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Eau Méditerranée's Panopticon: Democratic Oversight for Deregulated Public Services
Author(s) -
Bourdon Isabelle,
Kimble Chris,
Buffenoir Eric
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
global business and organizational excellence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.227
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1932-2062
pISSN - 1932-2054
DOI - 10.1002/joe.21767
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , deregulation , panopticon , accountability , transparency (behavior) , democracy , prison , workload , business , public administration , visibility , economics , political science , market economy , management , law , physics , optics , politics
How can democratic oversight of deregulated public services be provided without running the risk of reintroducing the layers of bureaucracy that deregulation was to remove? A study of the deregulation of water services provided by Eau Méditerranée in the south of France shows how a reworking of an 18th‐century concept for increasing visibility in a prison environment, updated to take account of the capabilities of today's information technology, can help. By adopting a new approach to management transparency—making the wealth of data it holds freely available to its clients—Eau Méditerranée found a novel way to provide a clear and credible form of accountability for local authorities without further increasing its bureaucratic workload. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.