Working for accountable government now

What can you do right now if you discover that your city, county or school district website lacks basic information you need to exercise your right to hold politicians and public officials accountable?

Talk it up

• Write or call your elected officials and ask for action. Send them the link to the article on Sunshine Review about your city, county or school district so they can see where they need to improve.

• Talk with your friends and neighbors about the need for local governments to voluntarily and proactively share much more information on their websites.

• Attend a local government board meeting, and ask board members to improve their website.

• Tell your state legislator that the government websites you as a taxpayer are funding are not providing basic information you need. Ask him or her to get involved with solving this problem.

• Write a letter-to-the-editor to your local newspaper. Keeping it short and sweet, explain the positive improvements you'd like to see on local government websites.

• Form an audit committee and check out what's going on in your local government's books. Make sure to measure their performance as well.

Contribute to Sunshine Review

• Sign up on Sunshine Review, and build more information by participating in collaborative projects to help build charts like this. Local politicians will change what they're doing when they see how inadequate their level of disclosure is. Don't know how to write on a wiki? Watch our video tutorials.

• If the article on Sunshine Review about a city, county or school district that matters to you isn't complete (Here's an example of a relatively complete article), fill in any missing information or write in the article any comments you have about the municipal or school district websites that matter to you.