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The aim of this paper is to examine the influence of the right to information laws on sustainability transparency in European local governments. This goal is novel, in that previous studies have examined the effects of various factors on the dissemination of government information (demographic, socioeconomic, political and financial) but not the contribution of legal factors to online transparency on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Our research question is this: Do information laws contribute to transparency on sustainability? Using the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines and a statistical regression analysis, we studied the websites of 106 local governments in ten European countries. The results obtained show that when transparency laws clearly stipulate the rules applicable and the procedures established for appeals, exceptions, refusals and requests, this can favour transparency on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Our findings advance understanding of this field and reinforce the basis for legal reforms to enhance sustainability transparency.

Although transparency on the sustainability of public services is an issue of urgent interest to both governments and academics, previous research in this area has mainly focused on developed European countries, and has paid insufficient attention to areas that are still developing, such as many Latin American countries. The aim of this study is to identify factors that promote transparency on sustainability by local governments in Latin America, in the view that greater transparency will help them meet the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Therefore, using content analysis and following the GRI guidelines, we analyze the economic, social and environmental information published on the websites of 200 large local governments in 18 Latin American countries. In addition, using linear regression and calculating the corresponding Spearman coefficients, we analyze the influence of idiosyncratic and systemic variables on the volume of information disclosed. Our findings show that certain factors—population size, education level, unemployment, the quality of legislation and political corruption—affect transparency on sustainability. The conclusions drawn from this analysis enable us to identify useful measures for enhancing transparency on sustainability, including the reform of transparency laws and the analysis and disclosure of citizens’ information demands., European Commission, Junta de Andalucia B1-SEJ-317-UGR18

One of the objectives of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) is to promote transparency and accountability of the public sector entities. But, at the same time, SAIs must improve their own transparency and accountability. The use of information and communication technologies plays an essential role in making this disclosure. The International Organization of the Supreme Audit Institution (INTOSAI) recognizes that communication is a strategic factor of SAIs. Studies have analyzed information dissemination practices carried out in developed countries. However, SAIs elsewhere, such as the Latin American and Caribbean, have not been the object of research. This chapter analyzes whether these SAIs are using the internet as a means to enhance transparency and interaction with stakeholders. The results indicate that, although in general the institutions analyzed publish the information required by INTOSAI, there is still ample room for improvement, especially regarding interaction with their stakeholders.

Developers and managers of websites are key players in conveying the transparency of governments. Although previous research has highlighted the need for further progress in transparency on sustainability, very few studies have considered how websites can better contribute to providing sustainability information. This paper identifies determinant factors that can help website developers and managers enhance the online transparency on sustainability provided by regional governments. In an empirical study of 17 Spanish regional governments, we identified technological factors (such as broadband availability and the online compilation of information) and transparency-stimulating factors (such as convergence with the information society, accessibility and usability) that can be useful to increase the volume of social, economic and environmental information published on their websites.

La presente tesis pretende entender al asentamiento informal de Lima Metropolitana a partir de la historia de la lucha cultural por la vivienda desde el siglo XX. Para esto se estudia las medidas que el Estado ha tomado frente a los asentamientos informales, la ascendente participación de los migrantes en la sociedad limeña y el constante crecimiento periférico de la metrópoli. Además, se estudian las características del fenómeno de la autoconstrucción.

Although the transparency and sustainability of governments are currently of great interest to researchers, few studies have specifically addressed these issues. Nevertheless, previous research has found sustainability transparency as a key issue in government–citizen relations, especially for local governments (LGs). The aim of this article is to identify factors that promote online transparency regarding the sustainability of public policies, by means of an empirical study of 62 LGs in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Southern Europe. Our results show that the prevailing administrative tradition may influence the degree of transparency of LGs, with population, socioeconomic, and financial factors being relevant.

Meme si les organisations internationales et la litterature existante reconnaissent l’importance des rapports sur la durabilite pour les gouvernements de nos jours, certaines etudes revelent que cette question n’a pas recu l’attention qu’elle merite et qu’elle doit des lors etre examinee de plus pres. Dans le present article, nous etudions la publication par les gouvernements locaux des informations sur les questions de durabilite, en analysant la relation entre les differents niveaux de divulgation des informations sur la durabilite et certaines variables socioeconomiques, financieres et demographiques. Compte tenu du recours accru a l’Internet par les gouvernements, la methodologie appliquee dans la presente etude consiste a analyser les sites Web de 55 grandes villes espagnoles pour y rechercher 61 elements recommandes dans les lignes directrices de la Global Reporting Initiative. En appliquant une regression lineaire multiple, nous avons analyse l’influence de treize facteurs sur les rapports sur la durabilite publies par ces autorites municipales. Les resultats indiquent que les informations sociales sont les plus repandues et que la population inactive a une influence positive sur la divulgation des informations sur la durabilite. Les principaux moyens d’ameliorer les pratiques en matiere de durabilite consistent a ameliorer la divulgation des informations economiques et en matiere d’environnement, par la publication de rapports formels sur la durabilite et en ameliorant la coordination des informations publiees individuellement par differents departements.Remarques a l’intention des praticiensLes resultats obtenus font ressortir plusieurs questions particulierement interessantes pour les gestionnaires. D’une part, la crise financiere dans le secteur public a fait ressortir la necessite de legitimer les actions du gouvernement. De plus, l’incidence de la variable « population inactive » sur la divulgation des informations sur la durabilite indique qu’il existe un lien important entre la structure de la population et la divulgation de ces informations, ce qui fait ressortir la necessite de considerer l’âge de la population et son evolution au fil du temps comme la raison d’etre de la creation de rapports specifiques sur la durabilite. La demande d’informations sur la durabilite de la part du public ne depend pas du niveau d’impots payes. Enfin, le niveau d’autonomie des gouvernements locaux n’a aucune influence sur les informations divulguees a propos de leurs engagements en matiere de durabilite economique.

Although international organizations and prior literature have recognized the importance of sustainability reporting for governments nowadays, some studies have revealed that this is an issue that has received little attention and thus needs further investigation. This article studies the publication of information on sustainability issues by local governments, analysing the relationship between diverse levels of sustainability information disclosure and some socioeconomic, financial and population variables. Based on the increased use of the Internet by governments, the methodology applied in this study is to analyse the websites of 55 major towns and cities in Spain, seeking 61 items that are recommended in the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. By applying multiple linear regression analysis, we analysed the influence of 13 factors on the sustainability reporting provided by these municipal authorities. The results show that social information is the most widespread, and that the dependent population has a positive impact on the sustainability disclosures. The major opportunities to improve sustainability practices lie in improving the disclosure of economic and environmental information, through the publication of formal sustainability reports and the enhanced coordination of information published individually by different departments. Points for practitioners The results obtained highlight several issues of particular interest for managers. On the one hand, the public sector financial crisis has heightened the need to legitimize government actions. Moreover, the incidence of the variable ‘dependent population’ on the disclosure of sustainability information suggests that there is an important relation between the population structure and such disclosure, highlighting the need to consider the age of the population and its evolution over time as the basis for creating specific reports on sustainability. The public demand for information on sustainability does not depend on the level of taxes paid. Finally, local governments are not motivated by their level of financial autonomy with respect to information about their commitments on economic sustainability.

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.

The aim of this article is to analyse the level of public financial information disclosed by certain Arab countries in the Middle East, in view of calls for greater transparency and international trends in this respect. Accordingly, we examined the financial reports published online by the selected countries, contrasting them with the financial statements and contents proposed in the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) issued by the International Federation of Accountants. The results show that the Arab countries analysed present a low level of public financial information. They all present similar degrees of compliance with IPSAS 1 and 2. Nonetheless, we can observe that aid-receiving countries are implementing the policies stipulated in the international recommendations in response to the demands of donors and international agencies. Countries with oil revenues experience less pressure to implement the IPSAS. Points for practitioners The findings of this article may be of interest to public managers in all the selected Arab countries, especially those in the public administrations of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and to consulting companies in the Gulf region. The analysis made of financial legislation and of the IPSAS 1 and 2 indexes for the selected countries may encourage them to initiate a process of financial reforms.

espanolEn el actual contexto de crisis, los ciudadanos demandan al sector publico mayor transparencia y rendicion de cuentas. Este trabajo pretende avanzar en el conocimiento de las practicas de sostenibilidad en la administracion publica. Para ello proponemos comparar la divulgacion de informacion sobre sostenibilidad realizada por distintos gobiernos regionales, analizando las webs de los mismos mediante un analisis de contenido, usando para ello un listado de items basado en las guias del Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).Nuestros resultados muestran que los gobiernos regionales espanoles difunden dos tercios de la informacion requerida por el GRI, presentando la informacion social un nivel de respuesta mayor y la informacion general un menor nivel de difusion. Ademas, aquellos gobiernos regionales con mayor compromiso ambiental publican mas informacion sobre sostenibilidad. De nuestras conclusiones podemos destacar que la mala situacion financiera que atraviesan no parece impulsar a los gobiernos regionales espanoles a divulgar informacion sobre sostenibilidad EnglishIn the current crisis, citizens are demanding greater public sector transparency and accountability. In this paper, we advance the understanding of sustainability practices in public administration. We propose to compare the dissemination of sustainability of various regional governments, analyzing the websites of these regional governments through a content analysis, using for this purpose a list of items obtained from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. Our results show that Spanish regional governments, spread two-thirds of the information in the GRI guidelines, being the social information which presents a higher level of response and corresponding general aspects which has a lower level of dissemination. In addition, those regional governments with greater environmental commitment are those who publish more information about sustainability. From our conclusions, we emphasize that the poor financial situation of the Spanish regional governments does not seem to promote them to disseminate information about sustainability

Although the importance of sustainability reporting in the public sector is widely recognized, there are few studies about this issue. This paper analyzed the practices of diffusion of information on sustainability in local governments. So, we observed the Websites of the largest local governments in Spain using a list of items from the guidelines of GRI and comparing the results with the results of the Spanish regional governments. Our findings show that local governments reported some information (50% of the items), but less than regional governments (60%). Social information is the most widespread and environmental information is the least reported.

Gulf Cooperation Council countries are seeking to develop their governmental financial information systems to make them more informative and transparent. The aim of this article is to determine the extent to which Qatar has developed its governmental financial information systems in response to the enormous degree of economic and administrative development in recent decades, and to identify the most important factors that have influenced the reforms made in this area. For this purpose, Luder's Financial Management Reform Process Model (2001) was referred to and semi-structured interviews were carried out with governmental accounting officials in Qatar in June 2011.

In the current socioeconomic context, the question of local government sustainability transparency is of great interest to policymakers, managers, citizens and other stakeholders, and yet one to which previous research has devoted little specific attention. At the same time, the Internet has become an instrument of good governance worldwide and government entities in Europe have strived to promote e-government to improve transparency towards citizens. The aim of this study was to identify factors that can help politicians and managers improve practices of sustainability information disclosed by European local governments. To do so, an empirical study was conducted of 91 municipalities in nine countries, comparing three main administrative cultures. Our analysis of the study results highlights various demographic, socioeconomic, financial and legal factors that may be useful to policymakers and managers in promoting the online provision of sustainability information in Anglo-Saxon, Nordic and Southern European countries.

This article describes a project of housings and public spaces in Villa Maria del Triunfo, in Lima, Peru. The description of the project is based on four design strategies that try to fit correctly to its environmental condition, thus it intends to contribute to the search of a project model appropriate for the hillsides of Metropolitan Lima where the informal settlements are. As an introduction, the informal settlements will be questioned, the value of a building will be set out and the work of an urban development plan will be emphasized.

This article analyzes the effects of changes in the political system-from dictatorship to democracy-on financial information systems and on their reform. We chose to study Argentina, Chile and Paraguay as these three countires share a similar geographic and social-political context. They all had dictatorial governments during the second half of the 20th century and peformed a transition to democratic systems in the 1990s. We provide a brief overview of the political context and of government accounting regulations, both before and after the transition. We propose an adaptation of Luder's contingency model to be applied to the situation in these three countries. This model enables us to identify the principal agents and motives favouring or prejudicing the implementation of reforms to financial information systems. Ours is the first academic study of reforms to government financial information systems in three Latin American countries that have made the transition from dictatorship to democracy, identifying the contingent factors that have affected the adoption of reforms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Local governments in many countries are implementing administrative reforms within the framework of New Public Management (NPM) in order to improve the quality and productivity of public services. The use of performance indicators and benchmarking facilitates evaluation of efficiency regarding the provision of such services and favours the acquisition of better practices. The problems that may arise in the introduction of performance indicators in local government mainly concern the consensual design and standardization of indicators for various entities, the method to be used for calculations and the selection of analytical criteria to be applied to the values obtained. In this article, we identify obstacles that may be encountered in achieving a standardized definition of performance indicators within local government and, on the basis of learning from the practical experience of several large city councils in Spain, formulate strategies to resolve these problems, taking note of the viability a...

The usefulness of performance indicators increases when organizations compare their data. However, most discussions have failed to emphasize two lines of action that could improve the relevance of such comparisons: a) agreement among service managers on the indicators to be used in the evaluation; b) homogenization of the indicators to be used by organizations, and of the process used to calculate them. In this context, this paper proposes a methodology based on the participation of and consensus among managers, which helps to standardize the construction and presentation of performance indicators. The aim of this proposal is to improve the comparative evaluation of organizations. Finally, in order to test the proposal, a practical application is carried out on the local culture departments of nine large municipalities in southern Spain.

Administrative decentralisation in Spain has been a continuous process since the restoration of democracy. However, while significant transfers of powers and funding have taken place between the central and regional governments, this is not the case with respect to local authorities. This situation, coupled with borrowing constraints and the budgetary balance required of Spanish councils under Spanish law, as well as the present economic crisis, is causing financial difficulties in municipal accounts. In this paper, we examine a sample of 2,364 local authorities, stratified by population size, for the period 2005–2008, with the aim of analysing the finances of Spanish local councils and observing the effects of the crisis on their financial condition.

The public sector is involved in a context of change. Decentralization, performance measurement and a greater emphasis on outputs are some of the main changes. To give public sector managers efficient tools, the adoption of what is considered to be private sector management styles and techniques is now becoming commonplace. The Balanced Scorecard approach has emerged as a new tool that meets many of the above-mentioned challenges faced by public organizations. Nonetheless, few reports of detailed experience in public sector entities are available. This research paper offers an insight into the process of elaborating the Balanced Scorecard for a public sector agency of sport services. El sector público está inmerso en un contexto de cambios, entre ellos la descentralización, la medición de la ejecución y un mayor énfasis en los resultados. Para dar a los gestores del sector público herramientas eficientes, la adopción de estilos y técnicas del sector privado se está convirtiendo en una práctica común. El Balanced Scorecard ha emergido en las administraciones públicas como una nueva herramienta que satisface las necesidades de información y gestión de muchos de los cambios mencionados. No obstante, es poca la literatura disponible sobre su aplicación en las entidades del sector público. Esta investigación ofrece una visión del proceso de elaboración de un Balanced Scorecard para una agencia pública de servicios deportivos. This research was carried out with financial support from the Spanish National R&D Plan through research project number SEJ2007-67441-ECON-FEDER (Ministry of Science and Innovation) and from the Regional Government of Andalusia (Spain), Centre of Andalusian Studies (PRI160/09) and from the Department of Innovation, Science and Enterprise (Research project number P09-SEJ-5395).