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The Conflicts Behind Government Opacity

Thursday, January 29th, 2009
Robert Wechsler
It's hard not to get excited about our new president when he says and does the right things when it comes to government ethics. In a memo to heads of executive departments and agencies, President Obama wrote:
    The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.... In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.
    Rarely do government officials so clearly show how much opacity involves conflicts of interest. Transparency is important not just because it's good for democracy, but because opacity reflects the personal concerns of public officials:  concerns about embarrassment, about hiding errors and failures. And worse.

    And then there's that interesting Obama touch: "because of speculative or abstract fears." What are you worried about? one wants to ask officials overly concerned with secrecy. Little information involves security, or even privacy. And all the exceptions are clearly stated and protected by freedom of information acts at every level.

    There are two ways that people are worried. One involves the "speculative fears" Obama referred to:  what effect could this have on my future, on my credibility, on the respect people give me? The other problem with openness is interference. The more people know, the more they can make my life miserable. "Look at how I'm attacked already!" they say to themselves. It could only get worse if everything were out in the open. Of course, it could also get more accurate.

    If you don't make a strong presumption in favor of openness -- that is, if you don't focus on being a public servant rather than who you otherwise are -- keeping secrets is the normal, human thing to do. I'm a part-time government administrator myself (administering a public financing program for New Haven's mayoral elections), so I know how hard it is to turn information over to the press (I don't have to worry about political opponents, since I work for a multipartisan board and have no political involvement in the city). There are lots of excuses you can make, only some of them valid, some of the time.

    But in his memo, Obama took the public servant role one step further:

      The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.
      It's one thing to respond promptly to public requests. It's another to anticipate them, to make information available before it's requested.

      This should be the attitude taken at the local government level, as well, especially since there are far fewer reasons to keep things secret there. And recognizing that transparency is a conflict of interest issue, government ethics professionals can lead the way by making their websites or web pages as user friendly and informative as possible. City after city, I find no information whatsoever about ethics commissions or codes, not to mention a lack of complaint forms, advisory opinions, handbooks, etc. Soon I will be publishing a survey of the status of website transparency of our cities' and counties' ethics programs.

      Robert Wechsler
      Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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