What Does Transparency Look Like?

Obama has made transparency a "touchstone" (his word) of his administration and promises to apply it to tracking stimulus spending. But more and more people are asking questions like, "Exactly what is it?" And, "How do you define it?"

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has some ideas. In a letter (here's the press release on the letter) he wrote to Earl Devaney, chair of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, who is in charge of tracking the billions of dollars in stimulus spending, Issa makes this point:

"Full transparency requires attention to not just what is posted online, but also how the information is posted. Information about how the taxpayers' money is distributed must be disclosed in a structured, open, and searchable format," Issa wrote to Devaney. "Spending this massive sum of money in relatively short order presents the dangerous probability of waste, fraud, and abuse."

This is a huge issue: Exactly what information do you post for the public to access so that you meet the definition of transparency, and, maybe more important, how do you structure it so it makes sense? Context is everything. Data that is given the proper context -- such as providing a "compared to what" context for the numbers -- works better than basic "data dumps," through which the public has to sift through rubbish to find a gem of a stat.

What are your ideas for structuring the data so it shows meaningful results and stats so that it meets the accountability standard Obama has said is needed?

Hat tip: Tech Daily Dose