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The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify legislators’ policy on the mandatory, online proactive disclosure of information; and to identify environmental influences on behaviour in this respect. To implement these proactive policies on transparency included in the legislative frameworks, internet websites are being used as a means of disseminating this proactive information.

To achieve these goals, by application of the theories used to analyse the causes of information disclosure, the authors first developed an index of online proactive disclosure; then, by means of a regression analysis, the authors examined and tested eight hypotheses related to environmental variables.

The results obtained show that legislators have chosen to require scant online proactive information on which to base institutional legitimacy, and that in this respect they are influenced by how long the previous laws have been in force, by the level of public sector borrowing and by the degree of political commitment among the population.

The results obtained from this study will provide valuable information for future legislators and for civil society about information policies, clarifying the amount and nature of information that, according to the authorities, should be disclosed without the need for prior request. The paper is also intended to stimulate the development of further research in this area, by showing how different economic, political, social, cultural and institutional contexts influence the decisions taken regarding the public information that must be reported proactively to stakeholders.

The purpose of this study is to analyse whether it is the Spanish urban environments that can be considered smart cities that are making the greatest efforts to ensure that citizens have better access to city information and, thus, participate to a greater degree in its governance.

This analysis of the use made of social networks, as an integral part of democratisation, is divided into two phases: first, a descriptive study was made of the cities’ use of their social networks; we then examined, by multiple linear regression analysis, whether the urban areas classed as smart cities are those that make more or less use or application of social networks.

Although, in general terms, the “smartest” smart cities are those which obtain the best overall results in terms of social networks, further improvements are needed, especially in the field of activity and interaction with citizens via these networks.

The impact made by social media is one of the emerging research themes in the domain of smart cities, e-government and their information policies. Nevertheless, few studies have examined whether the smart cities are also those whose governments have achieved a greater degree of citizen participation through social networks. Therefore, this study contributes to our understanding of the importance of social media in the local government context, by establishing a relationship between democratic participation, through Facebook and Twitter, and the development of smart cities.