The proper balance between governmental secrecy and open government is at the forefront of contemporary public debate. Citizens have different degrees of interest in and demand for governmental transparency. Using data from a national online survey of more than 1,800 respondents, we develop several indices to measure citizens’demand for transparency at the local level and explore its correlates. We also examine the correlates of citizens’ reported requests for information from local government. The data and analysis suggest that there are several dimensions to the public’s demand for transparency, including fiscal, safety, and government concerns, and principled openness. Age, political ideology, confidence in government leaders, frequency of contacting government, and especially the perception that there is currently not enough access to government appear to drive the public’s demand for transparency, although determinants differ for each dimension. Some, although not all, of these factors also predict citizens’ actual requests for government information.
Read more at http://arp.sagepub.com/content/37/3/306.short
comment by Hank Springer follows:
The Port Orange City Council is presently silent on the city manager’s decision to no longer publish the read file of the city manager on the Port Orange City’s web site.  Indeed, just how this decision came to exclude information from the public which privilege they have been enjoying since 2011 is not yet publically known by the citizens. If it be true that the city manager of Port Orange has met with city council members on a one and one basis to explore how to stifle negative comments of city’s operations by Port Orange residents, the genesis of this trend towards posting only positive things about Port Orange may have started in a meeting of Port Orange city council members, which had not been recorded by the city clerk.  In regards to suspicion that the city of Port Orange does not want the public to know about everything going on with city operations, the city has in the past seemed fit to hold meetings outside of the city council chambers, with a viewpoint that some of them need not be recorded. At some meetings with the Cypress Head community, plans to renovate the golf course and clubhouse in that community were had, with councilmembers in the audience, and at one time without the city councilman chairman of that golf course committee even being invited to said meeting.
In the age of advanced technology, where citizens expect to be informed in a timely manner of all things, our government agencies have taken to a plan of “strategic information” releases, and in some cases to consider activists who demand full disclosure, as necessary evils to contend with.
When the city of Port Orange met with the city of Daytona Beach Shores, to negotiate a $900,000 billing error, I was advised not to call the meeting a “secret” meeting, because the time, place and participants in the closed door meeting had been made public, although it had been agreed upon by all participants, that the details of an almost $1 million dollar concern to tax payers, would never be disclosed to the public.  All I know now as of 10 14 15, is that it cost the city tax payers over $1 million dollars because of the city’s financial mistake, and the details in negotiating with Daytona Beach Shores are deemed none of our business.  Those are my words for the so called non secret meeting, and I welcome  correction on my perspective.
I intend to explore the specifics about the history of the city of Port Orange and its lead role players in providing or not providing information to its citizens in a series of comments and editorials by me, Hank Springer, which will follow.
It is hoped, that anyone with pertinent information will join me with their own comments and perspectives on this issue in Port Orange, concerns which duplicate in many tax districts all over this nation.
This is a start. Editorial number 1, Transparency in Port Orange.  More to come, in small doses which I can handle.  – Hank springer
Posted on twitter, popdradiolog and face book at 218 pm 10 14 15
Twitter at Port Orange News @poimages
My web site http://www.popdradiolog.com
My face book page at https://www.facebook.com/portorangeareanews
Reference:  Video :

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