All interested in government transparency, check out this new site, sunshinestandard.org, created by Sunshine Review. The website aims to provide citizens and elected officials with model legislation and tools to launch reforms and expand the amount of information available about government. As Michael Barnhart of Sunshine Review explains, “State and local governments, and school districts, [...]
Tag Archives: transparency sites
School Vendor Data Available on IllinoisOpenGov!
What is your school district spending money on? Check out some new spending data available on our spending transparency website, IllinoisOpenGov.org. We have included school vendor information for you to check out! We’ll also be updating current information (Payroll, Checks to Businesses & People, Retiree Data) soon, so keep a eye out for that too.
Texas Model for Transparency
Yesterday the state of Texas launched its “re-branded and redesigned” Texas.gov, the state’s official website. Now, Texans can “search for information that matters to them, perform online transactions with 24/7 assistance, use an intuitive and effective search function, and access discussion forums designed to increase engagement between citizens and state government,” according to the Wall [...]
Cook County Check Register Live
Want to find out how Cook County is spending your tax dollars? Check out its check register here and see where your tax dollars are going. ABC 7′s I-Team found some interesting expenses of note, such as $6,243.75 to CROE TV (which stands for Coalition for the remembrance of the honorable Elijah Muhammad, the leader [...]
Accountability Portal Launched
For a look into Illinois state spending, check out the new transparency website, http://accountability.illinois.gov. This site provides a good, first step towards more transparency in Illinois, but it still needs some work. For instance, it would be more helpful and user-friendly if the state would simply list all contracts and vendors instead of asking the [...]
Transparency Comes to Illinois!
On Tuesday, August 11, Governor Pat Quinn signed spending transparency legislation—requiring a public, accessible website listing all state expenditures for taxpayers to see—into law. The bill, called the Illinois Accountability Portal (HB35), passed both the House and Senate unanimously on June 12, 2009 and went to the Governor’s desk for his signature. Sponsored by Representative [...]
Transparency breeds teamwork
ForeSee Results, a customer satisfaction research firm, recently released a study furthering the argument for government transparency. Applying an existing customer satisfaction model, ForeSee concluded that government agencies operating with transparency enjoy higher citizen satisfaction which in turn, promotes active citizens: “…increased transparency drives satisfaction, and citizens who are highly satisfied with a given federal [...]