The Study of Government Website Information Disclosure in Taiwan

Abstract

Taiwan’s Freedom of Information Act (TFOIA) aims at protecting people’s right to know and making the information easily, evenly formulated and obtained by the public. The access to government information not only enhances people’s understanding, trust, and supervision on public affairs, but also promotes their participation in democracy. The goal of open and transparent administration can be achieved only by sharing the information with the public. All government agencies must have everything set, especially after one-year adjustment of TFOIA that was passed in December 2005. In expectation of publicizing government’s efforts and achievement, we design a score card on the basis of regulations made by TFOIA for all governmental websites. Meanwhile, we also conduct a survey of 248 governmental websites to see whether the websites offer legal and proper information to the public or not. The findings of the research confirm that the information disclosed on government websites still remains insufficient, except for data on official organizations, duties, addresses, telephone numbers, fax numbers, websites, e-mail addresses, and the like. Moreover, the information disclosed on the websites has a remarkable connection with organizational levels and functional attributes of all government offices. In general, according to the score card, TFOIA scores only 1.25 on the average, far from the regulated full score 3.0. Apparently, TFOIA still has much room for improvement.