Transparency in Information Systems

Telecommunications Policy, 2023

Over the last decade, transparency reports have been adopted by most large information technology companies. These reports provide important information on the requests tech companies receive from state actors around the world and the ways they respond to these requests, including what content the companies remove from platforms they own. In theory, such reports shall make inner workings of companies more transparent, in particular with respect to their collaboration with state actors. They shall also allow users and external entities (e.g., researchers or watchdogs) to assess to what extent companies adhere to their own policies on user privacy and content moderation as well as to the principles formulated by global entities that advocate for the freedom of expression and privacy online such as the Global Network Initiative or Santa Clara Principles. However, whether the current state of transparency reports actually is conducive to meaningful transparency remains an open question. In this paper, we aim to address this through a critical comparative analysis of transparency reports using Santa Clara Principles 2.0 (SCP 2.0) as the main analytical framework. Specifically, we aim to make three contributions: first, we conduct a comparative analysis of the types of data disclosed by major tech companies and social media platforms in their transparency reports. The companies and platforms analyzed include Google (incl. YouTube), Microsoft (incl. its subsidiaries Github and LinkedIn), Apple, Meta (prev. Facebook), TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit and Amazon (incl. subsidiary Twitch). Second, we evaluate to what degree the released information complies with SCP 2.0 and how it aligns with different purposes of transparency. Finally, we outline recommendations that could improve the level of transparency within the reports and beyond, and contextualize our recommendations with regard to the Digital Services Act (DSA) that received the final approval of the European Council in October 2022.

Public Sector Economics

With applications in financial, regulatory, monetary, and fiscal policy, and with the World Bank, IMF, OECD, and many other NGOs advising on best practices, fiscal transparency has become a major theme of contemporary research in political economy and public administration. It was not always so. Even though the connection between transparency and corruption prevention was understood by the ancient Athenians, the connection with democracy at least since 1689, and the importance of bookkeeping and auditing practices in economic development even earlier, there was little academic interest in the causes and consequences of transparency. An important stimulus to academic thought was Holmström (1979), with 10,000+ citations. One could weave a narrative through three subsequent streams of analysis-institutions, corruption, and debt-in academia with real-world developments from Watergate, the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the founding of Transparency International, some aggressive lobbying by US firms, to the FCPA Amendments and OECD Convention of 1997-98. However, even though the 1990s saw increased attention to information, opportunism, and verification and the path-breaking publication of Mauro (1995, also 10,000+ citations), there was essentially no mention of "transparency". It is no longer so. Today, according to the US Department of State (2017), fiscal transparency is a critical element of effective public financial management, one that helps in building market confidence and underpins economic sustainability. Fiscal transparency also fosters greater government accountability by providing a window into government budgets for citizens, helping them to hold their leadership accountable and facilitating better-informed public debate. These pronouncements may be somewhat exaggerated, but around the literature one finds similar claims, that transparency promotes not only stability, sustainability, and credibility, but even trust. These claims have some truth in them, but overall the evidence in support of them is mixed. Our goal in this note is to look at twenty years of transparency research and highlight what is known and what is new. james e. alt: twenty years of transparency research public sector economics 43 (1) 5-13 (2019) james e. alt: twenty years of transparency research public sector economics 43 (1) 5-13 (2019)

Transparency seems to represent a solution to many ethic issues generated by systems that collect implicit data from users to model the user themselves based on programmed criteria. However, making such systems transparent – besides being a major technical challenge-risks raising more issues than it solves, actually reducing the user's ability to protect themselves while trying to put them in control. Are transparent systems only a chimera, which provides a seemingly useful information pastiche while failing to make sense upon closer examination? Scholars from ethics and cognitive science share their thoughts on how to achieve genuine transparency and the value of transparency.

Advanced Methodologies and Technologies in Business Operations and Management

Transparency is one of the most frequent words in the contemporary public discourse, due to the growing demand for organizational transparency from the many stakeholders, which include shareholders, national and international watchdog organizations, the mass media, and influential bloggers. For instance, since shareholders invest money in corporations, they require financial disclosure, the exposure of future strategies, and the revelation of the corporation's decision-making processes. Therefore, the chapter has as its main objective to present the main concepts related to organizational transparency, and its dimensions, according to a review of literature and competing models of transparency. The chapter aims to contrast the importance and implications of transparency for the society and organizations. The chapter also aims to present a research agenda on the topic and present how the society is requiring an ever-higher level of transparency of all kinds of organizations.

Vincent August & Fran Osrecki (Hrsg.)(2020), Der Transparenz-Imperativ: Normen, Strukturen, Praktiken. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. pp. 1-34., 2020

In Western societies, transparency has become an imperative and almost unquestionable norm. In this opening chapter, we provide an overview of social scientific debates about transparency. First, we trace the idea of transparency historically in order to contextualize past and present transparency imperatives. We start with the utilitarian tradition initiated by Jeremy Bentham and argue that transparency employs a mechanism of surveillance, formaliza-tion, and standardization that is supposed to transform insecurities into security and efficiency. This modernist legacy reaches into contemporary visions of transparency, for instance in institutional economics, new public management, or in current debates on big data. In a second step, we discuss the unintended consequences of these recent transparency imperatives. Based on a literature review, we show that transparency often does not achieve its self-proclaimed goals, as its rationale and practices produce unintended structural effects, such as organizational inefficiency, massive bureaucratization, and even intranspar-ency. Building on these results, we propose a comparative approach for future social scientific research on transparency, outlining new frontiers and topics.

Transparency is an increasingly prominent area of research that offers valuable insights for organizational studies. However, conceptualizations of transparency are rarely subject to critical scrutiny and thus their relevance remains unclear. In most accounts, transparency is associated with the sharing of information and the perceived quality of the information shared. This narrow focus on information and quality, however, overlooks the dynamics of organizational transparency. To provide a more structured conceptualization of organizational transparency, this article unpacks the assumptions that shape the extant literature, with a focus on three dimensions: conceptualizations, conditions, and consequences. The contribution of the study is twofold: (a) On a conceptual level, we provide a framework that articulates two paradigmatic positions underpinning discussions of transparency, verifiability approaches and performativity approaches; (b) on an analytical level, we suggest a novel future research agenda for studying organizational transparency that pays attention to its dynamics, paradoxes, and performative characteristics.

Human Relations, 2020

In this article, we advance research on transparency by developing and validating a measure based on recent theoretical insights about its dimensionality. We find that transparency-defined as the perceived quality of information-is a three-dimensional construct consisting of perceived information disclosure, clarity, and accuracy. Evidence shows items associated with these dimensions can be aggregated into a single transparency construct. We also find that transparency (as an aggregate construct) is distinct from neighboring constructs such as informational justice and capable of predicting perceptions of the source's trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, and integrity). Finally, we find evidence of measurement invariance between two commonly used referents of analysis, yielding confidence in the application of the proposed measure

Business & Society, 2016

Transparency is an increasingly prominent area of research that offers valuable insights for organizational studies. However, conceptualizations of transparency are rarely subject to critical scrutiny and thus their relevance remains unclear. In most accounts, transparency is associated with the sharing of information and the perceived quality of the information shared. This narrow focus on information and quality, however, overlooks the dynamics of organizational transparency. To provide a more structured conceptualization of organizational transparency, this article unpacks the assumptions that shape the extant literature, with a focus on three dimensions: conceptualizations, conditions, and consequences. The contribution of the study is twofold: (a) On a conceptual level, we provide a framework that articulates two paradigmatic positions underpinning discussions of transparency, verifiability approaches and performativity approaches; (b) on an analytical level, we suggest a novel...

ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 2015

On November 20 and 21 2014, Telefonica I+D hosted the Data Transparency Lab ("DTL") Kickoff Workshop on Personal Data Transparency and Online Privacy at its headquarters in Barcelona, Spain. This workshop provided a forum for technologists, researchers, policymakers and industry representatives to share and discuss current and emerging issues around privacy and transparency on the Internet. The objective of this workshop was to kick-start the creation of a community of research, industry, and public interest parties that will work together towards the following objectives: -The development of methodologies and user-friendly tools to promote transparency and empower users to understand online privacy issues and consequences; -The sharing of datasets and research results, and; -The support of research through grants and the provision of infrastructure to deploy tools. With the above activities, the DTL community aims to improve our understanding of technical, ethical, econom...

Effective and timely information and knowledge sharing in modern complex organizations is pivotal to their competitiveness. Challenges in such sharing often become particularly visible in the cooperation between organizations and organizational units. We outline a framework for understanding transparency drawing on 1) literature on information and knowledge sharing in operations management and knowledge management, and 2) a case from a highly complex environment -health care -and one from a highly competitive environment -the leisure boat industry. Both organizations are characterized by craft work. We further discuss how coordination could be better supported by schedules, routines, roles, and sharing of knowledge and information. Particularly, we focus on how well suited such tools, methods, and mechanisms are for increasing transparency. Finally we suggest how transparency may be enhanced by novel use of information and communication technology.