Government transparency: Monitoring public policy accumulation and administrative overload

Abstract

Democratic governments maintain their legitimacy by answering demands to solve societal problems, thus continuously adopting and implementing new policies, programs, and administrative rules. One possible consequence of this democratic responsiveness is policy accumulation and rule growth, thus overloading administrative resources and, ultimately, impairing policy implementation. The aim of this exploratory research is twofold: first, to analyse the relationship between government transparency and policy accumulation; second, to develop a government transparency framework aimed to monitor public policy accumulation and one of its major consequences, administrative overload. To illustrate the proposal and its applicability, the framework was used to guide the analysis of the Portuguese case, revealing the absence of a comprehensive approach to the overload problem, and identifying relevant components for a future monitoring system. The framework, and the analysis it provides, are intended to guide government transparency initiatives which address the public policy accumulation and administrative overload problem.