Assessing e-government: advances in the transparency of State public finances

The adoption of the electronic government system by the public administration has created a new relationship between the citizenry and the Government. However, in the case of Mexico, the question of whether the electronic government system can actually improve its transparency has still not been answered. Following the literature about the effect of the pressure of globalisation on bureaucratic change, this paper compares the transparency of the figures for public finances found on various State web pages (electronic government) against the information that each State is required to publish according to the Ley de Transparecia y Accesso a la Informacion Publica - LTAIP (Transparency and access to public information act). In 70% of the cases the results show that the electronic government on its own cannot affect the transparency of the public finances. In order to change the transparency it is necessary to modify the institutional context and the characteristics of the different organisations.