Borders: Ideas to promote transparency

ryanteaguebeckwith — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:09:37 -0500

Max Borders says government has no incentive to be transparent.

In a post on Red Clay Citizen, the libertarian blogger writes that government, unlike the private sector, does not benefit from making life simpler for users.

"Unlike Google—which profits from its usability—the government has only a minimal incentive to comply. If there is no statutory directive to be transparent or user-friendly, then they have even fewer incentives," he writes.

(Dome would argue that government actually has a disincentive, since transparency exposes problems.)

Here are a few of his ideas to promote transparency:

* Start a wiki-based open-source platform for state government.

* Contract with a tech company to unify state government Web sites.

* Form a nonprofit to promote transparency.

* Use college students as volunteers to collaborate on software.

* Hold a contest for the best ways to make government more open.

* Donate to Civitas' Citizen Legislature project.

Dome doesn't actually have $2,000 to promote a contest, but we do have some swag. So here's the deal: The best idea for a cheap, easy and effective improvement to a state government Web site gets you a free N&O hat. Post your ideas below.

Legislators' ethics forms online

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:17:52 -0500

The ethics forms for state legislators have been put online—but not by the state.

The Civitas Institute has scanned and posted the financial disclosure forms filed by members of the state House and the state Senate on its Citizen Legislature Web site.

The forms are posted in TIF format, which means they are essentially images, but they can be easily read or printed out. It would still be difficult to reverse-search the forms to see which legislators own stock in a particular company, for example.

Chris Hayes with Civitas says the group has posted all 2006 forms from sitting legislators and plans to post the 2007 forms soon. (Click here for an example.)

Still, that leaves out the forms filed by local judges, district attorneys and appointees, which was the focus of Mark Binker's earlier complaint.

And it begs the question of why the N.C. Ethics Commission doesn't post these itself.

Previously: The principles of online sunshine.