Health care bill passes, what to ask for in terms of transparency

Some claim that the transparency movement is overdoing it, but the passing of the health care bill championed by President Obama is a great reason to focus even more on open government.

Yesterday night, Congress passed the health care bill, amidst allegations of backroom deals and lack of transparency. Perhaps partisan politics have led to that charge, but the administration’s failure to post the bill before it was to be voted on, as it promised, was certainly a disappointment. Looking forward, what can we expect in terms of transparency from the health care bill if and when it becomes law?

To begin with, there are two figures we want to keep track of:

1) Individuals are required to purchase health insurance coverage or face a fine of up to $750 or 2 percent of their income. How many people pay this fine? Where does that money end up?

2) The claims are that roughly 32 million Americans will have health care who previously didn’t. There should be a method instituted to see what the exact, measurable results of these new policies will be.

There are many other numbers cited in the support of this bill, but they may change drastically from the estimates made during the creation of the bill, since the assumptions change as policies are adopted. Still, citizens need to track the implicit promises that have been made, like the two figures listed above.

It will be interesting to see how the most transparent administration in history deals with this monumental change in American politics.

You and I hold them accountable

The Reason Magazine blog has a funny post today titled It Depends on What the Meaning of the Word ‘Many’ Is:

In his recent interview with Fox News, President Obama promised that “the final provisions [of the health care bill] are going to be posted many days before this thing passes.” Yet The New York Times says a House vote is expected on Sunday, and “the Senate could pass the reconciliation bill [making changes to the health care bill sought by some Democratic congressmen] as soon as next week.” According to The Washington Post, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the health care bill “would be posted to the Web site of the House Rules Committee sometime Thursday morning.” As of noon Eastern time, it does not seem to be there.

Wait, that isn’t funny.

The easy part of transparency is demanding information, and listening to promises. All of this reverence paid to the idea of transparency may even serve the purpose of making people more aware of it as an issue. However, we have to hold politicians to their promises, not just ask for them. And we have to look at and try to understand information, not just demand good freedom of information laws.

For example, Attorney General Eric Holder had drawn much attention to his commitment to transparency. The fact that government has experienced absent accountability, selective transparency, and increased secrecy under the current administration is less touted. This article on the Examiner: Chicago draws attention to the fact that, while elected officials are basking in their own praises about how open and transparent they’ve been, they have failed to deliver on any of those promises—it is just praise and promises and more praise.

So as a small reminder: don’t forget. Don’t forget when someone promises information, and doesn’t give it to you. And hold someone to their transparency promises, even if the promises are vague. Remind officials of what they have stated they will do, and if they still fail to deliver, remind them with your ballot.

Obama transparency update: unions exempt from rules, data guru to advise board

Today, the Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is rolling back rules proposed by the Bush administration that expanded the financial disclosure statements required of labor unions.

Critics note the rules were rolled back while the Obama administration was seeking more stringent regulation of corporate America. This is inconsistent, making some charge that the administration is giving “preferential treatment” to unions.
Besides that, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota notes that rescinding and revoking those rules makes it more difficult for union workers to see how their dues are spent. Mr. Kline said to Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis that Mr. Obama had “made it a point on a number of occasions to talk about this administration wanting to be the most transparent and open administration in our nation’s history.”

Mrs. Solis told the congressman that transparency was the goal, but the department did not want to “overburden a system where information that was previously asked for may not be of much importance or significance.” We’ve heard that before. The focus of transparency and open government is empowering citizens with information, not giving public officials an easy time.

Because the President has made a point to promise to claim he’ll have “the most open and transparent” administration in history,” several times, it is important for citizens like you and I to hold him to his promise and continue reminding him of it.

But all isn’t cloudy on Obama’s sunshine promises. Last week, President Barack Obama announced that he would be appointing Edward Tufte to the independent panel that advises the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. Many people are excited about this, including the nonpolitical. Tufte is a renown information designer, which means the White House’s transparency effort may see some of that innovation we’ve been waiting for.

Transparency, a scholarly pursuit

An interesting post in the site NextGov (“technology and the business of government”) posits that “the practice of disclosing government data in a way that is meaningful to the public and holds the government accountable could become a growing area of scholarly interest.” In other words, transparency is gaining interest.

In particular, scholarly interest. The article notes that Obama’s transparency promises played a large role in making open government a priority by giving the idea a high profile, even if his policies in effect have been worthy of some criticism. This increased attention on transparency makes it easier to obtain funding for projects related to releasing government data in a usable format.

The article also notes that the body of work on the subject of using data to drive transparency is limited. I recently wrote about how some people are incentivizing the development of programs that would do just that.

The experts interviewed implied three things:

1) Transparency is complete. It means all of the related documents, all information.
2) Transparency comes with the responsibility of interpreting the data.
2a) There is a need for scholars’ perspectives:

“You might need legal experts to be able to explain how information fits into the statutory or regulatory framework; you would need cognitive specialists to talk about attentional issues, human-computer interaction specialists . . . and social scientists of some sort to do follow up.”

3) The collaboration between governments and citizens has to be real. (In fact, one scholar’s concern about Obama’s policies was the lack of genuine participation from citizens.)

The article continues to talk about the need and pursuit of funds for funding the academic study of government transparency. We, of course, are happy whenever any attention is paid to government transparency, from whatever angle. It tends to produce good outcomes. The scholarly angle in transparency can do nothing but add and improve to our current knowledge.

Sunlight Foundation: Obama = Transparency FAIL.

The Sunlight Foundation blog got on the case of Barack “Most Transparent Government in History” Obama today for not following up with a promise to post all non-emergency legislation to WhiteHouse.gov 5 days prior to signing. This practice was designed to allow time for public comment and review. Unfortunately, President Obama didn’t follow it on his very first opportunity, the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

It is too bad they let this transparency promise slip on the very first piece of legislation that hit the President’s desk. After a few transparency wins for the administration, it looks like they’ve hit their first fail.

Not good…Not good at all.