In the culture of accountability, through the management of the service, it is necessary to report not only on the legality of the acts, but also the efficiency, effectiveness, and cheapness with which the entity carried out its actions and complied its mission. A modern democracy is based on three fundamental axes: Respect for suffrage, respect for work and a transparent system of Accountability.
Democracy and accountability are a solid pairing. Information transparency is a substantial element of accountability. Political transparency is the obligation of governments to account to citizens for all their actions, especially the use of public money and thus prevent cases of corruption.
In a figurative sense, the term "transparency" is used to characterize a social practice guided by sincerity and by perfect or almost perfect accessibility to all related information, and which concerns and interests public opinion, or a sector of it, or even a single individual. In other words, it is the concern to explain, to make understood, to recognize errors or malpractice, to open files and notes and memories, to accurately describe facts and circumstances.
The main objective of transparency is to establish a relationship of trust between whoever requests or demands transparency and whoever gives it, and opposes the concept of opacity (Lack of transparency).
In the framework of public administration, transparency is a mechanism that prevents acts of corruption and allows citizens to know the internal functioning of the institutions and how the funds they receive are managed. For any citizen, the difficulty lies in knowing if the information that they have provided is really clear, objective, and corresponding to reality. A transparent government is one that fights in the first instance to guide the country on the path of true social development, which implies an increase in the quality of life of its citizens.
DECA-Equipo Pueblo, AC indicates that “Transparency is an institutional quality that allows the public to see the structures, operation and decision-making processes of our organizations. This implies the creation of mechanisms that guarantee that, at all times, any person can know what happens inside our institution through the documentation of the reasons for each of our decisions, their costs, and the origin and destination of the resources used ”.
It is determined from the recent National Survey of Perception of Transparency in the Public Sector of 2019 (ENPT) carried out by the General Comptroller of the Republic of Costa Rica in 2019 that, among other aspects that citizens consider that it is necessary to improve the way in which information is made known in the services of: health, safety, municipal services and education and to eliminate or solve the barriers to access public information, respondents first mention the improvement in attitude and customer service by of public officials.
The citizen survey conducted by the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic reflects areas of institutional neglect, showing an important space of challenge to the institutionality, in terms of transparency; bastion of efficiency and prevention of corruption. Likewise, in the survey, 71% of the citizens consulted indicate that the public sector is not transparent in the information it provides and questions the transparency of 40% of public institutions for omitting the publication of the minutes of the board of directors' meetings and of the audit reports and other documents.
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Bibliography of the article Transparency is essential for Accountability
- DECA Equipo Pueblo: Accountability, access to information and transparency in public budgets 2005. DECA Equipo Pueblo's mission is to be an actor of public interest that acts in favor of the establishment of democracy in Mexico, which promotes debate, the elaboration of proposals and the incidence in the subjects of the agenda of social and economic development, of justice and of citizen participation in the local, national, regional and international spheres. Team Pueblo Foundation. The Organization was founded in 1977, with the motivation to serve the most vulnerable and poor sectors of rural, indigenous and popular urban areas in marginalized conditions. Part of an ecclesial experience,through the Ecclesial Base Communities (CEBs) that intend to work for and with the poor to achieve equity and well-being. Equipo Pueblo was founded by Alex Morelli op, and Ángel Torres, under the auspices of Bishop Sergio Méndez Arceo, Don José Álvarez Icaza and Elio Arturo Villaseñor G
- National Survey of Perception of Transparency in the Public Sector of 2019 (ENPT) carried out by the General Comptroller of the Republic of Costa Rica in 2019.
