The President-elect’s Change.gov Web site announced a new feature on Friday, called Your Seat at the Table: “The Obama-Biden Transition Team will be hearing from many groups over the next several weeks. On this page, you can track these meetings, view documents provided to the Transition, and leave comments for the team.”
Says a memo from transition head John Podesta, itself posted online, “[A]ny documents from official meetings with outside organizations will be posted on our website for people to review and comment on.”
This is a very good start at transparency. John Wonderlich at the Sunlight Foundation wonders what this might look like across the entire executive branch. If the default rule were online disclosure of documents submitted to government agencies, that would make a big change in the conduct of the public’s business.
There are many dimensions of transparency, of course. Along with openness in political and regulatory processes, we should also have openness in functional information, and in results. Where is the money going? What are we getting in return? Answers to these questions can validate or invalidate government programs in ways never before thought possible.
Wednesday at noon, we’ll be having a policy forum here at Cato entitled: Just Give Us the Data! Prospects for Putting Government Information to Revolutionary New Uses. Ed Felten, Gary Bass, and Jerry Brito will discuss how access to government data in useful formats might revolutionize public oversight.