We have numerically studied a tunable dual‐spectral plasmon‐induced transparency metamaterial structure based on Dirac semimetal films in the terahertz region. The structure was composed of three ...length‐variant parallel coplanar strips. The dual‐spectral plasmon‐induced transparency is mainly induced by the bright‐bright modes coupling between neighboring Dirac semimetal strips. By adjusting the Fermi energies of Dirac semimetal strips, the individual and synchronous modulation of the dual‐transparency window in resonance frequency, bandwidth and strength can be obtained, respectively. Simultaneous change of the Fermi energies of all the strips can achieve an overall frequency shift of the dual‐transparency window, with the frequency modulation depth of 21.7% and 20.0%, respectively. The maximum group delays of 5.26 and 3.57 ps for each window were calculated in our proposed structure. The simulation results demonstrated the potential of the proposed structure to expand the applications for slow‐light systems, filters, and switchers in the terahertz region.
Under pressure to fight corruption, hold public officials accountable, and build trust with citizens, many governments pursue the quest for greater transparency. They publish data about their ...internal operations, externalize decision-making processes, establish digital inquiry lines to public officials, and employ other forms of transparency using digital means. Despite the presence of many transparency-enhancing digital tools, putting such tools together to achieve the desired level of digital transparency, to design entire government systems for digital transparency, remains challenging. Design principles and other design guides are lacking in this area. This article aims to fill this gap. We identify a set of barriers to digital transparency in government, define 16 design principles to overcome such barriers, and evaluate these principles using three case studies from different countries. Some principles apply to projects, others to systems, yet others to entire organizations. To achieve digital transparency, before building and deploying digital solutions, government organizations should build technological and institutional foundations and use such foundations to organize themselves for transparency. The proposed design principles can help develop and apply such foundations.
•Many barriers hinder digital transparency in government organizations.•Design principles for digital transparency in government are presented.•The ease of implementation and organizational impact differ among principles.•Proper internal organization is mandatory for digital transparency.•Design principles for digital transparency are context-dependent.
Police body-worn cameras (BWCs) have emerged in response to calls for greater police transparency and accountability. Leveraged as techno-regulatory tools with the potential to influence officer ...behavior, BWCs may also afford officers opportunities to review video footage prior to writing incident reports, which has implications for how police-public interactions are documented in official records. In this study of BWC adoption by a police agency in the United States, we examine how officers’ ideological perspectives on BWCs, technological limitations, and policy-related concerns influenced their decisions about whether and how to review video as part of their report writing practice. In conclusion, we argue that police practitioners and policy-makers should provide clearer policy guidance to officers about how BWC footage should be used in the report writing process and that police administrators, policy-makers, and researchers should directly consider the role that technology might play in regulating officer behavior, even in unintended ways.
In keeping with the growing movement in scientific publishing toward transparency in data and methods, we propose changes to journal authorship policies and procedures to provide insight into which ...author is responsible for which contributions, better assurance that the list is complete, and clearly articulated standards to justify earning authorship credit. To accomplish these goals, we recommend that journals adopt common and transparent standards for authorship, outline responsibilities for corresponding authors, adopt the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) (docs.casrai.org/CRediT) methodology for attributing contributions, include this information in article metadata, and require authors to use the ORCID persistent digital identifier (https://orcid.org). Additionally, we recommend that universities and research institutions articulate expectations about author roles and responsibilities to provide a point of common understanding for discussion of authorship across research teams. Furthermore, we propose that funding agencies adopt the ORCID identifier and accept the CRediT taxonomy. We encourage scientific societies to further authorship transparency by signing on to these recommendations and promoting them through their meetings and publications programs.
Fiscal transparency is fundamentally important but difficult to achieve. The conceptualization of transparency has to be more sophisticated than current rhetoric implies. Analytical tools relating to ...the generic concept of transparency can be applied to public expenditure. Achieving transparency about public expenditure presents challenges that require explicit strategies in the context of what can be very different sets of local conditions. This article identifies the specific meaning of transparency about public expenditure, defined in terms of the four directions of transparency: inwards, outwards, upwards and downwards. It identifies barriers to the effective transparency of public expenditure, characterizing these as intrinsic or constructed. Tackling these barriers, especially those constructed by policy actors, constitutes a route towards more effective transparency, not only about public expenditure itself but about surrogates for it. It is not just quantity that matters: different varieties of transparency will have differential effects on the achievement of public policy objectives. How transparency mechanisms are structured will therefore shape their impact on public policy – on efficiency, on equity and on democratic accountability.
Points for practitioners
Public expenditure transparency is fundamentally important, but elusive. The difficulty stems from technical complexities and from the political process. Governments that genuinely wish to improve public expenditure transparency must address intrinsic barriers (such as low public understanding of budgeting numbers and their relationship to national accounts) and desist from building constructed barriers (such as misleading spinned numbers and substituting surrogates for direct public expenditure). It is not just the quantity of transparency that matters: different varieties of transparency will have differential effects on the achievement of public policy objectives. How transparency mechanisms are structured will shape their impact on public policy – on efficiency, on equity and on democratic accountability.
The aim of this article is to propose a theoretical framework for studying digital resignation, the condition produced when people desire to control the information digital entities have about them ...but feel unable to do so. We build on the growing body of research that identifies feelings of futility regarding companies’ respect for consumer privacy by suggesting a link between these feelings and the activities of the companies they benefit. We conceptualize digital resignation as a rational response to consumer surveillance. We further argue that routine corporate practices encourage this sense of helplessness. Illuminating the dynamics of this sociopolitical phenomenon creates a template for addressing important questions about the forces that shape uneven power relationships between companies and publics in the digital age.
Under what conditions is a newly democratic government likely to increase transparency, accountability, and responsiveness to its citizens? What incentives might there be for bureaucrats, including ...those appointed by a previously authoritarian government, to carry out the wishes of an emerging democratic regime? Responsive Democracy addresses an important problem in democratic transition and consolidation: the ability of the chief executive to control the state bureaucracy. Using three well-chosen case studies—the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan—Jeeyang Rhee Baum explores the causes and consequences of codifying rules and procedures in a newly democratic government. In the Philippines, a president facing opposition has the option of appointing and dismissing officials at will and, therefore, has no need for administrative procedure acts. However, in South Korea and Taiwan, presidents employ such legislation to rein in recalcitrant government agencies, and, as a consequence, increase transparency, accountability, and responsiveness. Moreover, as Baum demonstrates by drawing upon surveys conducted both before and after implementation, administrative procedural reforms in South Korea and Taiwan improved public confidence in and attitudes toward democratic institutions.
Investigating the theoretical and empirical relationships between transparency and trust in the context of surveillance, this volume argues that neither transparency nor trust provides a simple and ...self-evident path for mitigating the negative political and social consequences of state surveillance practices. Dominant in both the scholarly literature and public debate is the conviction that transparency can promote better-informed decisions, provide greater oversight, and restore trust damaged by the secrecy of surveillance. The contributions to this volume challenge this conventional wisdom by considering how relations of trust and policies of transparency are modulated by underlying power asymmetries, sociohistorical legacies, economic structures, and institutional constraints. They study trust and transparency as embedded in specific sociopolitical contexts to show how, under certain conditions, transparency can become a tool of social control that erodes trust, while mistrust—rather than trust—can sometimes offer the most promising approach to safeguarding rights and freedom in an age of surveillance. The first book addressing the interrelationship of trust, transparency, and surveillance practices, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of surveillance studies as well as appeal to an interdisciplinary audience given the contributions from political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and civil society.
España cuenta con una escasa cultura de la transparencia, por lo que la «Ley 19/2013 de transparencia, acceso a la información pública y buen gobierno» tardó en llegar más que en otros países. Desde ...entonces, ha habido un esfuerzo por parte de las instituciones públicas por abrir portales de datos accesibles. En este contexto, la evaluación de la transparencia se vuelve necesaria para asegurar que se cumple el derecho de los ciudadanos a acceder a la información pública y para asegurar que esta sea de calidad. En España, existen modelos muy diferentes de monitorización de la transparencia. Desde el punto de vista público, está el Consejo de Transparencia y Buen Gobierno y los diferentes comisionados de transparencia puestos en marcha en algunas comunidades autónomas. Por otro lado, existen diversos índices de transparencia que evalúan con indicadores la información publicada por las instituciones. En este artículo, estudiaremos la situación actual de la evaluación de la transparencia en España, analizaremos los fallos y destacaremos mejoras necesarias en este sistema.
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