What is Political Dimension

This work tries to assess to what extent e-government enables transparency, openness and, hence, accountability in public administrations. For this purpose, local European Union (EU) administrations are analysed, encompassing all the different types of public administration styles of Western countries. Although almost all governments have opened a Web site and reports from multilateral organizations highlight the benefits of e-government initiatives for transforming the relationship between administration and citizens; the results of our analyses show that these benefits are far from being achieved because the e-government projects are still in their early stages. Even though the capacity of the Internet for the dissemination of information improves accountability and makes benchmarking easier, our research results also show that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) do not promote financial accountability beyond legal requirements. In conclusion, ICTs have not had a dramatic impact on public accountability in practice, even in countries that are at the forefront of digital technologies.