Friday, November 09, 2007
Open and Transparent Government
One thing that happens when you doorbell homes is that you talk with people and are reminded how little confidence a lot of people have in government. I find it frustrating that so many people are convinced that government is trying to put something over on them ... but of course government often does try to put something over on people. It's just that government is less likely to get away with it when it is local government. I can guarantee you are going to have an easier time getting to the bottom of something going on in Lakewood than you areina state agency in Olympia or a federal agency based in Washington DC.
But any government can be more transparent and accessible. Providing confidence in government is only one reason for open meetings laws, which require the public's business be done in public.
So while the mail-in votes are still coming in for Election 2007, some people are already looking ahead to the upcoming Legislative session in Olympia. The Washington Coalition for Open Government, which I belong to, has published its 2007 Legislative agenda.
You can read a news release about the WCOG open government agenda here.
You can read the WCOG Legislative agenda here.
You'll see that the big area of emphasis this year is on electronic records. A lot of government business is conducted over email and with electronic documents. From the news release:
A recent change in federal law requires corporations to retain all emails sent by employees in case they are needed in later investigations and court discovery; a similar provision for blanket retention of email should exist in our state’s Public Records Act with regard to emails sent by government employees through agency email systems. Most government business is now conducted by email, and far too many emails are deleted before they can ever become the subject of a public records request. Because this provision is difficult to enforce on individual employees, it shall be enforced at the email server, so that a copy of every email that passes through the server is automatic.
It's going to be interesting to see how the Legislative agenda fares. For one thing, WCOG is asking the Legislature to make its own documents subject to disclosure. Presently, a lot of documents in Olympia before, during and after Legislative sessions are not available (see my note above about which leve of government you should have confidence in) I'm thinking that this provision might run into trouble once it hits Olympia - sadly.
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But any government can be more transparent and accessible. Providing confidence in government is only one reason for open meetings laws, which require the public's business be done in public.
So while the mail-in votes are still coming in for Election 2007, some people are already looking ahead to the upcoming Legislative session in Olympia. The Washington Coalition for Open Government, which I belong to, has published its 2007 Legislative agenda.
You can read a news release about the WCOG open government agenda here.
You can read the WCOG Legislative agenda here.
You'll see that the big area of emphasis this year is on electronic records. A lot of government business is conducted over email and with electronic documents. From the news release:
A recent change in federal law requires corporations to retain all emails sent by employees in case they are needed in later investigations and court discovery; a similar provision for blanket retention of email should exist in our state’s Public Records Act with regard to emails sent by government employees through agency email systems. Most government business is now conducted by email, and far too many emails are deleted before they can ever become the subject of a public records request. Because this provision is difficult to enforce on individual employees, it shall be enforced at the email server, so that a copy of every email that passes through the server is automatic.
It's going to be interesting to see how the Legislative agenda fares. For one thing, WCOG is asking the Legislature to make its own documents subject to disclosure. Presently, a lot of documents in Olympia before, during and after Legislative sessions are not available (see my note above about which leve of government you should have confidence in) I'm thinking that this provision might run into trouble once it hits Olympia - sadly.
Labels: open government
