Let the “Sunshine” In…Why Transparency Matters
Filed under: Activism, Campaigns, Legislation, Schools, Sunshine Review, sunshine review
Some argue for more “Sunshine” in government as if transparency is a positive onto itself. It is not. Transparency matters because it guarantees access to information that empowers every citizen to hold government officials accountable for the conduct of the publics’ business and the spending of taxpayers’ money. Official accountability to the citizen is the great positive; the corner stone of self government and liberty.
Sunshine matters because without transparency there can be no accountability. And, without accountability, there is no self government. Without accountability, government of the people is government over the people.
The opportunities for government transparency have never been greater. The Internet allows direct, low cost access to virtually unlimited quantities of documents and data, while an array of telecommunications devices can instantly transmit information to millions of citizens simultaneously. But for all the power of these technologies, government cannot be fully transparent—and thus accountable—unless disclosure is de rigueur.
Freedom of Information Act laws do facilitate a degree of citizen scrutiny. But government agencies easily exploit a variety of FOIA loopholes, and even the savviest citizens can be stymied by the convoluted requirements. Thus, government at every level must be forced to provide citizens ready access to all budgets, contracts, audits, permits, meeting minutes and the like. It is entirely reasonable to expect that such “affirmative disclosure” should be no less stringent than the multifarious disclosure demands government imposes on taxpayers.
Many states, counties, cities and school districts come up short in providing an appropriate level of transparency. For example, California’s budget site does not disclose line item expenditures, grants, state contracts, or employee compensation data. Massachusetts has no online database of state spending. New York posts its financial reports online, but in a PDF format that is not searchable.
A useful method of evaluating government Web sites—a 10-point “Transparency Checklist” —has been developed by Sunshine Review, a wiki platform for measuring government Web content against what should be available. As noted on the Sunshine Review Web site (www.SunshineReview.org), “We shouldn’t have to ask the government for permission to be an informed citizen.”
Michael Barnhart, Sunshine Review
mbarnhart@sunshinereview.org
You are absolutely correct. Transparency alone is only the first step. Citizens armed with information must take it upon themselves to take action. For this reason we have created a site that allows citizens to vote on every bill in congress and send those votes to their representatives. We hope to expand to state level as well.
Please see: http://www.votecracy.com
And thanks for the checklist. I’ll be using it to grade my local gov sites.
Great post about the reasons for data openness in government, exactly what this group is about.
I’m interested in not only government information like spending, budgets, and contracts, but also in data the the government tracks that is public record but hard to obtain through FOIA requests: crime reports, car accident locations, building permits, zoning changes, restaurant health inspections, property values, home sales, etc.
I estimate that only 1 out of every 100,000 municipal datasets like this are available in any form online for citizens, leaving the average citizens no practical way to get at the information.
Let the sunshine in and let’s help the government make public information truly public.