Transparency is a general quality. It is implemented by a set of policies, practices and procedures that allow citizens to have accessibility

Accessibility

Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access" and benefit from some system or entity...

, usability

Usability

Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. A usability study may be conducted as a primary job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job...

, utility, understandability, informativeness and auditability

Audit

The general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting...

 of information and process held by centers of authority (society or organizations). Feedback mechanisms are necessary to fulfill the goal of transparency.

Motivation

Transparency has been, for long, a general requirement for democratic societies. The right to be informed and to have access to the information has been an important issue on modern societies.

Organizational transparency (for stakeholders)

Transparency in organizations is delimited by ethics and the value of truth (if the value of truth can be verified and in which degree of objectivity). Transparency also must be analyzed as the impact of an organization associated or affiliated with its stakeholders. These impacts need to find out whether the organization's activities are consistent with regard to the society’s interests, whether they are ethical and whether these activities are institutionalized (integrated into the organization).

Target transparency (for consumers)

According to Fung et al., “target transparency aims to reduce specific risks or performance problems through selective disclosure by corporations and other organizations. The ingeniousness of target transparency lies in its mobilization of individual choice, market forces, and participatory democracy through relatively light-handed government action.”

Social transparency (for citizens)

Social transparency allows citizens to be more informed and encourages the disclosure as a regulation mechanism of centers of authority. It is based on ethics and governance, where the interests and needs are focused in the citizen.

See also

• Government Accountability Project
  Government Accountability Project
  The Government Accountability Project is a leading United States whistleblower protection organization. Through litigating of whistleblower cases, publicizing concerns and developing legal reforms, GAP’s mission is to protect the public interest by promoting government and corporate accountability...
  
   (GAP)
• NYC Transparency Project
• The Transparent Society
  The Transparent Society
  The Transparent Society is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices...
  
  
• Transparency (behavior)

External links

• Transparencia.les.inf.pub-rio.br
• Software Transparency. Business & Information Systems Engineering 2(3): 127-139 (2010)
• Transparency versus security: early analysis of antagonistic requirements. SAC 2010: 298-305