Transparency (behavior)
As an ethic that spans science, engineering, business, and the humanities, transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed.
In information security, transparency means keeping the arcane, underlying mechanisms hidden so as not to obstruct intended function—an almost opposite sense.
[3] In 2009, the Spanish government for the first time released information on the net worth of each cabinet member, but data on ordinary citizens is private.
[8] In 2025 the Austrian Court of Audit argued that mistakes had been made in granting neither Austria's ministery of energy nor regulatory E-Control full access to gas contracts agreed upon between OMV and Russian Gazprom[9][10] in 2006.
In view of their responsibilities to stakeholders, including donors, sponsors, programme beneficiaries, staff, states and the public, they are considered to be of even greater importance to them than to commercial undertakings.
Modern technology and associated culture shifts have changed how government works (see WikiLeaks), what information people can find out about each other, and the ability of politicians to stay in office if they are involved in sex scandals.
Due to the digital revolution, people no longer have a high level of control over what is public information, leading to a tension between the values of transparency and privacy.
Sports has become a global business over the last century, and here, too, initiatives ranging from mandatory drug testing to the fighting of sports-related corruption are gaining ground based on the transparent activities in other domains.
[25][failed verification] Sigmund Freud, following Friedrich Nietzsche ("On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense"), regularly argues that transparency is impossible because of the occluding function of the unconscious.
The German philosopher and media theorist Byung-Chul Han, in his 2012 work Transparenzgesellschaft, sees transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic.
According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.
[27][28][29] Todd Sanders and Harry West, for example, suggest not only that realms of the revealed and concealed require each other, but also that transparency in practice produces the very opacities it claims to obviate.
In an article, Birchall assessed "whether the ascendance of transparency as an ideal limits political thinking, particularly for western socialists and radicals struggling to seize opportunities for change".
She is concerned that the dominant model of governmental data-driven transparency produces neoliberal subjectivities that reduce the possibility of politics as an arena of dissent between real alternatives.
[31] Researchers at the University of Oxford and Warwick Business School found that transparency can also have significant unintended consequences in the field of medical care.
