- For other uses of the word "transparency", see transparency, a disambiguation page.
Transparency, as used in the humanities, implies openness and accountability. It is a metaphorical extension of the meaning used in the physical sciences: a “transparent” object is one that can be seen through.
Transparent rules and procedures are generally instituted as a means of holding public officials accountable and fighting corruption. When government meetings are open to the press and the public, when budgets and financial statements may be reviewed by anyone, when laws, rules and decisions are open to discussion, they are seen as transparent and there is less opportunity for the authorities to abuse the system in their own interest.
Transparent procedures include open meetings, financial disclosure statements, the freedom of information legislation, budgetary review, audits, etc.
In government, politics, ethics, business, management, law, economics, sociology, etc., transparency is the opposite of privacy; an activity is transparent if all information about it is open and freely available. Thus when courts of law admit the public, when fluctuating prices in financial markets are published in newspapers, those processes are transparent.
When military authorities classify their plans as secret, transparency is absent. This can be seen as either positive or negative; positive, because it can increase national security, negative, because it can lead to secrecy, corruption and even a military dictatorship.
Some organisations and networks, for example, Wikipedia, the GNU/Linux community and Indymedia, insist that not only the ordinary information of interest to the community is made freely available, but that all (or nearly all) meta-levels of organising and decision-making are themselves also published. This is known as radical transparency.
See also
Further reading
External Links
Transparency International
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