOI). Along with this, the eFOI Portal was created which aims to increase government transparency while making it easy for the citizens to file a request. As of June 2019, the portal has received 11,990 FOI requests across 366 government offices. However, a series of reports on the actual experience of users of eFOI Portal by the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism in December 2018 revealed the many problems of the FOI implementation. Among these are the high rates FOI requests being denied, overdue responses from government agencies, and unsatisfactory results for fulfilled FOI requests. And so, given that the goal of eFOI Portal is to promote transparency in the government and support the public disclosure of information, but user experience tells otherwise, this looked at the mechanisms resulting in this gap. In particular, it attempted to answer why eFOI requests are being rejected. Guided by Schatzki s conception of practices, thematic analysis of the sayings, or the actual conversations of citizens and government agencies were performed on the 346 randomly sampled FOI requests. The paper found out that citizens and government agencies in the Philippines have unique practices when performing FOI, some of which favours the outcome of FOI requests being rejected. Government agencies reject FOI requests mostly because they do not have the information being requested, they do not consider the request made by some citizens as a validform of FOI, and processing of FOI requests may be different from one agency to another. On the other hand, citizens also have some practices leading to FOI request denials such as requesting for research work, requesting for the government agencies' opinion on current issues, and submitting complaints. Furthermore, the rules allowed for government agencies to have their own rules in processing FOI requests. Also, there are socio-technical arrangements in the eFOI Portal such as limited categories for reasons used by FOI Officers of respective government agencies in rejecting FOI requests, absence of the appeals process within the system, and no user satisfaction feedback for the whole transaction. Both of the rules and system design provided the environment for the FOI practices to happen and perpetuate. Thus, in improving the performance of FOI implementation, designers of the system must take into account the unique practices of government agencies and citizens. Some of the design considerations suggested by this paper is adding an additional support layer before citizens can file an FOI request to government agencies and improving the feedback to the system such as user satisfaction and appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of AIS: Ars Iuris Salmanticensis is the property of Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper examines freedom of information bill, a policy for national development: the library's perspective. The provision of timely and accurate information from an authentic source(s) is a booster to national development. Freedom of Information is the right to access information held by government and public institutions. Libraries are positioned to provide and promote access to information which will translate to development of the society. Freedom of information is a necessity in order to salvage the nation Nigeria. This paper therefore, is an opinion paper which gives us an overview of the FOI bill in Nigeria, the relevance of the bill as a policy for national development such as providing credible evaluation of the performance of government regimes, openness and transparency in government. Challenges of FOI in Nigeria was also revealed, some of which are: lack of awareness, lack of information flow, corruption etc. The study concluded with the library's perspective on FOI which shows that libraries are seen as an information centres/agents that will provide the necessary information on the FOI to the public. The FOI bill as it is today in Nigeria only resides in the constitution of the Federal Republic and not in the hearts of individual citizens, it is the library and other information centres that will bring it to the heart of the individual in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is a systematic literature review that assembles scientific knowledge in local government transparency in the twenty-first Century. The study finds a remarkable growth in research on local government transparency in the first nineteen years, particularly in Europe and North America. Social, economic, political and institutional factors are found to account for this trend. In vogue among local governments is the use of information technology to enhance transparency. The pressure to become transparent largely comes from the passage of Freedom of Information Laws and open data initiatives of governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's version of a freedom of information law, Open Government Information Regulations (OGI Regulations), was enacted in January 2007 and took effect in May 2008. Since 2009, various levels of Chinese government agencies have consistently published annual OGI reports detailing how much government-held information was disclosed proactively and reactively in prior years via a multitude of communication channels. After analyzing OGI reports published in the last 12 years (2008 to 2019) by government agencies at central and provincial levels, this study identifies problems that hinder people from having more meaningful access to governmental information. When it comes to disclosure of information vital to public interest such as public health, China is still highly secretive, as exemplified by its initial mismanagement of the coronavirus epidemic that originated in Wuhan. It is also found that national defense and state security agencies in China operate in virtually complete darkness. In most cases, administrative reconsideration and judicial relief are ineffective in rectifying agency non-compliance. A disturbing trend is for courts and government agencies to make nondisclosure decisions for reasons not mentioned in the OGI Regulations and relevant laws, thus bypassing the legislation. Despite these egregious shortcomings, the Chinese government has established foundational freedom of information platforms, and its enforcement of proactive and reactive disclosure requirements under the law seems more forceful than many Western observers expected. However, unlike in liberal democracies where enactment of freedom of information (FOI) laws often leads to reduction of government secrecy, less corruption and stronger accountability, various rankings indicate that China fails to translate its hard-earned authoritarian transparency into accountability and better governance. Despite over a decade of rigorous enforcement of freedom of information law, China remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal Public Administration & Social Management / Administração Pública e Gestão Social is the property of Administracao Publica e Gestao Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A transparent government is one that publishes open data on the activities of its various bodies in a timely manner, either in response to public demands or on its own initiative. This means not only putting a halt to corruption, but also guaranteeing the right of citizens to know what governments are doing with their taxes. This study aims to select and review various sources of information about the e-government strategy, which involves open data and thus transparency. Efforts are made to identify the most important aspects and trends of new technologies applied to government entities, as well as the implications for decisionmaking and for improving the services provided by the Government to its citizens. The methodology was carried out following the steps of a literature review from various sources, according to eight categories associated with e-government. The study concludes that the influence and adoption of e-government in different countries contributes to bringing citizens closer to the State, increasing transparency and improving services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Chilena de Derecho is the property of Revista Chilena de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition. The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertainty for incumbents is a double-edged sword for institutional reform: on the one hand, it incentivizes the adoption of ever-growing transparency provisions; on the other, it jeopardizes the implementation capacity of public agencies by leading to severe administrative burdens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information is essential for the functioning of modern societies. Access to information denotes the right of citizens to obtain information regarding how they are governed. In 2011, Nigeria enacted the Freedom of Information Act, to ensure openness and transparency in public governance. This article evaluates the extent to which the legislation has strengthened the right of access to information in Nigeria. Through analysis of the provisions of the act and some decided cases, the article argues that challenges, both in the act's provisions and in its enforcement by the courts, have resulted in a "blunted" law that lacks the capacity to satisfy the people's expectations on the right of access to public information. Drawing on the experience of other jurisdictions where similar laws are operative (notably South Africa and India), the article suggests ways through which the implementation of the act could be made more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes an open data movement in an unusual context of highly developed digital economy and widespread popularity of e-government services in a country that is universally well-known as one of the global leaders in promoting information society and electronic democracy, but paradoxically demonstrating modest results in propagating a presumably related concept of open government data. In this regard, paying special attention to the investigation of main drivers, stakeholders and challenges of the open data movement in Estonia, the author argues that a highly centralized administrative policy that has been widely used previously by authorities in advancing various technology-driven public reforms, which partly explains a truly impressive advance of this Nordic state in e-government, e-commerce, e-banking and evoting, does not necessarily lead to same effective results in the open data domain. On the contrary, the presence of established democratic institutions and developed civil society as well as an incredibly advanced and dynamic private ICTindustry that values competition and professional curiosity along with a very strong sense of patriotism and adherence to a particular neighborhood deeply rooted in Estonian society has played a much more important role in diffusing the concept rather than just traditional government directives and strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses legal issues involving the right to privacy and transparency in government in Pennsylvania by examining the state's Right-to-Know Act of 1957 and the Right-to-Know law and the case Pennsylvania State Education Association v. Commonwealth. In the case, school employees filed a petition to prevent the Office of Open Records from disclosing their home addresses.

The article examines the results of a survey on the effects of Pennsylvania's right to privacy provisions on the right-to-know law (RTKL) requests in the state. The RTKL aims to promote governmental transparency by allowing citizens with access to the government's public records. Also cited is the ruling by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court in the case Department of Human Services v. Pennsylvanians for Union Reform, Inc.