Transparency Laws Research Articles

Availability and Variability of Consumer Prices for Lumbar Discectomy Across US Hospitals in 2018.

To determine the availability and variability of consumer pricing data for an elective lumbar discectomy in the USA. Hospital representatives were contacted via telephone, hospital websites, and state price-transparency websites. A total of 153 hospitals were contacted via telephone calls under the guise of a patient requesting a self-pay price for elective lumbar discectomy. The same hospitals were then researched for price comparison between those requested by phone and those listed on hospital websites after installment of the price transparency law by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on 1 January 2019. Complete and partial prices were recorded for both datasets when available. Hospitals were grouped based on profit status, teaching status, and geographical region. Statistical analysis compared rates of price availability and mean prices between hospital groups and between datasets. Thirty-four (23.0%) of 148 hospitals included in the final analysis were able to provide complete price information via telephone. An additional 70 (47.3%) were able to provide a partial price. A total of four (2.7%) institutions provided a complete price and an additional 65 (43.9%) provided a partial price via website. The mean complete price for microdiscectomy when provided was $27,342.36 (n = 34). When compared to government and non-profit hospitals combined, private hospitals had significantly lower partial-prices. A patient seeking to undergo a common surgical procedure in the USA will likely be met with difficulty and few options if motivated by price. A high degree of variability exists among US hospitals in 2018 with regards to availability and comprehensiveness of pricing information.

Electronic Traffic Law Enforcement: Is it Able to Reduce Traffic Violations?

The practice of law enforcement on traffic violations committed by law enforcement officers is currently not enough to satisfy the expectations of the community. Problems often occur in current law enforcement practices, including vulnerability to corruption and convoluted bureaucracy in dealing with the process of law enforcement, especially for traffic violations. The practice of law enforcement itself cannot only be shackled in the current legal rigidity, in this condition a legal breakthrough or legal progression is needed, so that our law can adjust to the times and demands of society. The E-TLE (Electronic Traffic Law Enforcement) system created by the Semarang Traffic Police Unit is a breakthrough in law in law enforcement practices that are applied to traffic violations in the City of Semarang in order to bring a fast, precise, clean and transparent law enforcement system. In this context, progressive legal theory is used to create a breakthrough in progressive law enforcement in the E-TLE Satlantas Polrestabes Semarang system against traffic violations in the city of Semarang.

Groups of Companies — National Report on Cyprus

This chapter examines groups of companies in Cyprus law. It derives from a country report submitted to the 2018 International Congress on Comparative Law. After an introduction, statutory provisions of company law on group of companies, holding and subsidiary companies are discussed. The issue of lifting the corporate veil in Cyprus company law is scrutinized. In this context, the doctrine of separate legal personality in Cyprus company law, as it was approached by the courts, is examined. Moreover, the case law on the possibility of lifting the corporate veil in group of companies and the case law on the possibility of lifting the corporate veil in parent and subsidiary companies are discussed. Reference is made to lifting the corporate veil in the context of tax law and public procurement, as well as to legislative provisions allowing lifting the corporate veil. With regard to capital markets law/securities regulation, groups of companies are examined in the light of takeover law and transparency law. The position and regulation of groups of companies in various other areas of law are explained: competition law, banking and financial law, insolvency law, private international law and environmental law. A few concluding remarks are inferred.

Non-Oil Revenue and Economic Growth in Nigeria

This study examined the effect of non-oil revenue on economic growth in Nigeria. The four specific variables proxy for non-oil revenue are: Value Added Tax, Companies Income Tax, Personal Income Tax and Custom & Excise Duties, while Gross Domestic Product was used to represent economic growth in Nigeria. The study population consists of all individuals, corporation soles and corporate organisations whose taxes were paid to the Nigerian government except firms operating in the upstream industry. The study sample consists the entire population of study using the census sampling approach. The secondary source of data collection method was used in generating data from the Federal Inland Revenue Service Statistical bulletin of 2018 and the National Bureau of Statistics of 2019 for the period 1994-2018. The descriptive statistics and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression techniques were used to analysed the data collected. The study findings revealed that indirect taxes (Custom & Excise Duties and Value Added Tax) have more significant positive effect on the Nigerian economic growth than direct taxes (Companies Income Tax and Personal Income Tax). Also, direct taxes have significant but negative effect on the Nigerian economic growth, especially in the long run. It is therefore recommend that simple and transparent tax laws be enacted to regulate the tax regimes in Nigeria in order to avoid any form of illicit strategic tax behaviour by management. Also, the problems of implementation of good tax reforms policies should be eliminated. Tax authority should provide strategies to strengthen the control on the significant variables identified in this study analysis. Keywords: Tax revenue, economic growth, gross domestic product, direct tax, indirect tax. DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/11-8-10 Publication date: April 30 th 2020

Mediation in public healthcare: opportunities for improvement

Mediation in healthcare is a non-adversarial process to resolve a dispute risen between patients and health providers during medical attention Aim: To characterize the mediation process taking place in the public health system in Chile, from its start until 2017. Cross-sectional descriptive study. Under the Transparency Law, information about mediation processes between 2005 and 2017 was requested to the State Defense Council (CDE in its Spanish acronym). This data was complemented with the information available on the website of this agency. Ninety four percent of the complaints filed at the CDE were deemed eligible for mediation. Only 19% of the concluded cases led to an agreement between the disputing parties. The agreements reached were mostly monetary compensation, medical assistance, and apologies/explanation of the facts. The average amount of compensation reached $14,862,088 (Chilean pesos). The most commonly claimed damage resulting from medical care was partial disability. The medical specialties more often claimed were Obstetrics and Gynecology, General Surgery, and Internal Medicine. The analysis of conducted mediations is a source of feedback for healthcare staff and health institutions. It would greatly contribute to prevent possible damage and medical conflicts, specially within the specialties with the most complaints. Improvements to the existing legislation are required to ensure free access for all the population.

Análisis del derecho a la información pública en el Ecuador

En este artículo de revisión se exponen diferentes núcleos que permite un estudio referente a la doctrina y jurisprudencia para aplicabilidad del derecho al acceso a la información pública dentro de las instituciones públicas y privadas, por cuanto, la Legislación Nacional como la internacional manifiestan, que existen documentos considerados de carácter reservado y cierta restricción que se presenta al acceso de la información, y la LOTAIP determina dos vías para la obtención del acceso en la información, este Derecho Constitucional deber ser considera un deber social, garantizando de esta forma transparencia en la gestión y democracia. Se concluye que la Ley Orgánica de Transparencia y Acceso a la información pública a más de que se encuentra vigente por más 15 años se ha evidenciado que haya cumplido a cabalidad con su objetivo y no ha logrado mecanismos que sean de fácil y rápido acceso.

A política nas políticas de acesso à informação brasileiras: trajetória e coalizões

Resumo Como as diversas iniciativas legislativas sobre acesso à informação no Brasil culminaram na aprovação da Lei n. 12.527 (Lei de Acesso à Informação [LAI], 2011)? A partir da abordagem de coalizões de defesa (advocacy coalitions framework - ACF), este artigo analisa a formação de agenda e a atuação de diferentes coalizões, por meio da análise de amplo clipping de notícias, entrevistas, leis e documentos publicados entre 2001 e 2012. Foram identificadas duas coalizões: a) uma a favor de mudanças na legislação, composta por setores do Poder Executivo, do Poder Legislativo, da mídia e da sociedade civil; e b) outra a favor da manutenção de regras restritivas de acesso à informação, composta por Forças Armadas, Itamaraty e Comissão de Relações Exteriores e Defesa Nacional (CRE) do Senado. Identificou-se, também, a superposição de dois subsistemas de políticas públicas: a) o de transparência; e b) o de reconciliação. Este último monopolizou o debate público sobre o tema, contribuindo para a morosidade na aprovação da LAI (2011). O Itamaraty também emerge como autor de forte lobby contra modificações nas regras de classificação de documentos, por motivos ainda a explorar em profundidade.

Level of Electronic Transparency of Peruvian Ministries

This article increases information in electronic transparency. The main objective of this paper was to determine the transparency level of official web portals of the Peruvian ministries, as well as to uncover correlations between the levels of transparency, the type of ministry and / or the number of years past since the web portal has been working, or the gender of the responsible. In the first part of this work, I present a brief theoretical framework which establishes the principles of transparency regarding public information managed by the Peruvian State Administrative Entities. For this study two methodologies were used, the first one was the implementation of indicator’s table elaborated based on the Law of transparency for the collection and processing of data to obtain an objective diagnosis of the electronic transparency of the Peruvian Ministries, the second methodology was an correlation analysis, used to find those possible relationships between the variables chosen to be analyzed. The analysis allowed a diagnosis of the electronic transparency situation at ministerial level to 2017. As a main result, it was known which were the Ministries with the highest rate of compliance with the law for 2017 and also which are those that need more supervision to achieve their objective. The conclusion of the study was that, the Transparency Law has not yet been 100% implemented by more than 90% of the ministries.

Legislative Watch: State legislative bills

North Carolina law brings consent to the 21st century Body camera transparency law goes into effect

The contribution of the right to information laws in Europe to local government transparency on sustainability

The aim of this paper is to examine the influence of the right to information laws on sustainability transparency in European local governments. This goal is novel, in that previous studies have examined the effects of various factors on the dissemination of government information (demographic, socioeconomic, political and financial) but not the contribution of legal factors to online transparency on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Our research question is this: Do information laws contribute to transparency on sustainability? Using the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines and a statistical regression analysis, we studied the websites of 106 local governments in ten European countries. The results obtained show that when transparency laws clearly stipulate the rules applicable and the procedures established for appeals, exceptions, refusals and requests, this can favour transparency on environmental, social and economic sustainability. Our findings advance understanding of this field and reinforce the basis for legal reforms to enhance sustainability transparency.

THE IMPACT OF CORRUPTION ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY IN THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES OF ASEAN–3: THE APPLICATION OF THE BOUND TEST

This paper has examined the short-run and long-run relationships between economic growth, energy consumption, foreign direct investment, trade openness, financial development, corruption, urban population and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in three developing countries of ASEAN, i.e., Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines (ASEAN-3), with data from 1970 to 2017. Special emphasis has been given to the level of corruption in these three countries as several recent media releases have reported that many firms have been conducting unlawful activities by importing large amounts of waste from developed countries and these wastes, including plastic waste, have been burnt in open spaces and have caused higher releases of carbon emissions. Long-run elasticity results have proven that the higher level of corruption in these three ASEAN countries has caused more environmental pollution. Meanwhile, other tested variables have shown mixed findings across the three tested countries. Improvement of institutional quality is urgently needed for ASEAN-3 countries by adopting more transparent laws and the imposition of heavier penalties on corrupt officials and even on the entrepreneurs who have engaged in unlawful business activities that have caused higher environmental pollution.

Analysis of State-Level Drug Pricing Transparency Laws in the United States

Increasing drug prices strain the budgets of consumers and public payers, including Medicaid. Faced with an opaque drug supply chain, few people outside of the pharmaceutical industry know which supply chain participants are making excess profits and where to target policy solutions.1,2 Some states have responded by passing laws to increase drug price transparency in the supply chain.3 In this study, we analyzed state drug price transparency laws to assess their potential to improve transparency in the drug supply system. Prior research has focused on state laws requiring manufacturers to report research and development expenditures and efforts to control costs through drug importation or manufacturer price controls.3,4 To our knowledge, this is the first study to focus on state laws to improve drug price transparency across the supply chain.

ILRA: Novelty Detection in Face-Based Intervener Re-Identification

Transparency laws facilitate citizens to monitor the activities of political representatives. In this sense, automatic or manual diarization of parliamentary sessions is required, the latter being time consuming. In the present work, this problem is addressed as a person re-identification problem. Re-identification is defined as the process of matching individuals under different camera views. This paper, in particular, deals with open world person re-identification scenarios, where the captured probe in one camera is not always present in the gallery collected in another one, i.e., determining whether the probe belongs to a novel identity or not. This procedure is mandatory before matching the identity. In most cases, novelty detection is tackled applying a threshold founded in a linear separation of the identities. We propose a threshold-less approach to solve the novelty detection problem, which is based on a one-class classifier and therefore it does not need any user defined threshold. Unlike other approaches that combine audio-visual features, an Isometric LogRatio transformation of a posteriori (ILRA) probabilities is applied to local and deep computed descriptors extracted from the face, which exhibits symmetry and can be exploited in the re-identification process unlike audio streams. These features are used to train the one-class classifier to detect the novelty of the individual. The proposal is evaluated in real parliamentary session recordings that exhibit challenging variations in terms of pose and location of the interveners. The experimental evaluation explores different configuration sets where our system achieves significant improvement on the given scenario, obtaining an average F measure of 71.29% for online analyzed videos. In addition, ILRA performs better than face descriptors used in recent face-based closed world recognition approaches, achieving an average improvement of 1.6% with respect to a deep descriptor.

The tenuous link between CSR performance and support for regulation: Business associations and Nordic regulatory preferences regarding the corporate transparency law 2014/95/EU

AbstractDo countries with high corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance support more stringent supranational regulation? Following this logic, existing scholarship claims that Nordic countries push for tougher regulations to sharpen their competitive advantage. On the basis of an examination of the negotiations over the EU Directive 2014/95/EU, a corporate transparency law that requires firms to report on their social, environmental, and human rights impacts, this paper argues that strong CSR performance does not necessarily entail strong support for regulation. Nordic companies perform well when it comes to sustainability, but except for Denmark, Nordic governments’ support for the Directive was lukewarm. To explain why, I examine the dynamics between CSR leaders, business associations, and party politics. I find that business associations are key for explaining this outcome. While some Nordic CSR leaders provided support, business associations, in which SMEs with lower CSR performance comprise the bulk of the members, were forceful opponents of regulation, unless domestic regulations are in place, in which case these associations support supranational regulations to level the playing field. I also stress the importance of partisan politics and extend the analysis to mandatory human rights due diligence. In sum, Nordic countries are much more heterogeneous than what the literature often suggests.

Why Civil Society Cannot Battle it All Alone: The Roles of Civil Society Environment, Transparent Laws and Quality of Public Administration in Political Corruption Mitigation

ABSTRACTUtilizing a large-N data that covers about 20000 observations from about 200 countries from 1789 to 2018 from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, and anchored on institutionalism as an overarching theory, and the nascent literature on civil-society corruption nexus, the paper looks at the predictive capacity of civil society environment, transparency of laws and predictability of enforcement, and rigorousness and impartiality of public administration in political corruption. Using a four-step hierarchical multiple regression, results show that while civil society and its structure is a significant determinant of the level of political corruption, the introduction of transparency of laws and predictability of enforcement, rigorousness, and impartiality of public administration, and civil society environment in the regression model accounted for additional variance in political corruption. Practical and theoretical implications, particularly on civil society-corruption nexus and the broader corruption-democracy linkage, are discussed.

Transparencia y secreto tributario

Si hay un sector del Ordenamiento jurídico especialmente problemático a la hora de conciliar el derecho de acceso a la información y el derecho a la protección de los datos de carácter personal es, sin lugar a dudas, el tributario. El trabajo reflexiona sobre la tensión existente entre el derecho a la intimidad, fundamento en última instancia de la normativa sobre protección de datos, y el derecho de acceso a la información administrativa a la luz de las actuales leyes de transparencia, centrándonos en el ámbito tributario, pues ambos sectores del ordenamiento jurídico parten de principios contrapuestos, lo que constituye una fuente de inseguridad jurídica para quienes tienen la función de aplicar estas normas. Por otro lado, cuando se trata de personas jurídicas, expresamente excluidas del ámbito de aplicación de la LOPDGDD, tanto la normativa tributaria como catastral extienden expresamente a estas su régimen de protección de datos, situándolas en el mismo plano que a las personas físicas; por tanto, es la normativa sectorial la que configura el estatuto de protección de datos de las Personas jurídicas.
 

The Impact of Transparency on the Citizen Participation in Decision- Making at the Municipal Level in Romania

The article analyses the implementation of the transparency law and investigates whether its adoption generated more citizens’ participation in the decision making process at municipal level in Romania. The research consisted of an analysis of the transparency reports that municipal authorities need to compile every year. We analysed the reports compiled by 28 cities and 5 sectors of the Bucharest municipality for the years 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Additional information about the challenges of the implementation of the law was collected from previous studies conducted by nongovernmental organizations on this topic. The research showed that public institutions increased the transparency of the decision making process by disclosing draft normative proposals and the documents the proposals were based on. The level of citizens’ participation in the consultation and deliberation stages of the decision making process remained low over the period analysed, even though a small increase could be observed. The number of recommendations received on draft normative acts was low. The research showed that citizens’ suggestions had higher chances to be included in final decisions if they were voiced during Local Council meetings. Besides providing empirical insights in the implementation of the transparency law in Romania, the article provides the researchers with evidence that increased decisional transparency does not automatically lead to greater citizens’ involvement in the decision making process.

Method for Improvement of Transparency: Use of Text Mining Techniques for Reclassification of Governmental Expenditures Records in Brazil

Many countries have transparency laws requiring availability of data. However, often data is available but not transparent. We present the Transparency Portal of Brazilian Federal Government case and discuss limitations of public acquisitions data stored in free text format. We employed text-mining techniques to reclassify descriptive texts of measurement units related to products and services. The solution presented in KNIME and Java aggregated measurements in the original (n = 69,372 with 78% reduction in number of descriptions, 94% items classified) and in cross validation sample (n = 105,266 with 88% reduction, classifying 78% of items). In addition, we tested computational time for processing of texts for a wide range of data input sizes, suggesting the stability and scalability of the solution to process larger datasets. Finally, we produced analysis identifying probable input errors, suppliers and purchasing units with abnormal transactions and factors affecting procurement prices. We present suggestions for future research and improvements.

Making Transparency Work: Experiences from the Evaluation of the Hamburg Transparency Law

Freedom of information acts (FOIA) aim to improve the public’s opportunities to access official information from public authorities and hence to increase the level of transparency. Thus, it is important to know whether and to what degree the effects intended by establishing FOIAs are achieved and how their implementation could be improved. Hence, this article presents the evaluation of the Hamburg Transparency Law (HmbTG)– Germany’s first FOIA that binds authorities to disclose government information proactively. The purpose of the paper is to provide a valuable example of how evaluating FOIA might produce useful information for policymakers and public authorities. The analysis results, based on a mixed set of methods (i.e. standardised surveys, statistical secondary data, qualitative expert interviews, and criteria-driven document analysis), lead to the conclusion that the HmbTG was very effective in providing the direct access. On the other hand, it was found that strategies for implementing the law varied considerably between authorities, yet proactive disclosure was overall implemented effectively. Moreover, this law shows some weaknesses to be improved in the future. Besides providing practitioners with valuable insights into how a transparency law may be implemented, the evaluation of the HmbTG also provides researchers with ideas how FOIA evaluation might be conducted comprehensively.

Central Government Strategies to Promote Local Governments’ Transparency: Guidance or Enforcement?

The push to make governments more transparent extends worldwide, as transparency is expected to boost citizens’ trust in government and participation in public affairs. Recent transparency laws and open-government initiatives have encouraged local governments to share more information with their constituents. A growing number of recent studies have investigated the drivers of local governments’ transparency, but have not yet addressed the role of higher levels of government in making local governments more transparent. In light of implementation scholarship arguing the success of centrally designed programs is a function of higher-level involvement, this study contributes to the transparency literature by approaching local governments’ transparency as an intergovernmental implementation process. We assess the explanatory power of two central government strategies: enforcement mechanisms and central government guidance on Chilean municipalities’ transparency levels. Results show that both types of central government strategies can have a substantial impact on transparency over time.