The discussion over the requirement for openness of governmental information is part of a much larger debate: transparency as a general principle in democratic societies. There is no doubt that in several countries, significant inroads have been made into this area. However, this debate is often based on a kind of hope which is poorly supported theoretically and analytically. Giving actual content to the social concept of “transparency” seems to be a critical step toward more important and practical agendas, such as its effective implementation and inclusion into governmental organizations. This paper proposes four “transparency failures” as tools to study concrete and workable ways of incorporating the transparency agenda into governmental organizations.