Abstract
The efficient municipal service delivery, expectations and perceptions of citizens are one of
the important issues which are central to any municipality across various parts of the world.
Among these issues, the transparency and accountability, management of funds for local
development attracts special interest among citizens, organization, NGOs, and other
stakeholders involved in the development process. The vicious cycle of financial constraints and
poor service delivery often results into diversion of funds from earmarked development areas to
the areas demanding priority attention. These issues still remain unaddressed and hidden in the
absence of appropriate transparent and open government accessibility at internal as well as
external levels within the municipal context. The paper highlights key findings from selected
metropolitan cities of South Africa and India by doing exploratory comparative analysis about
to what extent are the municipal websites addressing the issues of transparent and open
governance. The assessment of municipal websites is focused on the issues of access to
information on development funds and projects at local level to citizens and other
stakeholders. The web content analysis on selected cities provide a background for discussion on
the areas of concern to address the key gaps and initiatives for enabling transparent and open
governance through municipal websites.