Abstract
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\textemdashmaking the wealth of data it holds freely available to its clients\textemdashEau Méditerranée found a novel way to provide a clear and credible form of accountability for local authorities without further increasing its bureaucratic workload. \textcopyright 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.