Blogging by Local Government Officials - A New Kind of Transparency

Once again, California is in the vanguard.  This time, it's blogs by mayors, city managers, and other local government officials (for list, click here; not all of these are government officials' blogs, but many are and it's not hard to tell them apart).

This is a risky approach to transparency, but by opening the blog to citizen comments, it certainly sends a clear message to citizens that their government leaders want to know what they have to say. It opens up government to community discussion on an ongoing basis, supporting participation, dialogue, and diversity of ideas.

Of course, such a blog can be abused. The one kind of abuse people really have to watch out for is the rejection of comments that are critical of the blogging official.

Here's an article, by a California mayor of course, on local government official blogging. Thanks to Judy Nadler (a former California mayor) and her blog for alerting me to this phenomenon.