The Evolution of the Level of Transparency in Entities in the Social Economy Sector: The Case of IPSS in Portugal

The Social Economy (SE) has developed in the last several years through increased recognition of the entities that comprise it. These entities receive numerous public funds that need to be appropriately managed to fulfil the demands of the population that are not addressed by the State. Because of this, is crucial that these SE entities are transparent about how public funds that comes from taxes citizens pay are spent. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to evaluate the level of transparency of Private Social Solidarity Institutions in Portugal and verify their recent behaviour. To achieve this, analysed Enhancement of an Accountability Guide for Learning E-Government transparency index was used to analyse the websites of these institutions. Through this investigation, it was possible to confirm that there is still a low level of transparency, despite the elevated number of entities that have a website.