Making Government Transparent

Dear James, Daniel and Emily

This is part of the Sunlight Foundation BlogSwarm on Open Government Week

This is more to reiterate a point I already made once: Opening the doors of government will help chase out the roaches.

One of the great achievements of the original Progressive Movement was the Civil Service Act, and similar actions. Making government work a profession instead of leaving it in the hands of political cronies and appointees. And this went a long way towards restoring people's faith in government.

Well we have reached another crucial point in our nation's politics where government is in danger of falling into the hands of corrupt politicians instaed of we the people. This time it is not the day to day civil servants who are the problem. Instead it is the elected officials. And it is the way these elected officials inevitably fall under the sway of lobbyists and corporate interests.

Here is where we the people, and organizations like the Sunlight Foundation come in. Demand open government, demand access to information like who the lobbyists are, what are they doing, what are they actually doing. Demand to know where your elected officials funding really comes from. In the era of the Internet and gradually accpeted standards for accessing any data there is no reason why this information is not readily available at a moments notice.

Because when we the voters need to know that while politician A claims to want a smaller, more efficient government that is responsive to the people, that same politician may also receive vast sums of money from developers, bankers and other industry leaders. So we voters can realize what the politician really means is: elect me so I can guarantee my good friends in Industry X can continue to receive their fat contracts.

Opening the curtains and letting the Sunlight in in this case means getting that information out there so we as voters can be more educated and realize who we are electing. And maybe the time will come when we do not have elected officials telling bankers they need to keep up the fight to stop regulation that will protect the people from those same big predatory banks and corporations.