Transparency, Transparencycy And Privacy

The general meaning of transparency implies openness, or see-through, which is then applied to socio-politics with regards to accessing information and governmental records to better enable knowledge sharing and accountability. Finel and Lord (1999) define transparency as legal, political, and institutional structures that make internal information about a government and society available to actors both inside and outside of domestic political systems. According to Ann Florini (1998; 2002; 2008), transparency is the opposite of secrecy and a choice encouraged by changing attitudes about what constitutes appropriate behavior. Gupta (2008) and Mason (2008) further highlight the complex, contested, and important nature of transparency as a tool

Scholarly interest in transparency has enhanced our understanding of information sharing, accountability, and the removal of corruption, secrecy, and other kinds of misconduct (Flyverbom et al. 2016). Finel and Lord (1999) further argue that governments willing to provide data about policy actions and decisions are also more likely to permit better information flows of all kinds. Transparency, enabled by visibility, also has become a virtual stand-in for democracy by way of observation, clarity, and behavior (Flyverbom et al. 2016; Christensen and Cheney 2015). A fundamental part of democracy is, after all, consent from the public being governed, and that consent is not only without merit but ultimately meaningless if the public is not informed (Florini

OECD has noted that Electronic government particularly refers to the use of the Internet as a tool to achieve better government (OECD 2003). Effective e-government seeks to achieve greater efficiency in government performance by making services easier to access, ensure accuracy, and improved efficiency (Almarabeh and Abu Ali, 2010). While government is still seen as inefficient, ineffective, or unresponsive and depriving citizens of abilities to engage in public affairs, e-government becomes a natural extension of the technological revolution that has accompanied the knowledge society by adding new concepts such as transparency, accountability, and citizen participation in the evaluation of government performance (Mohammad et al. 2009). E-government has the potential to increase transparency in public administration by making it easier to relay information of activities to those being governed (Drüke 2007). La Porte, Demchak, and De Jong (2002) also argue that a change in current management techniques to include more collaborative relationships can help government become more efficient, effective, and