The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) on Feb. 24 issued a report evaluating government agencies on information transparency.
The National Railway Administration ranked last, according to the blue book report, with a score of zero out of 100, according to a Global Times article.
Number on in the index was the Ministry of Education, followed by the State Administration of Work Safety and the National Development and Reform Commission. Lü Yanbin, head of the research group, was quoted as saying that the National Railway Administration did not have an official website until Jan. 6.
For the fifth year running, CASS evaluated government transparency on the availability of department reports and regulatory documents on their official websites. “They also asked government departments to disclose information in written form, but found that many departments were reluctant to comply with the requests,” the article said. A majority cited state secrets as an excuse to withhold information, according to news portal cnr.cn. “It is one of the major problems in information disclosure. The central government needs to further explain, at the State level, what information can be released and what should be kept secret,” said Yun Jie, a political science scholar from CASS.
When accessing transparency of provincial governments, Tianjin Municipality is ranked No.1 out of 31 provincial regions, followed by Anhui Province and Jiangsu Province. Liaoning Province is ranked the last and Beijing is ranked 9th on the list. Lü invited 10 departments to discuss government transparency, but some didn’t reply and others refused to come.
On the other hand, Lü said, “We received feedback from lots of organizations. They read the report and improved their work accordingly.”
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