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How often do you think about government like a business? Until I started working with Sunshine Review, I never did.

However, experience has taught that governments programs need to be run like a business. Some have good performance, some are corrupt. ::cough, um, , cough::

But government programs can be run like a business. Asking questions like, “Is the new road being built as efficiently and cheaply as possible?” are just as important as posting the checkbook register. Which is why I’m glad one of Sunshine Review all-stars, , just gave a for how they manage programs for optimal performance. You can see the entire presentation .

I like to think transparency demands better performance management from governments. After all, what government wants to report what a bad job they’re doing?

Does your local government have performance results posted online? Let us know in the comments.

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Three current and one former commissioner of a South Carolina fire district face charges they violated the by barring a reporter from a meeting. A judge signed their summonses this week. Hometown News reporter Jay King says officials threw him out of a June meeting and ignored his explanation of the . The Holly Springs Fire and Rescue commissioners are set to appear in court in late September.

This is the first time a criminal case has has been brought against public officials over the 1974 statute.

Chairman Ryan Phillips acknowledges the board didn’t follow the law but says it didn’t know the law at the time. This actually seems sincere. Other instances of and make it clear that the guilty parties either didn’t care about the law, or didn’t consider whether the law exists. They simply knew they could use their authority to box-out inconvenient watchdogs and ensure secrecy. However, the officials seem to sincerely not have known.

This may even be a worse offense. But who is to blame?

Perhaps the attorney general. Generally speaking, it is often the attorney general that is the Freedom of Information officer in states.

South Carolina, however, doesn’t need a scapegoat. It needs a solution. Local officials in every state need to be educated as to what their Freedom of Information Acts require of them, both the public records and public meetings portions. This is an easily justifiable use of taxpayer money.

Often we focus on citizen education in order to hold government accountable. But the government has to do its part, too.

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is one of the poorest cities in , pays its top officials some of the in the nation, including nearly $800,000 annually to the city manager. When citizens do not have the information necessary to hold officials accountable, abuse of power and misconduct in office are almost certain results. Hence, it should come as no surprise that Bell’s government also fails the most basic standards of government transparency

And like Bell, the vast majority of state and local governments also fail to meet the most basic standards for government transparency. That fact alone virtually guarantees that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of officials across America are today wasting taxpayer money by the fistfuls on astronomical salaries, sweetheart contracts and payrolls bloated by cronyism, breathtaking malfeasance, stupidity and criminality…

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Today, the Department of Justice announced its schedule for Freedom of Information Act training. Anyone can sign up to attend and you can see the entire schedule .

A sample of some of the sessions:

cialis online: This seminar is designed for FOIA professionals and legal advisors of all federal agencies. It provides advanced instruction on selected topics under the FOIA, including up-to-date policy guidance and views from the FOIA requester community. This program also serves as a forum for the exchange of ideas useful in dealing with problems that commonly arise in administering the FOIA.

cialis online: This course is designed for agency attorneys and FOIA professionals and focuses on the issues that arise when FOIA requests become the subject of litigation. The seminar will provide guidance on successful litigation strategy and will address in detail the preparation of Vaughn Indices and declarations.

As always, we also encourage you to join us for on Twitter, every Friday from 2-3 pm EST.

H/T:

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The , a taxpayer-funded lobbying organization, recently released a resource guide of governments using technology to increase government transparency.

are funded by public dollars. Officials or local governments will use tax funds to pay for dues to membership to these organizations, which then lobby for appropriations or legislation. Often, these activities go undisclosed to constituents.

The National League of cities (NLC) highlighted the effort of six cities in in their report. is one of the cities profiled. The city has a tool called “.” This is an excellent tool.

The site has six easy to understand options. These are:
*Where the City Gets its Money
*How the City Spends Your Money
*Louisville Checkbook, which allows you to search expenditures by agency and vendor
*City Employees Salaries (a tool could have used)
*Stimulus Funding for Louisville
*Questions & Answers, a frequently asked questions and context section.

Louisville not only discloses key information to taxpayers on its site, but it does it in a visually-appealing way. The website looks modern and simple. But it’s not just appealing in a superficial manner: the layout of the site contributes to how it is. It takes more than design to make a website usable, it takes thought. The site is incredibly intuitive and straightforward.

This is important. A government that discloses information in a matter that isn’t usable by its citizens may as well not disclose anything; in the end, no one is using or understanding the information. The same goes for governments that disclose information without context. Even something as simple as meeting minutes can seem abstruse for a person not used to reading information in that format or unfamiliar with certain jargon. I’ve often received information I’ve specifically asked for through requests and had no idea how to approach the list of vendors and purchase orders. Easy-to-understand information is invaluable.

One thing we’ve been working on at Sunshine Review is getting information about organizations like the National League of Cities. Part of what we consider on our is whether a local government discloses its lobbyists and membership in lobbying organizations. Most don’t. Citizens have a right to know whether their taxes are being directly used to lobby for issues. Either way, we should start demanding this level of disclosure from our governments.

So kudos to the National League of City for promoting innovation in transparency. Louisville is proof that it doesn’t take extreme measures to provide information to citizens. And here’s hoping the National League of Cities may take its focus on transparency as inspiration to more about its functions.

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In the wake of exorbitant government salaries being revealed, officials, agencies, and associations are scrambling to push through transparency initiatives. Treasurer Bill Lockye wants increased auditing rules to report large pay increases and Controller John Chiang would like to create a database revealing the highest wages in every country. Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has called for investigations, while Sen. Lou Correa has proposed the Taxpayer Right to Know Act, which would create a database of public employee pay. Even the is to publish government employee salary and pension information.

These are all great ideas, but the cialis online was right to point out that Californian officials were “asleep at the wheel” to have let this happen in the first place. CalPERS, California’s retirement system, knew about Bell’s salaries since 2006. Officials who were previously unconcerned with a report about the high pay of city managers in California are now waving it like a red flag.

This fervor for transparency points out an important lesson to take away Bell, transparency and disclosure are just the first steps towards an honest government. However, all these efforts will be useless if you have an inactive citizenry. Watchful or curious citizens, like the journalists at the cialis online, can never be replaced by a database.

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Andrea Di Maio is an analyst at (and VP of) Gartner Research, where he focuses on e-government strategies. Today, an essay from .

One Di Maio appreciates in the essay is its acknowledgment that feedback of all sorts tends to be negative. You don’t call a representative, for example, to tell them that they’re doing a great job. Typically, you call a representative when you’re angry. When they’ve done something wrong. Sunshine Review does recognize this, however, and in an effort to acknowledge the positive efforts governments make in being transparent, we give to governments that get an A, A-, or B grade on our . Good achievements deserves just as much, if not more, acknowledgment than shortcomings.

Still, there’s one part of Di Maio’s assessment that is slightly off-mark. Noting that government is the most transparent of all of society’s institutions, he quotes the conclusion of the essay, saying that most people would agree:

“The current sophisticated movement for open government should expand its agenda and become a movement to Open Society”

It is true that most people would agree with this statement. Transparency, which has the curative effects on government of weeding out corruption, exposing fraud and waste, and instituting trust in constituents, should have the same effect on other spheres. As we often note, it’s not just citizens that benefit from this, but governments themselves. An inefficient government is no good to anyone. So, again, private companies, for example, can benefit from transparency as much as their customers can. This is probably true even on an individual level: my friends and I would both benefit from me being more open and honest about my actions and motivations.

But this is all beside the point of government transparency. We don’t demand that governments to us solely because of consequential reasons. We demand it because it is our right. This isn’t a disagreement with Di Maio, but rather a clarification. Transparency is great in every sphere, but while it’s voluntary or in the hands of customers to demand it in most, in government, it’s the ultimate standard. Take for example the recent where it was discovered that public officials of the town of 40,000 were . The outrage wasn’t simply about a misuse of funds. It was about breaking the . If, for example, you buy a product and later find out it cost much less to produce, there is maybe annoyance. But not a feeling of betrayal.

Governments need to respond to citizens in a way that private entities don’t. Perhaps citizens have high expectations of their governments that contribute to them focusing only on the negative. But being held to high standards is nothing to complain about. Transparency everywhere is a noble goal. But let’s start with transparency in government.

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chairman yesterday when he ordered Channel 6 News cameras to not film a public meeting. In the middle of a meeting disputing changes to St. Joseph’s baseball field, the chairman of the zoning board told reporters they could stay, but they had to turn their cameras off.

This was a direct violation of the .

“It’s a public hearing but we don’t do that. We don’t want people to do that. It causes a zoo. We don’t want it to become a zoo,” said Zoning Board Chairman Kenneth Aaron, Esq.

When the journalists refused to turn off their cameras, the chairman called the police. The police sided with the chairman and ordered the cameras to be turned off. The journalists relented, turning off their cameras, but at the cost of government transparency.

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California Controller John Chiang (D) has responded to the outrage that came after citizens discovered that elected officials in Bell, California were making . In a city of 40,000, this is .

Chiang, who is running for re-election in November, has ordered cities and counties to report to him the salaries of elected officials and public employees, such as city managers.

He said posting this information on the controller’s website “will make sure that excessive pay is no longer able to escape public scrutiny and accountability.”

The absence of transparency is a breeding ground for waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

Chiang touches on two of the most important reasons for transparency. Implicitly, he knows the trust that comes when governments spending information. But from a practical standpoint, he recognizes the value in open information. Chiang is correct to note that transparency helps prevent corruption and waste: the outrage that came out of Bell is proof of that. What officials may not immediately realize, however, is that preventing this waste helps them, not just taxpayers. If officials have fund available to them that would otherwise be misspent, they can make those dollars go further. This delivery of services to constituents, which translates into votes.

And what better constituency service than transparency? Posting pay information online is a great response by Chiang.

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More is bubbling up in Texas. It was revealed earlier this week that the authority for the Port of spends a half-million dollars a year on lobbyists in Washington.

“If you don’t have people in D.C. to protect yourself, you’re going to be in trouble,” John LaRue, the port’s executive director, said. “We’re not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake, we’re talking about hundreds of millions.”

Lobbying with taxpayer dollars happens at every level of government, some of the funds help local government entities, but other have proven to be wasteful spending. Like yesterday’s example of . This spending needs to be and scrutinized by taxpayers, just like any other government spending.

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