Evaluating Accountability and Citizens Participation On the Open Government Plans of Selected Countries (Published)
This study assesses the openness of government plans of three countries, Peru, Indonesia and the United States within 2011 to 2013 using the average scores of four assessment tools Budget Transparency, Asset Disclosure, Law, Transparency and Citizens Engagement. On Transparency, the score for Peru fell by 0.04 points from 2.12 points in 2011 to 2.08 points 2012 and remained stable in 2013. Meanwhile, Indonesia improved its score by 0.13 points from 2.48 points in 2011 to 2.61 points 2012 and did not change in 2013. The overall score for the USA drop by 0.01 during the same period of time. This implies that even though the United States is seen as the most transparent, emerging countries are narrowing in as they adjust to certain regulatory conditions overtime. Rankings changes by 0.07 for Peru from 2011 to 2013, 0.17 for Indonesia and 0.08 for the United States. Indonesia reported the strongest change of 0.17, followed by the United States, and then Peru. Evidence presented in these rankings also shows that emerging countries like Peru and Indonesia are closing in to the countries that have been in democracy for a longer period of time. Even though the United States is leading the rankings, the graph above shows that the biggest improvements came for Indonesia, while Peru followed sluggishly behind.
Keywords: Law, asset disclosure, open government plans on budget transparency, transparency and citizens’ engagement