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A paradox seems to emerge when public information is priced without associated costs of electronic distribution. This paper investigates this paradox in light of recent Norwegian government policymaking. The picture seems to be that neither pricing principles nor practices are consistent with information policies, technological advances or theories of information economics.

The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the policy debates surrounding the commercial reuse of public sector information. It aims to provide an overview of these discussions in the light of the 2003 EU Directive on this matter and the UK's implementation in the form of the 2005 Reuse of Public Sector Information Regulations. It also aims to argue that there is an inherent conflict of interest between the UK policy of making public sector information more freely available and the financial targets imposed by government on some of the key producers of this information.

The discussions presented in this paper draw on secondary academic and commercial research carried out in Europe and the USA. Primary analysis of the financial accounts of public bodies is also utilised to consider the potential conflicts of interest between revenue generation and information dissemination.

The evidence presented suggests that the sale of information collected by a number of key public bodies and the financial targets that are set by HM Treasury for them are a barrier to innovation within the private sector and to the wider development of an information society.

This research provides useful evidence for developers of UK information policies within the context of stimulating the development of a more vibrant information economy.

This is the first attempt to combine the financial analysis of UK public accounts with discussions about the commercial reuse of public sector information.

This article outlines the details of a British Library Research and Development Department funded project on the provision of European Union information in public libraries in the UK. It explains how European Union information is currently being provided to the public in the EU Public Information Relay and emphasises the issues involved in providing European Union information electronically.

The advancement of enterprise social networks (ESNs) facilitates information sharing but also presents the challenge of managing information boundaries. This study aims to explore the factors that influence the information-control behavior of ESN users when continuously sharing information.

This study specifies the information-control behaviors in the “wall posts” channel and applies communication privacy management (CPM) theory to analyze the effects of the individual-specific factor (disposition to value information), context-specific factors (work-relatedness and information richness) and risk-benefit ratio (public benefit and public risk). Data on actual information-control behaviors extracted from ESN logs are examined using multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression analysis.

The study's findings show the direct effects of the individual-specific factor, context-specific factors and risk-benefit ratio, highlighting interactions between the individual motivation factor and ESN context factors.

This study reshapes the relationship of CPM theory boundary rules in the ESN context, extending information-control research and providing insights into ESNs' information-control practices.

The purpose of this paper is to present the relationship between records management (RM) and accountable and efficient governance.

In this paper, the required framework and the prerequisites for planning and implementing an effective and efficient RM system are presented and a literature review and empirical studies are used to depict the interaction between good governance and RM.

The following conclusions are derived from the bibliographic data analysis. Specific training by RM professionals for recordkeeping is useful for public servants. All levels of the administrative chain should be trained and involved in RM processes. Good governance, information security and RM are all deeply connected. The tendency of regarding archives only as cultural thesaurus or valuable historical resources and not also as products and assets of their originating organizations has to be abandoned. Electronic RM and preservation is a complex matter that requires interdisciplinary action in order to be resolved. Technology and computers are not the panacea of records keeping and information management problems in governmental institutions. Institutional capacity and top‐level support are two elements, plus technology that enhances change management, work flow, standardization and interoperability.

Top management of the public (and private sector) has to be persuaded that there is cost reduction and effectiveness through the implementation of RMS. Public administration needs to turn to records and archives management professionals and involve them in the legislative, planning and operating work regarding the information management and its influence on good governance in public organizations.

Governments have to set and apply a comprehensive strategy for records and archives management, meaning the physical and intellectual control over all records created and held in public administration. Citizens should be always informed on their rights to access and use of governmental information. Only responsible and informed citizens can demand transparency and accountability by governments.

Through this work one can identify the major key issues and problems in planning and implementing a strategy for the creation and management of public records in governments. The most important goal is to raise awareness amongst all participants for emerging legal, fiscal and administrative issues involved with managing governmental information.

Public information disclosure is a manifestation of transparency and contributes to governance-by-disclosure. Also, better financial reporting can improve the credibility and integrity of public finances and contribute to a better management of public resources. A survey was carried out in Cyprus of users’ of public financial reports concerning an expectation gap about the types of information included in such reports (information needs expectation gap) as well as the quality of such information (information quality satisfaction gap). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Two focus groups of users and preparers of public financial reports were used to construct the questionnaire. Users of such reports, who belonged to all three categories of public sector financial reporting identified by IPSASB, were surveyed. The quantitative data obtained was analysed using SPSS and quadrant analysis to answer the research questions posed.

Data from 101 respondents confirmed that each of the information needs identified in the IPSASB Consultation Paper (2008) was rated as being a significant information need. Data analysis also showed that both types of expectation gap exist, especially as far as local authority and semi-public organisations are concerned.

The response rate in the self-administered survey was admittedly rather low but it was not unexpected mainly due to the survey’s very specialised nature and the tendency by people in Cyprus not to critique public bodies.

Deficient financial public sector reporting means the auditor general is not able to adequately express an opinion on public spending at the local government level. This, in turn, means taxpayers do not get the quality of services they pay for. At the same time, the lack of information transparency means corrupt practices are not eradicated. One answer to the problem would be legislating the content of public financial reports.

The lack of governance-by-public exposure means that services to the local community cost a lot more, due to corruption and inefficiency. In addition, it contributes to lowering market confidence and eventually contributes to financial crisis at the national level.

The survey conducted was the first of its kind in Cyprus to investigate financial public sector reporting and document both manifestations of the expectation gap. In addition, information needs identified in the IPSASB Consultation Paper (2008) was rated as significantly needed and this is the first time it has been done in Eurozone member state and in a country facing a financial crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the environmental uncertainty faced by public administrations and their likelihood of disclosing performance information, particularly at municipal level.

The existence of the relationship between environmental uncertainty and performance information disclosure is explored, drawing on organizational information processing theory. The paper describes an empirical quantitative investigation in a sample of 490 Italian municipalities.

Municipalities facing more uncertainty are more likely to disclose performance information. There is no unique set of factors that can explain the difference in the disclosure activity of Italian municipalities, but this activity appears to be contingent on the level of environmental uncertainty.

The paper explores the under-investigated field of factors influencing the disclosure of performance information by public administrations. It identifies uncertainty as one of the determinants of performance information disclosure. The findings suggest that the use of theories and variables not previously used in this type of study can improve understanding of the phenomenon. The study also suggests that public officials should consider adequate enforcement mechanisms to promote performance information disclosure, especially for organizations with lower incentives to improve information processing capabilities.

Although uncertainty has been identified as a key crisis characteristic and a multi-faceted construct essential to effective crisis management research and practice, only a few studies examined publics' perceived uncertainty with a focus on crisis severity uncertainty, leaving crisis responsibility uncertainty uninvestigated in organizational crisis settings.

To close this research gap empirically, this study employed data from an online survey of a total of 817 US adults to examine how participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty and their attribution-based crisis emotions might impact their crisis responses such as further crisis information seeking.

First, findings show that participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty was negatively associated with their attribution-independent (AI) crisis emotions (i.e. anxiety, fear, apprehension and sympathy) and external-attribution-dependent (EAD) crisis emotions (i.e. disgust, contempt, anger and sadness), but positively associated with internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) crisis emotions (i.e. guilt, embarrassment and shame). Second, crisis responsibility uncertainty and AI crisis emotions were positive predictors for participants' further crisis information seeking. Third, AI crisis emotions and IAD crisis emotions were parallel mediators for the relationship between participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty and their further crisis information seeking.

Organizations need to pay attention to the perceived uncertainty about crisis responsibility and attribution-based crisis emotions since they can impact the decision of seeking crisis information during an ongoing organizational crisis.

This study improves uncertainty management in organizational crisis communication research and practice, connecting crisis responsibility uncertainty, attribution-based crisis emotions and publics' crisis information seeking.

The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory study whose aim was to investigate the role of public libraries in the provision of European Union (EU) information in an EU acceding country (Croatia).

Study was conducted via online questionnaire in public libraries across country.

The findings revealed that majority of respondents (83.7 percent) think it is an important task of public libraries to provide citizens with materials about the EU, and that almost all responding libraries (98 percent) have EU materials. In general, respondents think that provision of EU materials in their library does not compromise its role of politically neutral institution. The results also indicate that libraries quite rarely (10 percent) maintain links to relevant EU online sources on their websites. EU collections in responding libraries are promoted actively most frequently in the library itself and on its website, and very rarely in the local media.

Findings are expected to be of interest to European administration in charge of the development of effective communication policies, national authorities in EU candidate and acceding countries, and information professionals in general.

This is the first study to investigate the role of public libraries in EU information provision in an EU acceding country.

We all know that the AIDS threat to society is alarming. It is not only a serious health problem but it has become a problem of education and information as well. By the end of 1991, AIDS is predicted to be the second leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease. More people will die from AIDS than from cancers or accidents; and the direct health cost for caring for the estimated 145,000 AIDS patients in 1991 will be between 8 and 16 million dollars.