The Perils of Transparency in Bureaucracies

Many countries have recently enacted or proposed reforms aimed at increasing the availability of information on the quality of some public sector services. Transparency has been a buzzword among international organizations and public sector reformers. For example, the disclosure of school and teacher quality has generated a heated public debate. In the United States, No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires learning progress be measured for every child and results from students’ tests be made available in annual report cards, so that parents can evaluate school performance. Similar reforms have also been proposed for many other public services. In the United Kingdom, legislation introduced in 2000 requires the performance of each local government be reviewed and results made public, not only with regards to provision of services such as fire, police, housing, social services, and education, but also the condition of roads, average time taken to remove fly-tips, and the amount of household waste recycled. Most of these reforms have been opposed by the affected public sector employees. In the United States, the largest teachers union (the National Education Association) spent more than $8 million in an effort to derail NCLB. In the United Kingdom, public service unions greeted reforms with increased scepticism and hostility.