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Since 2015, Spanish local councils have had to comply with the Transparency Act, which includes the duty to publish information on their activity on a website, electronic headquarters, or transparency portal. To do so, they often have the help of provincial councils, autonomous communities, or the State. Previous studies on compliance with this rule ignored town councils with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, i.e., more than 90% of them. This paper presents an introductory analysis on the presence of transparency information on websites and transparency portals offered by municipalities of all populations. A sample of municipalities, divided into 14 population ranges, was studied, covering 20-30% of municipalities, extracted proportionally and randomly for each range and from each province. The analysis includes variables such as the existence of a municipal website and specific transparency portal, the connection and publicity between the two, and the minimum presence of information within such portals. Despite support from larger institutions, one out of six municipalities did not have a website, and half of the municipalities did not offer real information on transparency. The three main causes identified (in order) are that their transparency portals are empty, that they do not actively advertise their portal on the website, or to a lesser extent (one in ten) that they do not have a transparency portal. This result occurs mostly for municipalities with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants. The municipalities that do offer transparency information mainly use tools provided by the State, which are associated with an electronic site. Efforts by other (autonomous or provincial) institutions to promote transparency are also detected, although only massively in some provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Budget visualization tools facilitate the communication of complex technical information. In this paper, we analyse the main technical, individual and organizational factors that affect its implementation and use. Through a questionnaire survey we have collected data from those responsible for the web application "Dónde van mis impuestos" ("Where do my taxes go?") in 23 Spanish regional and local governments. Our findings show that these tools have a small number of users but that their main target are not citizens but specific groups, mainly media and political groups. Its adoption is neither a budgetary nor technological problem, although the free software license gives clear advantages. The impulse for adoption is mainly political with the main focus on financial and budgetary transparency but sometimes also on participatory transparency or microtransparency. Finally, we detect a serious risk of governance generated by the lack of clear transparency and accountability strategies in the administrations, as well as an absence of operational procedures to adapt to the changing budgetary structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once open data initiatives are consolidated worldwide, it is important to find out if the Spanish regional open data portals are useful for active transparency. To this end, we developed an indicator to assess the existence of information and its reusable quality in three periods of time (2013, 2015 and 2018). Then, we inquired about the existence of differentiated groups of regional governments using, when necessary, cluster analysis. We found indications that there are two conglomerates of governments: advanced and lagged. These findings are in line with those offered by two opposing views on the dissemination of information from the public sector: agency and neo-institutional theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid adoption of social media by public administrations deserves attention from the side of institutional information and communication. One of the points recently identified is the tone used by public sector organizations to deliver their messages, as it may encourage citizen collaboration and participation. This paper explores the tone that Spanish city councils with more than 50,000 inhabitants are using in their social media profiles. This paper is based in two research questions: (a) What is the general tone used by the city councils in their use of social media?; (b) What explanatory factors are behind the adoption of one tone or another? Studying Twitter through big data techniques and statistical analysis, this study finds a positive general communicative tone. Traditional organizational, institutional and environmental factors do not seem to have a statistical significant influence over the tone. This article concludes with proposals for improvement on future research derived from the research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we analyze the organization of information in Spain's Portal of the Transparency, which includes information that is required by law. We analyze both the organization of information and people who appear in the Portal. The analysis is then compared with the Law of transparency, access to public information, and good governance. The results show a high percentage of subjects that are not reporting the information as required by law. Contrarily, some sections, like economics, include an excess of information that makes their access complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Municipal communication transcends the simple information about public services, activities, projects, and administrative procedures. Communicative and information strategies in the local context are oriented towards citizens who participate in a shared municipal project in which they are prosumers in the design and development of sectorial strategies linked to public policies. Consequently, city councils must integrate a communication structure that takes advantage of public information from governance, transparency, and proactive citizen participation. Since the first Spanish democratic legislature in 1979 the evolution and adaptation of process and production routines has been justified by the need to shape a positive perception of government action and consolidate their institutional reputation. In this paper an approach to municipal communication, based on the rigid and standardized models of the 80s and 90s, is presented to influence the current revolution that represents the paradigm of communication 2.0, the implementation of the social web in the context of proximity and social media strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on the transparency of the public websites of the main cities of the region of Castilla y Leon (Spain). Taking as a sample the 24 towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants, this article presents the results related to management and information about the collective resources and the issues concerning the online press room. Using a fully proven methodology developed by a larger project titled Infoparticipa Map, a particularly relevant group of results are achieved. On the one hand, information about the composition of the governing bodies is widely available, with differences between the most and least populated towns. But on the other hand, the performance of municipal power in the region is focused on the publication of general news and concessions to the city governments, obviating other information such as detailed city accounts or the role of the opposition parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the entry into force of the Law on transparency and good governance, city councils have had an obligation to fulfill the criteria and principles included therein. In this context of demanding better political communication from the authorities, a study of the communication on the websites of Extremadura's city councils, representing more than 7,000 inhabitants, was carried out in the years 2015 and 2016. An analysis model, with 52 indicators grouped into five groups, was applied. This research presents and discusses the most interesting results and conclusions related to the online political communication of these city councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication is indispensable for institutions in regaining trust and credibility among citizens. In this context, transparency management and the promotion of citizen participation online are essential. After December 2015, when the Spanish transparency law 19/2013 was fully in force at the local level, all local municipalities were required to show all the public information on their websites published in a clear and understandable way. This requirement turns the Spanish local administrations into an interesting case study to assess efforts to improve their relationships with their citizens; hence this research aims to measure the Spanish transparency level on public information and participation. For that purpose, a set of indicators were used to analyze the content of those websites that corresponded to a representative sample of municipalities with 10,000 or more inhabitants (N=394). Findings pointed to a very low transparency level and major deficiencies related to online engagement with resources that are required by law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public information, including the right to know and the right to transparency, is one of the main topics in academic research and professional development. It is usually analyzed on three epistemological levels: constitutional, governance, and media citizenship. It is thought-provoking to the extent that we find a strong tension between transparency and confidentiality, when rebuilding trust in the public sphere. Using this information we can predict new areas of work, such as the quality data processes, literacy, integrity, and traceability of such data and the emergence of new professions in public communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The situation of access to public sector information and its reuse in Spanish regions is analyzed. For this purpose, it was used Meloda, a metric to assess open data reuse published on open data portals. Furthermore, the correlation between the number of datasets available on open data portals, the International Transparency Index of Spanish regions, and the Meloda average for each Spanish region are studied. 2,165 datasets have been examined. 95.15% of data published by Spanish regions on open data portals is optimum for reuse, or suitable for reuse but with some improvement needed. The public bodies which are leading this process are those of Aragón, Cataluña, Comunidad Foral de Navarra and País Vasco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study looks at how and if the Spanish central government is currently meeting the laws of transparency and good governance by providing access to public data. The first part is a description of the most relevant legal standards relating to this topic. Subjects, information on recruitment, formats available to reuse information, and platforms on which these public data are published are identified. This study was performed using March 2016 data from the Public Platform for Hiring which is provided by the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration of Spain. The most important finding may be that the law has been correctly applied by the Spanish government for the reuse of information. On the other hand, accessing information is difficult and nearly half of the subjects do not offer hiring data despite this requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reuse of public sector information is an increasingly key element in the Open data and Open government strategies. The European authorities are promoting public information reuse policies as a pillar for the digital economy and for democratic transparency. In the same way, several public and private reuse initiatives in Spain have sprung up in recent years to maximize public information reuse benefits. In this sense, the Aporta Project, supported by the Spanish Ministry for Territorial Cooperation and Public Administration and the Ministry for Industry, Trade and Commerce, have been working since 2009 in promoting reuse in Spain. Regarding the challenges of the actual reuse policies it is important to point out that a Royal decree that develops the Spanish Reuse Law is being drafted with the aim to solve some indeterminate aspects of the present public information reuse law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptual framework for e-government and its historical evolution are explained, including mention of different approaches and applications. The essential pillars far developing e-government services at the European level are identified as technological legal and methodological. Finally, issues are discussed regarding the recommended methodology for developing government web sites, with suggested guidelines and good practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]