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Tracking Transparency's Direct and Indirect Costs (Opinion)

October 14, 2009 By Paul W. Taylor

The problem with promises is that they set expectations on which it's impossible to deliver.

Consider transparency. It's a friendly word with a progressive edge as used by the Obama administration, which days after inauguration, declared its commitment "to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in government."

The president then directed federal agencies and departments to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act requests, noting that potential embarrassment and the revelation of errors or failures don't constitute reasons to keep data private.

That was the bargain struck as the administration began. Echoing themes from the campaign, government was going to change even as the notion of public information was changing. Mash-up contests, such as Apps for America, demonstrated that the old-fashioned notion of the public record as exclusively a paper artifact had been eclipsed by live data sets and feeds that could be used to do interesting, useful things.

Watchdogs immediately weighed in too and began to fill in what "unprecedented" transparency should mean. The Sunlight Foundation, the group behind Apps for America, suggested government information should not be considered public until it's posted online -- and freely accessible -- in an easily downloaded format. Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, called for a similar standard: "Almost all our public sphere is now online. Our information should be there too."

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