Popular Financial Reports as Fiscal Transparency Mechanisms: An Assessment Using the Fiscal Transparency Index for the Citizen User

ABSTRACT

Popular financial reports (PFRs) are intended to increase transparency by providing financial information to a non-technical, citizen audience. We examine the extent to which PFRs are meeting the goal of transparency by developing a 23-criteria fiscal transparency index for the citizen user (FTI-CU) and applying it to a sample of PFRs (popular annual financial reports and citizen-centric reports) issued by local governments in the U.S. These criteria are organized into five areas: comprehension, access, financials, appearance, and community-focused. The analysis finds that, while there are areas for improvement, the PFRs rated the highest in the access and appearance criteria.

KEYWORDS:

• Disclosure index
• financial reporting
• popular reporting
• transparency

Notes

^1. Other types of PFRs issued by governments are: Budget-in-Brief, Report of Efforts and Accomplishments, Summarized Financial Statements, and Financial Trend reports (Yusuf et al., 2013).