Transparency checklist templates

From Sunshine Review

Budget Meetings Elected Officials Administrative Officials Permits, zoning {{{Building permits and zoning}}} Audits Contracts Lobbying Public records Local taxes {{{Local taxes}}}

Budget Meetings Elected Officials Administrative Officials Permits, zoning Audits Contracts Lobbying Public records Local taxes

Taxes Budget Meetings Elected Officials Administrative Officials Contracts Audits Public records Academics Background checks

This page is designed to provide templates for creating the 10 point transparency checklists. Please Open a new window or tab with the source code in order to view the source code of the templates. This will make it easier to explain how to create the checklists for your desired page.

Contents 1 Filling out the templates 2 Elaborating on the checklists 3 The good 4 The bad

Filling out the templates

Below are the templates for City, County, and School District Checklists. They all follow the same format. Notice in the code that all of the options are set to No. When reviewing a website if the information contained in the website is there or partially there, you need to change this. enter {{Yes}} if all information desired is present and enter {{partial}} if only partial information is present.

The next task is to reference all information that you have found. This can be done with simple html. For example on the line for Elected officials

Elected Officials = {{No}} |

The Templates you need start with {{ and end with }}. The | indicates the change from one line to the next. Do not forget to show references by including the following tag at the bottom of your page. <references/> .

To get a better feel for how these are done check out the Websites of the Texas Cities page which has transparency checklists completed for hundreds of city websites.

Elaborating on the checklists

If a government websites contains good or partial information please expand on it in the body of the article. You can do this by simply creating two sections The good and The bad. For example:

The good

• The county website post the budgets for the past five years.^[1]

The bad

• Elected officials but the website lists no way of contacting them. Here is an examples of a references in wiki code: <ref>[http://url.com ''County elected officials]</ref>

The checklists
Here are the codes for the existing checklists on Sunshine Review. Click on the edit tab to copy them into your government's page.

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