Transparent government: Parliamentary and legal accountability in an information age

  • Authors:

  • Albert Jacob Meijer

  • Affiliations:

  • Utrecht School of Governance, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, 3511 ZC Utrecht, The Netherlands. Tel.: +1 31 30 2539568/ Fax: +1 31 30 2537200/ E-mail: a.meijer@usg.uu.nl

  • Venue:
  • Information Polity
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

There are several indications that the (long-term) memory of electronic government is in danger and that this decline in organizational memory may have important negative effects on accountability. Case study research in the Netherlands, however, highlights the positive effects of the use of information and communication technologies for parliamentary and legal accountability. Although technological safeguards for authenticity may be lacking and data may not always be preserved in a durable way, parliamentary and legal fact-finding is generally facilitated. The use of ICTs leads to more informational and analytical transparency of government organizations: more data is recorded and there are also more ways to retrieve this data. This increased transparency is an unintentional effect of efforts to improve the support and management of business processes.