Day 59 – Q 5.While transparency reduces corruption, good governance goes beyond transparency in achieving openness. Openness means involving the stakeholders in decision-making process. Transparency is the right to information while openness is the right to participation. Comment.

5. While transparency reduces corruption, good governance goes beyond transparency in achieving openness. Openness means involving the stakeholders in decision-making process. Transparency is the right to information while openness is the right to participation. Comment. 

जबकि पारदर्शिता भ्रष्टाचार को कम करती है, सुशासन खुलेपन को प्राप्त करने में पारदर्शिता से परे है। खुलेपन का अर्थ है निर्णय लेने की प्रक्रिया में हितधारकों को शामिल करना। पारदर्शिता सूचना का अधिकार है जबकि खुलापन भागीदारी का अधिकार है। टिप्पणी करें।

Introduction:

Open government is the governing doctrine which holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight

Transparency is the condition of openness of system where no aspect whether related to information, principles, actions, rules etc is hidden from the stakeholders in terms of accessibility.

Openness is accommodating attitude or opinion, as in receptivity to new ideas, behaviours, cultures, peoples, environments, experiences, etc, different from the familiar, conventional, traditional, or one’s own.

Body

Significance of transparency:

• Democracy, accountability and participation: Absence of, or inaccessibility to, information often creates a sense of disempowerment, mistrust and frustration.
• Increased efficiency and effectiveness: Greater transparency can also bring benefits to government themselves, directly or indirectly. Therefore, transparency is also considered to be a key component of public policy and efficiency.
• Against corruption: Free and guaranteed access to information enables citizens, the media and law enforcement agencies to use official records as a means to uncover cases of corruption and maladministration

Significance of openness:

• Increased public participation: Open government – increased disclosure of information and enhanced citizen participation in government decision-making is a powerful way to address the complex governance and development challenges we have faced for so long
• Openness benefits citizens: Open governments are built on robust and inclusive engagement between citizens and governments. Fluid two-way communication between citizens and governments allows governments to better understand citizens’ true needs and to respond to those needs.
• Inclusion of various sectors: voice of marginalized sections of the society, gender inclusion and financial inclusion can be considered.

Example: RTI Act achieved its prime objective of bringing about a qualitative change in the governance of this country by bringing transparency but recent amendments of The Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2019 could have taken inputs from the public to make it less controversial and efficient.

Disadvantages:

• Adverse effects: Instead of yielding more accountability, however, these reforms [transparency reforms] have yielded more lobbying, more expense, more delay, and more indecision.
• Difficult to work under surveillance: Government officials cannot properly deliberate, collaborate and compromise when everything they are doing is being watched.
• Personal details of individuals: The difficulty of balancing further transparency of government, while also protecting the privacy of personal information, or information about identifiable individuals that is in the hands of the government.
• Data protection: Dealing with distinctions between data protection regulations between private and public sector actors because governments may access information collected by private companies which are not controlled by as stringent laws.
• Protecting citizens: There is also concern for protecting citizens’ privacy so they are not exposed to “adverse consequences, retribution or negative repercussions” from information provided by governments

Conclusion

Openness and transparency centrally defines the processes, mediums and commitment a government chooses as the basis of how it shares information with its citizens. The importance of this process is that democracy requires citizen participation, involvement and meaningful engagement such that a government is able to lay bare its operational activities for open scrutiny by the public