You might want to hurry because the open government is about to close. Participation in the "Brainstorming" phase 1 of President Obama's online Open Government Initiative only lasts from May 21st to May 28th. To find it, go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/open You'll see listed there three phases, with the "Discuss" and "Draft" phases not yet active. But you can click on the "Brainstorming" phase until it ends, which will take you to http://opengov.ideascale.com And if you're too late, you can join in the "Discuss" phase of governance.
Candidate Obama asked for our opinions through a website. Our top demand was that he keep his promise to vote against immunity for telecoms that spied illegally. He ignored us, promised to do better as president, and hasn't.
President-Elect Obama asked for our opinions through his transition website. Our top question was whether he would appoint a special prosecutor for Bush, Cheney, and gang. He refused to answer the question until asked by the corporate media, and then talked about "looking forward".
Now President Obama is asking for our opinions on a website. This is a good thing but should be gone into with some caveats.
President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history
During the transition, this commitment took the form of several specific proposals. These proposals include, but are not limited to:
Publishing legislation online before it is signed into law
Making all "earmarks" public information, including which legislators are responsible for them
Detailing how much all federal contractors spend on lobbying
Creating a centralized database for all lobbyist information
After eight years of the most secretive administration in American history, these are all welcome changes.
However, what these new transparency commitments do not address is the newly created, ultra-secretive program by the Federal Reserve Bank to purchase and subsidize toxic bank assets. This program has already spent at least $2.4 trillion, nearly the size of the entire federal budget. Further, today Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced that this program would grow by at least another trillion dollars.
This program, now nicknamed BARF, is not only conducted behind closed doors and not only begun without congressional approval or legislation, but is not even subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The continued lack of transparency on this program, which for fiscal year 2009 will literally become the largest organization on Earth in sheer monetary terms--eclipsing even the annual monetary cost of the United States federal government--renders all other attempts to increase transparency in the Executive Branch nothing more than grains of sand on a slowly eroding beach. In order for President Obama's commitments to increased transparency to have any substantive meaning, the books on this program, "BARF," must be opened be opened for public review.
More background, and how you can help, in the extended entry.
EDIT: Forgot to add that this is cross-posted to my own blog too!
I spent some time looking through the Your Seat At the Table feature at the Obama transition team's website. YSAT is a document dump where the transition team releases copies of every letter or policy proposal sent to them by third parties during the transition. There are currently over 4000 documents here, from an open letter from the Mayor of Charleston to recommendations from the Coalition for Space Exploration to a letter from the American Bar Association.
My first impression when I saw this document dump was that it amounted to a nice symbolic gesture towards transparency, but nothing more. It's good that the transition team realizes that special interests need to face more public scrutiny, since the government is ultimately supposed to be accountable to the public and not to the special interests. So this is a good symbolic break from the practices of the Bush Administration. But of course, nobody from the public is actually going to read through thousands boring policy papers, so there won't be any actual oversight here, it's just a nice idea.
Then I looked at the comment section, and felt some of that elusive "hope" that's going around nowadays. It turns out that people are reading these papers, and commenting on them. I think the average document has about ten comments, ranging up to near 100 for contentious issues like health care. And the comments are generally pretty worthwhile.
Civic engagement! It's wonderful to see! This is just some random backwater on the Obama team's website, but it gives me hope for our country. My only suggestion would be to require the organizations that submit the documents to respond to the commenters. I recall seeing a few instances of this happening, but there's no reason why everyone who submits a policy paper to the transition team shouldn't have to discuss it with the people who elected the team as well.
What can we dig up? Read on for 7 examples (contracts with KBR/Halliburton, Tom Delay's pork, no bid contracts with defense contractors and even the government of Canada, spending on guided missiles, maintenance of dams, and stranger things including flags, perfumes, and hand tools). I also talk about how this fits into Sen. Obama's broader plans to make government transparent.
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President Obama has repeatedly promised to have the most transparent and open administration in history.