Google (NASDAQ: GOOG - News) is bottom of a league table on openness and accountability, and needs to sharply improve transparency towards customers and staff, according to a report to be published on Tuesday.

The internet search engine "is not addressing the privacy and other issues that are concerning many customers", said Robert Lloyd, lead author of the cross-sector report, which examines the accountability standards of a total of 30 companies, intergovernmental organisations and civil society pressure groups.

The report, by One World Trust, a non-governmental group, will be launched in the UK parliament, with Lord Malloch-Brown, minister for Africa, as the keynote speaker.

"We were surprised about Google's result. They did not co-operate [with the report] and on some policy issues, such as transparency towards customers, they have no publicly available information at all," Mr Lloyd said.

A person close to Google said the company was unable to respond to the large number of requests it received to participate in surveys. No official comment was available.

Top performers identified by the report, the Global Accountability Report 2007, include the United Nations Development Programme, the Christian Aid development charity and General Electric.

Other poor performers were PricewaterhouseCoopers International, the auditing and consulting company, and Interpol, the international police agency.

Interpol's secretariat in Lyon, France, said the report lacked credibility and the police agency's accountability standards were "nothing short of extraordinary".

It said One World Trust lacked transparency in its own working methods.

On a score out of 100, the UNDP, the top performer, received 88 points while Google received only 17.

The report assesses transparency towards the public and staff; mechanisms for staff and external stakeholders to participate in decision-making; whether organisations have mechanisms to evaluate the social, environmental and other impacts of their work; and whether there are mechanisms to respond to complaints.

The 10 companies performed well on complaint mechanisms, but overall performed worst in the other three categories. Several NGOs also had low standards in transparency and complaints procedures.

Lord Malloch-Brown writes in the report's introduction that accountability remains a major problem especially in "global institutions", and says a recent ethics scandal at the World Bank is still "jeopardising the institution".