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Tag Archives: accountability
What the candidates are saying about FOI
The Sunshine Week website created a page entitled: "What the Candidates Are Saying About Open Government and FOI" based on the the Sunshine Week survey responses and analysis of articles, speeches, and debate transcripts that give insight into the candidates' thoughts on government access to information. They state: "Only New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards responded, and only Richardson answered all the questions. The remaining four leading major party candidates were re-surveyed following Super Tuesday in February. To date, none has replied". They mention Obama's Senate co-sponsorship of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which went into effect on New Years Day '08 with the launch of USAspending.gov, a site that "gives people access to information on government contracts, grants and other awards". Speaking of which, USAspending.gov is based on the software that runs Fedspending.org. I'm going to examine both these sites and see how the differ, but so far, the only difference I'm seeing is that USAspending.gov has a lengthy privacy policy which dotgovwatch.com claims is different from their previous warning! Continue reading
Public Dissatisfied with Government Financial Transparency
The Association of Government Accountants published a report entitled "Public Attitudes Toward Government Accountability and Transparency 2008", based on their first annual survey of public attitudes toward government financial information transparency and accountability. It is a part of AGI's "Advancing Government Accountability" campaign, which they hope will educate the government and the public on the benefits of government transparency, particularly in reporting government financial information. Not a big surprise here...the survey findings show that people are deeply dissatisfied with the availability of government financial information and how it is delivered to the public: "...among those who do receive information about governments’ generation and spending of money, there is a strong dissatisfaction with the information that they receive. The strongest dissatisfaction is with the information about the federal government’s financial management (Federal, 60%; State, 46%; Local, 38%). Only 5% are satisfied with what they receive from the federal government". To view more of the survey's findings, view or download the PowerPoint file. Librarians can learn from this...know where to retrieve government financial information and make this known to your patrons and your community! Continue reading
Government Transparency and Ethics Reform in Louisiana
An issue that is near and dear to my heart, considering that I live in Louisiana, is that of recent government ethics reform initiatives from Governor Bobby Jindal. He was the focus of a recent New York Times article mentioning the "extensive package of ethics bills" passed recently. One such bill includes House Bill 1 which "Enacts personal financial disclosures for the vast majority of elected and appointed officials in state and local government for the first time in Louisiana’s history". Not everyone is happy about these changes. My favorite quote in the New York Times article: "The volume of grumbling suggested real change was afoot. 'This is huge,' said D. W. Hunt, a veteran lobbyist at the Capitol. 'This is a sea change. This will seriously, dramatically change things. The meta-theme is the transparency.' " Can you see the sweat on his forehead? Louisiana is considered to rank low nationally on state ethics, but according to a statement issued by The Center for Public Integrity, these bills may put Louisiana in the top tier of states with tough ethics rules. Hopefully this will be the case, but we shall have to wait and see... Continue reading
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