Re: Against Transparency

Larry Lessig, in his wonderful New Republic essay Against Transparency begins with

We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement–if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness–will inspire not reform, but disgust. The “naked transparency movement,” as I will call it here, is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.

Please do read the whole essay before weighing in.

Jon Udell has a good posting collecting some of the links Contextual clothing for naked transparency.

Open innovation tools

Manor, TX uses an online tool to accept ideas for enhancing or improving municipal services. There is a simple and clear process that all ideas undergo on their way to either acceptance or not. The online tools is Spigit.

Better Policy Making

The UK Government Cabinet Office, in their Better Policy Making report, and outlined 9 features of modern policy making:

1. Forward Looking - Defining policy outcomes and taking a long term view
   
2. Outward Looking - Taking account of the national, European and international situation; learning from the experience of other countries; recognising regional variations.
   
3. Innovative, Flexible & Creative - Questioning established ways of dealing with things, encouraging new and creative ideas, identifying and managing risk.
   
4. Evidence Based - Basing policy decisions and advice upon the best available evidence from a wide range of sources; ensuring that evidence is available in an accessible and meaningful form.
   
5. Inclusive - Consulting those responsible for implementation and those affected by the policy; carrying out an impact assessment
   
6. Joined Up - Looking beyond institutional boundaries; setting cross-cutting objectives; defining and communicating joint working arrangements across departments; ensuring that implementation is part of the policy process.
   
7. Review - Systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of policy is built into the policy making process.
   
8. Evaluation - Existing/established policy is constantly reviewed to ensure it is really dealing with problems it was designed to solve.
   
9. Learns Lessons - Learning from experience of what works and what does not.
   

We should expect no less from South Kingstown's councilors. Unfortunately, we have no evidence that this is in fact the case.