Transparency and Accessibility in Municipalities: The Case of Social Services in Spain

Municipalities in Spain hold the political status of basic and public organizations. Given the importance of this type of organization to citizens, achieving a system of transparency requires involving citizens in the management of public services provided by municipal institutions. Cases of corruption, embezzlement, fraud, and abuse of power in governments have prompted growing demand from society to access public information. In response, governments have been forced to be more transparent in their activities (Ferraz Esteves de Araujo and Tejedo-Romero, 2016).

Transparency is a critical condition for accountability, good governance, and democracy (Erlingsson and Wittberg, 2018). The public must be able to evaluate its government's performance and depends on the access to information to do so (Mendel, 2006). Access requires an intensive system of Right-to-Information laws through the encouragement, assistance, or insistence of the international community. Such legislation is especially needed in the European Union (EU) countries’ accession process (Trapnell and Lemieux, 2014) because public authorities deny transparency by withholding the required pertinent information more often than they should (Nigam, 2015).

Literature on transparency determinants is evolving but incipient. So far, it has typically focused on national governments, neglecting the local level (Albalate del Sol, 2013). The demand for transparency is currently more evident in citizens’ search for important and valuable information to make decisions, their need to know the level of efficiency and efficacy with which resources have been managed, and their desire to know how resources are allocated to public services. Transparency mechanisms are also needed to improve public managers’ decision making and optimize the information then disclosed to citizens. The concept of transparency is based precisely on citizens’ ability to access the information that municipalities provide through their websites.

The paper's goals are, firstly, to highlight the importance of a transparency culture, specifically in municipality-level management of social services; secondly, to develop the most suitable theoretical framework to analyze this issue; thirdly, to design and propose a “Transparency Evaluation Model” for social services (MTSS); and finally, to test the viability of and variables influencing the proposed model.

Regardless of the concept of transparency adopted or the goals transparency development seeks to achieve, it is essential to determine both the benefits transparency provides and the difficulties involved in achieving an acceptable level of transparency. Transparency benefits citizens by enabling rectification of improper behavior and abuses of power, encouraging honesty among managers, improving participation and responsibility at all levels, and increasing efficiency and effectiveness in resource management. Difficulties encountered in applying systems to improve transparency fall into three categories: (1) from an economic point of view, high investment (economic, human, and ethical) to achieve global change through personnel training and technological tools; (2) from a political perspective, resistance among some public managers to transparency, since the concept may go against their personal interests; and (3) from an administrative perspective, the challenge of implementing innovative processes, new procedures, routines, and paperwork. Transparency in public administrations makes political and economic decisions more open and promotes organizations’ accountability. The key to enhancing transparency is to motivate officials to disclose basic information where managers’ behavior can be adjusted to adopt best practices (Del Campo et al., 2020). Along the same lines, Barbosa and Hortale (2016) argue that transparency and social control are important elements in improving processes of municipal management.

The Model of Transparency of Social Services (MTSS) was developed in stages to permit us to answer the research questions posed. The first stage was a bibliographic review of the concept of transparency and of prior studies of transparency at the municipal level. The next stage analyzed the legal framework of transparency. The third and final stage identified the role of social services in the Spanish context, as well as leading models that have measured accessibility in information searches.

After completing the initial documentation stage, we proposed a model to evaluate transparency (MTSS). We then applied the model to the data sample, analyzing the data using SPSS software. This analysis enabled us to draw a series of conclusions from the statistical results obtained from the application of the model.

This paper contributes to the literature on government transparency by analyzing the transparency level of local social services, generating a new measure of transparency, and developing an MTSS based on the postulates of agency and legitimacy theory. The results obtained from applying the MTSS indicate that Spanish local governments must stop following their public managers’ interests in providing only compulsory financial information and deliver all necessary information. This study also contributes to the debate around transparency by developing a municipal transparency index based on the information available on local government official websites, along the lines of Da Cruz et al.'s (2016) development of this index in Portuguese local government. Finally, our study defines and tests a model that facilitates and improves comparison among municipalities to establish benchmarks and re-engineer practice to improve control and quality of the information to which citizens have access. Our study thus not only enhances transparency and citizen interaction but also contributes to constructing a theoretical and empirical framework to aid both academics and practitioners in measuring transparency and advancing accountability.

There are currently three leading models for measuring transparency: Value for Money (VFM), Transparency International Spain (TI-Spain), and Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (Spanish acronym FEMP).

VFM is the philosophy of transparency implemented in the United Kingdom (culture, knowledge, and processes). Three agencies have adopted this concept: the Audit Commission, the Care Quality Commission, and Ofsted-Office.

TI-Spain is the Spanish Delegation for International Transparency, which seeks to create global awareness. It has developed several transparency indexes, such as the ITA (Index of Transparency of the Town Halls), which is based on 80 indicators.

Method for proposing a model to Measure the Transparency of City Councils in Social Services: MTSS

Figure 1 shows the proposed model applied in this study. This model has two facets: first, indicators that determine the information sought (57 indicators on social services of the FEMP and 11 ITA indicators on transparency law); and second, selection of the 38 municipalities in which to search for these indicators (on the municipalities’ respective websites). Applying the indicators to the municipalities, we obtain results that enable us to perform the subsequent analysis.

Fig. 1

Because many governments have promoted transparency and openness of their actions through Internet, we must currently promote and measure the transparency achieved through these websites, as proposed by Bertot, Jaeger, and Grimes (2010). The model proposed below is highly significant in this effort.

We adapt the concept of transparency to the MTSS model by understanding transparency as the citizen's ability to access the information that Spanish municipalities provide on their web pages (based on the theoretical references).

The following formula is used to calculate the MTSS indicator: MTSS=Percentage of presence of MTSS indicators*Total average of degree of ease of locating information. {\boldsymbol{MTSS\; =\; Percentage\;of\;presence\;of\;MTSS\;indicators\;^*\;Total\;average\;of\;degree\;of\;ease\;of\;locating\;information.}}

The calculations included two main variables:

Percentage of presence indicators: total number of indicators of social services in the model (68) that were located on the municipality website (even if only one).

Average degree of ease of locating the information: Accessibility of social services data, ranked using values from 1 to 5.

Table 7 summarizes the results obtained by applying this model to the websites of the 38 selected municipalities.

The results obtained for the social service management areas are displayed in Figure 2. Note the great disparity in areas of social services, indicating the need to identify the factors influencing the MTSS results. Information is not provided on the internal factors from the city council itself, and there is reluctance to provide this information. Other types of factors include the presence of poor economic-financial results (such as indebtedness level).

Fig. 2

The external factors that do not depend on the city council are total population and population over 65 years old. To find the relationship between the MTSS and the internal and external factors that can influence degree of transparency, we selected a sample composed of the following variables: MTSS by city council (values from 0 to 5), Total population, Population over 65 years old, and Indebtedness level (in thousands of euros) (Camaño-Alegre et al., 2013; Vila I Vila, 2013; Sol, 2013; Esteller-Moré and Polo Otero, 2012; Guillamón et al., 2011; López et al., 2011; Serrano-Cinca et al., 2009; García and García, 2008) (see Figure 2).

To answer the third research question, we first ran two multivariate regressions. The first analyzed the connection between the transparency variable and the sociodemographic and economic variables such as population, age, and debt level. The second analyzed the same variables but distinguished the population by gender. The results of both analyses are shown in Table 8.

The results obtained show that the MTSS index maintains an inversely proportional relationship to the total population (−2.513, 0.082) and indebtedness level (−0.69, 0.071). The results also show a direct relationship to the population over 65 years (3.715, 0.000). Moreover, by gender, we see that Male is directly related to the dependent variable (11.952, 0.056), whereas Female is inversely related (−17.014, 0.023). Finally, in both cases, the variable population over 65 years is significant.

To deepen this analysis, we ran another stepwise backward multivariate regression to obtain more evidence on transparency in municipalities according to the level of presence in the different areas of social services (see Table 9).

With the exception of the area Cost (0.310, 0.759), the results show that the variable MTSS depends on all the areas: % total presence by activity_area (0.038, 0.000), % total presence by budget_area (0.03, 0.069), % total presence by coverage_area (0.068, 0.000), % total presence by environment_area (0.022, 0.000), and % total presence by transparency law_area (0.03, 0.000).

Finally, we ran another stepwise backward multivariate regression to gain more evidence on transparency in municipalities, this time to determine the ranking of social service areas according to the transparency level (see Table 10).

The results are similar to those from the previous regression. The variable MTSS depends on all the areas, with the exception of Costs: MTSS by activity_area (0.16, 0.000), MTSS by budget_area (0.42, 0.095), MTSS by coverage_area (0.228, 0.006), MTSS by environment_area (0.113, 0.000), and MTSS by transparency law_area (0.08, 0.000).

Bibliographic analysis and analysis of the quantitative results and the model constructed lead to some general and some more specific conclusions.

No consensus exists on the concept of transparency, perhaps due to the merely incipient legal initiative to promote all the issues related to transparency. Despite the complexity and cost involved, implementation of transparency systems is the way forward for modern societies.

Although municipal transparency must be assessed by evaluating overall management of the organization, transparency can also be measured for smaller management areas, such as social services. The fact that Spanish social services are in a period of recession (ADYGSS, 2014) is sufficient reason to seek or implement new initiatives that could contribute positively to managing this type of service.

In the Information Age, when public authorities should reveal useful and timely information proactively, these authorities often end up denying transparency by withholding the required information (Nigam, 2015). For Bonson, Torres, Royo, and Flores (2012), this information is not accessible to citizens because it is very difficult to locate. No homogeneous models exist for the publication of information or corporate dialogue, and the use of Internet tools to promote e-participation is still in the early stages at local level. The structure and organization of open government portals are currently unsuited to supporting transparency for accountability—a clear objective of open government efforts (Lourenço, 2015). To remedy this situation, an appeal could be made to the local authorities managing social services to establish homogeneous guidelines to structure the relevant information they should publish.

The results show different degrees of both accessibility between the municipalities and transparency by areas, the best being areas covered by the Law of Transparency and the worst the area of Costs and Budget.

We find no significant differences in transparency by areas and municipalities. This finding reinforces Moreno-Sarda, Molina-Rodriguez-Navas, and Simelio-Sola (2017), which shows that the information municipalities provide to citizens is still insufficient in many cases, despite the time granted to the municipalities to adjust to the law.

The results also show that population size influences transparency in some areas more than others, along the lines of Ortiz-Rodríguez, Navarro-Galera, and Alcaraz-Quiles (2018). Our results show an inverse relationship: a larger population does not imply more transparency. These results differ from those of Albalate del Sol (2013), who indicates that large municipalities report better transparency indexes. We find the worst results in provincial capitals, touristic cities, and mayors with absolute majority. Next, the population over 65 influences transparency; the higher the number of elderly, the greater the transparency. We argue two fundamental reasons for this result. First, the population over 65 represents a very high percentage of the Spanish population (around 19%), according to Pérez Díaz et al. (2020). Second, this group is especially interested in social services and therefore demands information about them.

Economic and financial resources are inversely related to transparency. That is, the higher the level of debt, the less information will be shown to citizens. The transparency index is also strongly linked to all of the transparency areas reviewed except cost. This situation may be caused by low levels of transparency regulation in this area, in other words, by high opacity—a challenge that suggests a direction for further study.

A major contribution of this study is its construction of a model that can be used to initiate a process of homogenization of information on these services at local level, as well as in other municipal areas beyond social services. The MTSS is much simpler than the other existing models and includes many conceptual elements of transparency. It can also be used or adapted to measure transparency in other countries. Further, the MTSS promotes homogenization of information to improve transparency. As Bauhr and Grimes (2012) assert, with policymakers and researchers focus increasing attention on the importance of government transparency, the demand for greater conceptual clarity and authoritative measures on government transparency increases. Our model seeks to meet this demand. Finally, our study's definition and development of a model to facilitate and improve comparison among municipalities constitutes a step towards benchmarking and re-engineering to improve control and quality of the information to which citizens have access, potentially enhancing transparency and citizen interaction.

The most important limitations detected during our study affect the empirical research, specifically the application of the model. The complexity of the information search process and the amount of time needed to locate the information are limitations. We were unable to locate the information for some indicators at the time the information was tracked. In addition, the characteristics of the information on social services published by the municipalities prevented us from performing historical analysis, as there is no information on the indicators for earlier time periods. Finally, as not all countries have similar statistics and the sample is limited to a small number of municipalities, generalization of the results is not assured.

The conclusions drawn in this paper add detail to Layne and Lee (2001), who observe that e-government presents a series of challenges for public administrations. Addressing these challenges must proceed through several stages, and transparency processes are complicated and need space and time to mature.

Future lines of research will focus on the need to establish national policies, laws, or recommendations to generate local governments’ achievement of similar levels of transparency to avoid social dilemmas, as suggested by García-Sánchez, Frias-Aceituno, and Rodríguez-Domínguez (2013). It would also be interesting to study whether local governments report more or less strategic and socio-economic information when subjected to strong media pressure, since the press tends to focus on unusual and negative news and ignore other issues, such as the environment (Cuadrado-Ballesteros, Frias-Aceituno, and Martinez-Ferrero, 2014).

Another different but very useful line of future research could address accessibility to the citizen of information on social services at municipal level. As Bonsón, Royo, and Ratkai (2015) show, communication strategies in citizen participation are a fundamental factor in improving effectiveness of the information provided in promoting electronic participation.

In addition to all of the trends mentioned in the theoretical framework of this study, another approach that focuses on quality of information in transparency is gaining increasing strength and support (López Díaz, 2014; Dewi, Azam, and Yusoff, 2019; Sofyani, Riyadh, and Fahlevi, 2020). This focus also represents a promising way to advance the study of transparency.