Explaining Government’s Online Transparency on Collaborative Policy Platforms: Risk Management and Configurational Conditions

Abstract

This study aims to advance our understanding of online transparency for open government by focusing on the conditions affecting the behavior of public agencies. By drawing from literature on open government, collaborative governance, and bureaucratic behavior, the study identifies key conditions for transparency. The empirical investigation builds on citizen-initiated policy proposals on an online collaborative platform and utilizes fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. The results support a risk-management perspective for agency-level transparency behavior. There are multiple configurations for the provision of policy and collaboration information. The lack of policy conflict is a necessary condition for information provision.

Keywords:

• Citizen engagement
• collaboration
• digital government
• open government
• transparency

Notes

Acknowledgments

This research was in part funded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology Overseas Project for Post Graduate Research, 106-2917-I-004.

Notes

1 The Website of the National Development Council (https://www.ndc.gov.tw).

2 About 1,500 for the citizen-initiated and 100 for the government-initiated, which translates into a 15:1 ratio.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yu-Che Chen

Yu-Che Chen is professor of Digital Governance at the School of Public Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska.

Teng-Wen Chang

Teng-Wen Chang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Public Administration at the National ChengChi University.