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Internet Financial Reporting in EU Local Governments. Is ICTs Leading To a Global Convergence?
Vicente Pina,
University of Zaragoza
Lourdes Torres, University of Zaragoza
Sonia Royo, Assistant Professor University of Zaragoza
ABSTRACT. The research question of the paper is how extensively local governments are using the Internet to disseminate their financial reports. This paper aims to assess to what extent e-government better enables transparency and accountability by analyzing a range of 86 items included in the Web sites of the seventy-five biggest EU cities and national capitals of fifteen EU countries. Exploratory analysis was carried out to identify the outstanding characteristics. Our findings suggest an overly optimistic assessment of multilateral organizations about a global convergence in transparency and financial accountability through common modes of IFR. The introduction of ICTs without the corresponding institutional reform only is leading to limited success in IFR. From the analytical results it can be concluded that the public administration style, the overall e-government efforts of cities and the audit of financial information by private firms are significant explanation factors of IFR practices.
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