The Impact of Digitalization on the Transparency of Public Authorities

Abstract

Transparency of public power is one of the main aspects of civil society. The actions of public administration bodies must be transparent, open, and ensure citizens’ legitimate rights and interests. Large-scale digitalization of society also affects public authorities, opening up new opportunities for improving the transparency of public administration and creating risks at various levels of public administration. The study is devoted to the issue of transparency of public authorities under the influence of digitalization. The normative legal acts of Ukraine, the Strategy of digital development, scientific achievements of domestic and foreign scientists are analyzed. The main elements of transparency of public authorities are identified: transparency, openness, and publicity. The level of digitalization penetration into the bodies of legislative, executive and judicial branches of power is characterized. The main functions that digitalization can perform in relation to public authorities are identified. The main achievements of Ukraine in terms of the public power digitalization, which has increased its transparency level, are described. They include a network of web portals of legislative, executive and judicial authorities, which provide public information in the form of messages, files, open data sets, photo and video information. Another important achievement is the service of providing services online and the introduction in Ukraine of full-fledged digital documents, which are analogs of physical. The main indicators of digitalization and characteristics of public authorities are identified: Digital Development Level, IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, ICT goods exports, ICT goods imports, ICT service exports, Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, Control of Corruption. A canonical analysis of digitalization impact on the transparency of public authorities quantitatively shows that public authorities are closely linked to digitalization and influenced by it.