There are many researches on transparency, -governance principle-, I suggest to check few research and their reserach question , and methods to decide and thennarrow your question down.

Transparency and accountability in public sector management is a two sided coin, neglecting the accountability dimension will leave a gap on your research focus, as well as potentially misleading your research question. Servqual analysis with the application of likert scale would be great entrance for measuring the public satisfaction over the public service delivery. with a validation model on the servqual you can attach the aspect of transparency and accountability as a perfect tool of analysis , as well as adding a consistency to your  rRQ. i hope it helps 

How will you measure transparency, and how will you measure the quality of services? Which public institutions will you include and in what countries? 

A Primer on Corporate Governance, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228518193_A_Primer_on_Corporate_Governance, ought to be relevant and of interest. The article makes the point that more demanding notions of corporate governance—typically drawn from the principles of the Cadbury Report of 1992—are spreading to the public sector and shines a light on how to build better governance there.

Article A Primer on Corporate Governance

Thank you very much for your participation,

Dr Onder, I've been reading many articles about public governance, its very broad subject and there are many methods and problems addressed by many researchers. I cant decide which to follow.

Mr Hidayat, this is an important point I didn't notice before, I think I might consider it in my research.

Dr Morris, I've found some possible dimensions for transparency and services quality where I can use likrt scale to measure them using a questionnaire based on both people's and employees's opinions. I am planning to conduct this research in a European country.

Mr Serrat, very interesting article rich of information. thank you very much.\

I would love to hear more opinions about what specific research questions can I consider in my research and which methodology can work fine with it.

I think you need to narrow down your topic to be more specific 

Great subject area, the topic is wide open.  The question that particularly intrigues me is using openness/transparency as a dependent variable, watching and measuring change over time in the degree of transparency in some key indicators, and trying to figure out what increases or decreases the level of transparency over time.  in the U.S., watching the degree of transparency about spending on the so called black budget has been fascinating.  Regardless of how you focus your study, you will have to pay attention to how you measure transparency.  If I were you, I would pick a couple of areas that are critical to the country or countries you are looking at, (or cities or provinces for that matter), once you have narrowed it down that way, measurement is much simpler.  Transparency in budgeting for example, includes the publication of a proposal in the US, the inclusiveness and detail of the proposal, and public records of legislative consideration and decisions, as well as detailed reports on the degree to which the budget as approved was actually implemented, with discussion of changes made after approval.  There are many steps along the way, involving both inclusiveness (scope) and level of meaningful detail, at each major point in the process.  Some may become more obscure while others become more apparent--what is going on when that happens?  what does it mean?

I wish you very good luck.

Irene

Transparency in the public sector as one key element has a dependency element in order to rate the end quality.

i.e. Transparency + “something” = quality of service

The transparency element is well and good in the beginning when the institution engages with the public regarding the needs, desires and wants.

The issue with ‘something’ is that THIS is the enigma. Often, when the strategic response to needs is taken up in strategic planning; at this stage despite the best informed intentions of the technocrat /expert during the planning and strategic planning phase; the “something’ is more often than not compromised by a variety of factors ranging from political influences and interest, budget, choice and decision-making, individual competence, and the time given (influenced again by the politics as well as the performance framework and public demand), execution of plan, etc. to deliver the product or service, and by the supply chain principles that need to be followed (usually the lowest qualifying bidder rather than the most competent).

At the end, when the service or product is delivered, transparency, while it may have been rated well the beginning (during engagement), is now dependent on the ‘something’ enigma that was internalized during planning and if this enigma scored low because of all the factors that influenced it, at the end quality scores low.

For instance if out of ten; transparency scored 5 and the ‘something’ enigma scored 3; then quality equals 8. If the enigma factor scored higher (better managed, less interference, etc.), then quality is increased.

Questions should not discount this enigma factor.

Wish you well in the research

The quality of public services can be assessed through the principles of availability, accessibility, adaptability and acceptability. In this link there is an example of its definition: http://socialprotection-humanrights.org/framework/principles/standards-of-accessibility-adaptability-and-acceptability/

This article may be a good point of departure for discussing transparency in relation to other concepts: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2202/1944-2866.1076/full

At some point, I think you will have to decide whether you want to look at transparency as an independent or a dependent variable.  If as an independent variable, you probably should think about what you think greater transparency could or should accomplish, outline the mechanisms through which you think transparency might influence your dependent variables.  For example, full transparency in budgeting should reduce the level of government corruption, say in contracting, because it would make clear what the costs are for what services provided by whom, and if the government was paying much more for a service than it seems that it could, it would look suspicious...full transparency might increase public confidence that tax money was being spend in accordance with the budget or with national needs, and would reveal the priorities of the government, that is, proportionally, how much of the money is going to defense, or to historic preservation, or child health.  Possibly transparency could reduce the level of public alienation.  Full transparency in governmental reporting--say making inspector general reports public--should, could or might increase accountability.  If you cannot come up with a likely mechanism linking transparency to your dependent variables of interest, you should omit those dependent variables from the analysis.  Or do a different study of the determinants of the dependent variable you are most interested in.

The same kind of logic should apply if you use transparency as your dependent variable, what variables might influence the degree of openness and transparency and how do they operate, through what mechanisms?  To me, these questions are less obvious, the research topic is wide open, waiting for eager researchers.  You might have to look at variations in openness that have occurred in the past and see if you can ferret out what might have been involved in those cases, and then design a study around those independent variables to see how they work.  

Irene

It is a very interesting topic in the study of public administration. I think, it is good to consider other concepts of good governance to increase the strength of this research. And you have to find out the independent variables which help to determine and enrich the transparency in these public sectors.

In my opinion, the two questions can not combine in one research project. (1) the transparency in public sector (how is it ? and in what extent?) (2) what is effect ? how much?. The second is evaluation type of research and the first is a description type.

good luck

There really are three possibilities, the descriptive one, what is transparency, how does it work;  transparency as an independent variable, what effect does it have, on what outcomes; and transparency as a dependent variable, what are the determinants of transparency.  It would be too much to include all three in one study, but one or two would work, there needs to be some descriptive work, what is it, how to measure it, and that could be combined with looking at either determinants or outcomes.

Irene

How do you see this "Effects of transparency on the quality of service provided by institutions: Evidence from the Public sector".

I agree with some of the members, indicating that Transparency and Effect should not be combined into one.  Transparency would be more of descriptive.  Effect would be evaluative.  I feel the effect/impact part would be more interesting.  I am not sure how will you bring out the use of ICT as an enabler for bringing transparency?  Today ICT/eGovernance is a major enabler for transparency and reaching to the un-reached.

Transparency is a very important factor to deliver better services for citizens... I believe you will get a better picture if you read about NPM. Also, make sure to have a good measurement for transparency. You first have to measure the level of transparency in particular area if you have a case study. Then, you need to evaluate public services provided by public institution in order to determine the effects of transparency on public service delivery. I have talked about aspects of transparency and its impacts on public service delivery in my thesis. If you need that, I can email it to you. 

There can be a close relationship between transparency and effectiveness if careful measurement of quality of service delivery is made public...but there is a danger that the data will be slanted to make an agency look good, so the performance measurement must be insulated from pressure, probably done by an outside ngo or another agency that has nothing to lose from negative reports.  

If these performance measures improve over time, without a compensating deterioration in other measures, you have your evidence.  

Irene

These are an interesting issues as i have accountability and transparency as among the knwledge gap in the context of public sector. Therefore, both are some my dependent variables in developing a new measurement items for a holistic leadership attributes. However, i'm not focusing on the quality as my study is aiming at exploring and developing the holistic leadership attributes in the public sector. It is more on the relationships between my main ivs with my dvs.

Dear Ahmed

I think the following papers are very useful for you:

• Information Management Model for Intellectual Capital of HEIs in Oman: Theoretical Quantitative Approach and Practical Results. J. of Information and Knowledge Management, 2018, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp.1-38. (World Scientific).

• HEIs Quality Improvement Through Students and Academic Staff’s Perception: Data Analysis and Robustness of the Results. International Journal for Quality Research, 2017, Vol.11, No.2, pp.261-278.

• Al-Farahidi Performative model to assess HEIs. 4th OQNHE Conference 2017, pp.1-15.

• A Framework for Fostering the Quality of HEIs: Data Collection, Evaluation, Indication and Validation. Int. J. of Quality and Innovation, Vol.3, No.1, pp.42-66 (Inderscience).

Regards,

Zuhair