Government Transparency
From Sunshine Review
Contents |
Government transparency means that citizens can openly view exactly what governmental units, officials, and employees are doing when conducting public business. A transparent government, whether it is a local, state or federal government will answer to the people to whom they serve and provide detailed information to the constituents in an easily accessible format.
[edit] Local government
The Sunshine Review has developed a "Ten Point Transparency Checklist" for determining how transparent a local government unit is. This checklist includes criteria for the following categories:
- Budgets
- Open Meeting Laws
- Elected Officials
- Administrative Officials
- Ethics
- Audits
- Contracts
- Lobbying
- Public Records
- and Taxes
[edit] State Government
State governments need to share the same information as local governments to be transparent, however the state governments have a lot more information that needs to be open than most local governments. The amount of information in each section needs to have the same level of detail as that of local governments. This includes budget items and revenue items (taxes) This information includes:
- Records of the Governor's Office
- Records on House and Senate Bills along with voting records
- Expense Reports of Elected and Appointed officials
State governments all have their own transparency laws and versions of FOIA. Most states exempt Records of the Governor's office from FOIA requests. States such as Louisiana are developing online databases to provide citizens with access to Records on Bills and Laws, as well as on spending.
[edit] Federal Government
The United States Federal Government has taken many steps towards becoming more transparent, however it has many departments that are not transparent as well as extensive amounts of information that is deemed "classified" and exempt from FOIA. Like most state governments, many of the files of the executive, the President, are exempt from open records requests. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 allows for records to be sealed for up to 12 years. This however has not stopped many records from being sealed for several decades.[1]
[edit] External links
[edit] Federal Government Links
- "USA Spending: Federal Spending Database"
- '2008 Government Transparency Act"
- "Opensecrets.org Campaign Finance and Personal Financial Disclosures"
- "Truth and Transparency: The Federal Government Fiscal Outlook"
- "Database for searching Congress bills votes and committee action"
- "Searchable database of Government Documents acquired through FOIA"
- "Congressional staffer salary information and congressional travel data"
- "Search engine that searches 7 sets of government documents"
- "Determines Avg. cost or savings to each individual of each bill passed."
[edit] State Government Links
- "National Institute of Money in State Politics"
- "Information of State FOIA"
- "LA Transparency and Accountability Database"
- "Texas Window on State Government"
- "A Coalition Dedicated to Transparency in State Government Spending"
- "Who is funding city and state politicians? (In Development)"
