The paranoid secrecy is one of the hallmarks of the Bush Administration. The signs are there that Obama will have the opposite approach. But how exactly?
Here, the staff of the Sunlight Foundation has posted a set of recommendations to Obama and his administration: Open Letter to the Obama Administration on How to Shine Sunlight:
Dear Mr. President-Elect,
In your acceptance speech, you rightfully called on Americans to get ready to work to address the challenges that tomorrow will bring. All of us at Sunlight affirm to pitch in and work harder, and agree that we all have to look after each other. In that spirit, we offer advice for your administration on how to undo the culture of secrecy and transform the presidential administration into a transparent operation.
Your campaign embraced the Internet and engaged millions of Americans in unprecedented ways. Keep that momentum going. Your administration can make our government more open, more responsive, more accountable and thus more trusted by the people. But, how?
I asked several Sunlighters to sound-off about how they think the next administration should act to create greater government transparency. They represent a healthy cross-section of who comprises Sunlight: technology geeks, policy wonks, bloggers, journalists, optimists and pragmatists. Here's their advice:
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Over the coming weeks and months, Sunlight staff will share reviews of various transition recommendations for the new administration. Readers, what do you think? How do you think the 44th POTUS should help promote a more open, accountable government? Share your thoughts by commenting below.
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Some of the advice there is better than others. For example, Nisha Thompson says that "I would like to see presidential signing statements online 72 hours before a bill becomes a law." First, that isn't really a transparency issue by and large. Second, given the questionable Constitutionality of signing statements, we shouldn't be talking about making them more transparent. We should be just getting rid of them.
Joshua,
The Presidential signing statement is a transparency issue. I believe that any opinion a lawmaker has regarding legislation should be made to the public and not kept secret. As we can see in the last decade and more the use of signing statements has increased and are essential to understanding how laws are enforced by the executive branch.
It's true that signing statements are controversial, however, that is not going to stop Presidents from using them. If the President is going to have a signing statement the public should be able to see it before he attaches it to legislation.
Nisha Thompson
Sunlight Foundation
nthompson(at)sunlightfoundation(dot)com
Nisha, that's a good point. Point withdrawn. I'd still rather see signing statements abolished completely. And given Obama's background in Con Law we might actually get that. It still seems like asking for transparence in such statements is not going as far as we can go.