Assessment of the Transparency of Spanish Local Public Administrations: Methodology and Results

Abstract

The availability of information about public management is a key factor in the democratic participation of citizens, as it enables public management to be assessed and makes contributions to the decision-making processes regarding public affairs. In this article, we present some results of the Infoparticipa Project, whose objective was to determine to what extent local public institutions meet the minimal requirements of transparency and whether there is a relationship between the behaviour of municipal governments and the number of inhabitants, the governing political party and the mayor's gender. In order to do this, in a first phase, the information published by the websites of the local public administrations was analysed through 41 indicators. In a second phase, the geolocalized outcomes were published and disseminated through the media and a consultancy procedure was offered to the administrations' politicians and policymakers. The results of the evaluation of municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants in six Spanish Autonomous Communities indicate that the information published by the councils is still very scarce, especially in those with fewer inhabitants. No clear relationships could be established between the political party governing in each municipality or the mayor's gender and the level of transparency on their websites. However, we have been able to confirm that the full application of the Project, including the consultancy phase, has led to an improvement in the information published by the municipalities in which it was applied.