The Journal of Accounting and Management, Vol 7, No 1 (2017)

Abstract

Assessing performance in the public sector continues to be a major issue for all governments around the world.  In this area of information, governments are assigning increased attention to the development and implementation of communication technologies in the public sector, in particular, the Internet, as a mean of promoting transparency and accountability, through information disclosure, and for increasing citizens’ trust in government. Therefore, this research focuses on the financial information disclosed by the Romanian public hospitals on their websites. The research also focuses on timeliness and visibility of data but also on the usefulness of the search engines in an attempt to establish the qualitative level of information disclosed. To achieve these objectives this study applies the disclosure index developed by previous authors and adapted to the Romanian public hospital setting. The results show that disclosing financial information is not always a priority for hospital managers. The visibility of information is high, and the search engines mostly return relevant information regarding the search terms. However, timeliness seems to be significantly low revealing only a formal compliance with the principles of good governance. This study provides support to legislators in developing a uniform transparency law.