Assessing public preferences and the level of transparency in government using an exploratory approach

Maria Cucciniello*, Nicola Belle, Greta Nasi, Giovanni Valotti

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Any information disclosed by governments should serve the purpose it is meant to fulfill. This is an underlying pillar of transparency. Our article assesses whether the information citizens consider to be most relevant for interaction with the authorities is actually disclosed. Our research was conducted on the population of the 117 Italian provincial capitals. A sample of 500 Italian citizens were interviewed with the purpose of understanding which type of information they consider most relevant, given the choice of institutional, political, financial, and service delivery-related information. The results indicate that Italian provincial capitals currently fail to publish the information that citizens consider to be most relevant: Despite differences in opinions among users, the sample we analyzed tends to rate the importance of service-delivery transparency and financial transparency higher than institutional or political transparency, whereas most information disclosed by Italian provincial capitals is associated with data they are obliged to disclose in order to comply with transparency regulations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)571-586
Number of pages16
JournalSocial science computer review
Volume33
Issue number5
Early online date17 Dec 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2015

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • transparency
  • ICT
  • citizen preferences

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