“Transparency means that something can be seen through. When we talk about transparency in government, we mean that citizens must be able to ‘see through’ its workings, to know exactly what goes on when public officials transact public business. Government that is not transparent is more prone to corruption and undue influence because there is no public oversight of decision making.”

Local government

Residents and taxpayers need to be able to adequately gauge whether a local municipal government is:

• Effective.
• Competent.
• Frugal with tax revenues
• In compliance with all expectations and relevant laws about public records and open meetings.

In order for this to happen, residents and taxpayers should expect to find key information on any municipality’s website.

The website should include comprehensive bugdet information.

• The budget for the current fiscal year should be posted online.
• Budgets for previous years should be posted online.
• It should be very easy for people to find this information when they visit the website. This means that prominent navigational features enabling someone to locate the budget should be included on the homepage of the website.

Suggested

• Graphic features that compare the current budget to past year’s budgets should be incorporated, to enable people to make sense of trends over time.
• Narrative features should be incorporated into descriptions of the budget. For example, if the current year budget is 1.2% higher, or 5% lower, or 14.7% higher than the previous year’s budget, it is helpful to citizens to provide this comparative explanation at the beginning of a summary about the budget.
• The checkbook register should be posted online. This information provided should include:

1. The amount of each payment
2. Date
3. Check number
4. To whom the payment was made (including the address)
5. Scan of Invoice or Purchase Order or Check Request (this often provides significant drilldown detail including who approved it)
6. What it was for
7. Budgetary authority for the expenditure
8. Functional expenditure category
9. Sources of funds
10. Links to the relevant contracts under which the payment was made

The website should disclose all government meetings and agendas.

• Time of meeting.
• Place of meeting.
• Agendas for all meetings that fall under rules about open meetings (which should be 99% of any government meetings);
• Whether the meeting is open or closed.
• Whether public input is allowed at the meeting and, if so, what the rules are that govern public input.
• Minutes of meetings should be recorded and posted online.
• Text of Real-Time-Captioning if created as part of the video or audio stream

The website should disclose key information about the elected officials.

• Their names.
• Contact information, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
• Terms of office and date of next election.
• If the elected officials are elected in partisan elections, the website should indicate their party affiliation.
• Any financial disclosures and conflict-of-interest statements that the city requires of its elected officials should be posted online.
• Their Committee appointments.

The website should disclose key information about the appointed administrators:

• Their names and titles.
• Contact information, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Financial and management audits to ensure that it is operating in accordance with the highest standards of financial and management competence and integrity:

• Copies of performance and financial audits should be posted on the website.
• Routine financial audits should be posted online.
• Evaluations of the performance of any specific agencies or commissions should be posted online.

The website should provide comprehensive information about the contracts it enters into with vendors.

• The rules the municipality must abide by when it enters into contracts with outside vendors should be posted on the website.
• When the municipality enters into a bidding process for larger contracts, the request for bids should be posted on the website.
• Publicly available information about the bids the municipality receives should be posted online, keyed to the request for bids the municipality has previously published.
• Specific contracts the municipality enters into with outside vendors for any amount over $10,000 should be posted online.
• If elected officials of the municipality have received campaign contributions from any vendors who sell services to the municipality, this information should be posted on the website.

If the municipality gives grants to non-profit organizations, these grants should be disclosed on the website with a reason for the grant and information about who in the non-profit organization is responsible for oversight and administration of the funds it has received from the municipality’s taxpayers via a grant from the municipality.

The website should include comprehensive information about how citizens can obtain access to public record in the custody of the municipality.

• When a citizen wants to file an open records request, which employee of the municipality handles those requests?
• What is that employee’s contact information?
• The website should provide this information in a very easy-to-locate position on their website.
• The website should lay out the procedure for a citizen to follow who wants access to public records.
• The information should be user-friendly.

(SOURCE: Sunshine Review, bringing state and local governments to light.)