"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."
Lord Kelvin

Do Hungarian municipalities abide by the law? Analysis of urban municipalities’ webpages

Publications, Reports

The report empirically analyses information disclosure practices on 368 municipalities’ webpages in 2013 from the viewpoint of transparency, accountability, and informing citizens. The analysis is based on the laws regulating information disclosure in Hungary. The report measures the degree to which municipalities’ webpages abide by the prescriptions of these laws. The empirical results show that it is the lack of transparency and neglecting legal prescriptions which characterises urban settlements; nevertheless, the example of numerous municipalities point out that it is possible to fully abide by the information disclosure and transparency legislation. By implication it is possible that municipalities neglecting their transparency obligations also purport high corruption risks. Furthermore, it is suggested that not following legal prescriptions by the state itself can deteriorate the respect for law in the citizenry.

 

Report in Hungrian with Englisgh summary (PDF),                                      List of municipalities by Transpareny  Scores (XLSX), Press release in Hungarian (DOCX)