Transparency as a vehicle for accountability and trust: the discrepancy between formal and useful transparency

Transparency promises to heal governments by enhancing their relationships with constituents and improving their capacity to meet their objectives. Some studies show that the practice of transparency is still limited to some policy areas or to comply with law requirements (Heald 2006). Information and communication technologies (ICT) promise to enhance governments' accessibility and openness. However, due to ICT, in most cases, government produce too much information that does not necessarily meet their constituents' needs. As a consequence to enhance transparency and to make governments work better and more efficiently (Norris, 2001; Northrop et al, 1990), they would have to embed in their transparency strategy citizens' preferences for government information. This should contribute to reach further levels of tangible rather than formal transparency and might eventually contribute to facilitate government-constituents relations.