More open, more democratic or better at hiding? Two decades of local government transparency in the UK

Local government has long been the site of experiments and innovation in transparency. Since the 1990s waves of reforms have sought to open up local government in Britain, from the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in the 2000s to Open Data in the 2010s. This paper looks across the evidence to see ho...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Local government studies 2024-11, Vol.50 (6), p.1062-1073
Main Authors: Worthy, Ben, Waugh, Megan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decentralization
Decision making
Economic crisis
Experiments
Freedom of information
Innovations
Local government
Local politics
openness
Outsourcing
Reforms
Transparency
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Summary:Local government has long been the site of experiments and innovation in transparency. Since the 1990s waves of reforms have sought to open up local government in Britain, from the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act in the 2000s to Open Data in the 2010s. This paper looks across the evidence to see how well these new transparency tools have worked, who is using them and why. It then moves to analyse what impact the changes have had on local government, in line with hopes of campaigners and fears of (some) politicians. Have reforms succeeded in making local government more open, more accountable and more participative, and in what situations? Or have they, as some claim, simply driven decision-making into other arenas, and made local bodies 'better at hiding'? Finally, how does transparency sit with the fragmented and disjointed landscape of local politics today, from outsourcing and devolution to financial crisis?
ISSN:0300-3930
1743-9388
DOI:10.1080/03003930.2024.2417222