Transparency should be part of the corporate culture

18/02/2016

The transparency of municipally owned companies is important not just as a way for citizens to learn about the use of public funds, but also because transparency can improve efficiency and the quality of services provided.

"What is missing is not the intention, but a conscious support by top brass for the case of transparency. There is a wide range of relatively low-cost solutions for this, but the companies either don’t know about these, or they do not use them because of a lack of internal capacity or resources” – said Petra Reszkető at a workshop organized by Transparency International Hungary and Budapest Institute in Szeged.

At the event we presented the results of our study prepared in partnership with Transparency International Hungary to the representatives of companies owned by the municipality of Szeged, and we discussed what works and what can be improved concerning data sharing practices.

The main conclusion of the workshop was that in most of the cases top management do not support consciously and explicitly transparency as a corporate value, and do not communicate their commitment to good information sharing practices either internally or externally. This is true even for companies that are at the top of our transparency rankings – local pioneers in the public disclosure of financial data and organizational information.

The main conclusion of the related research project is that neither state-owned enterprises nor companies owned by local government know about or use modern management tools that reduce the risk of corrution. Building these into the everyday work of companies takes time, but, for companies that take integrity seriously, that should not be a reason not to start to do so right away.