Transparency is Your Friend

One of the key arguments for transparency is that it builds trust, as well as opening your organization to more and maybe better ideas from the public. After just more than a year of President Obama's open government initiative, some top federal executives are finding that out to be true.

Roger Baker, the chief information officer at the Veterans Affairs Department, said on Thursday that opening up his operations to the public, while at first scary, has turned out to be comforting. Baker was referring to open government tools such as the IT Dashboard, which provides data on federal technology projects.

"Transparency builds trust fundamentally," he said during a panel discussion hosted by Government Executive at the National Press Club. "You'll see that three or four months down the road, you'll find that transparency is your friend. It isolates you from the question, 'What are you trying to cover up?'"

At first it can be a bit disconcerting, he admitted, as when he began in May holding monthly meetings with the press to discuss any information security breaches at VA. The department has had an uncommon frequency of lost laptops and disks over the years that have turned out rather embarrassing for top officials. Now Baker has chosen to go public with any breaches before they are leaked to the press. He likened the first press briefing to "walking a tight rope, not knowing if the end of the rope was actually tied to a pole."

But such candor already has paid off, Baker said. In a recent survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research firm, the public ranked VA as the fifth most trusted agency to safeguard personal information. Another survey found a similar relationship.

Not to be outdone, Jeff Neal, chief human capital officer at the Homeland Security Department, offered a slightly more philosophical opinion of transparency. "There's a treasure trove of information out there through which you can bring about societal change, produce more societal benefits. . . . IT increases velocity and availability of information. Put those two things together and you find out a lot about the human condition."