Transparency and technological change: Ensuring equal and sustained public access to government information

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Abstract

The Obama administration campaigned on the platform of increased transparency and access to government information after the limitations of the Bush years. As part of this focus on transparency, the Obama administration is emphasizing the use of e-government and new social media services to open up access to government. This paper explores the considerations and challenges of this approach, such as the inclusion of members of the public with limited access to the internet, the use of non-governmental channels to disseminate government information, the permanence of digital-born government information, and the design of e-government.

Section snippets

History and intent of freedom of information

The importance of widely distributed and accessible government information in a democratic society, along with an informed citizenry which can actively participate in their civic obligations, remains the foundation of the American constitutional republic. The Declaration of Independence specifically notes the separation of public records and legislative bodies as one of the reasons for the revolution, while the Constitution established a national postal system for distribution of information

Technology, transparency, and the Obama administration

After the Bush years, transparency advocates greeted the Obama campaign and election with great anticipation. Obama campaigned with a heavy focus on information policy in his platform, including promises of greatly increased government transparency and the use of new technologies to new means of access to government information (Jaeger, Paquette, & Simmons, 2010). A day after he took office, Obama issued two executive orders requiring government agencies to err on the side of openness when

Access, skill, and usage of e-government transparency

The internet has had a profound impact on information behavior and reshaped virtually every channel of information access–newspapers, television, movies, magazines, books, music, and all forms of telecommunications–in the past decade (Kirchoff, 2009, Lyons, 2009, Zolli, 2010). However, these changes have not been uniformly distributed or equally available to all. There remain significant gaps in society in terms of access to the internet, access to broadband speed, and skill with technology.

The sustainability of new methods of transparency

Transparency is an issue that has not only short-term considerations–for example, can members of the public reach the information they seek?–but also long-term considerations. Government information must survive in an accessible format and location to provide for long-term transparency. The embrace of social media and other new internet-enabled technologies as a means of disseminating government information may create long-term challenges in the preservation of and access to such government

Toward citizen-centered transparency in the electronic age

Internationally, the internet has made transparency easier for governments to accomplish in practical ways, but it has also added new complications to ensuring equal access to and preservation of digital-born government information. The direction of the future of transparency will be defined by the solutions different governments employ to address these new issues. However, transparency is now used in so many ways in so many countries, “the term has been stretched to the point of making its

Paul T. Jaeger, Ph.D., J.D., is Assistant Professor, Director of Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government, and Associate Director of the Center for Library & Information Innovation in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. He is the Associate Editor of Library Quarterly. Dr. Jaeger's research focuses on the ways in which law and policy shape information behavior. He is the author of more than ninety journal articles and book chapters, along with six

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    Paul T. Jaeger, Ph.D., J.D., is Assistant Professor, Director of Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government, and Associate Director of the Center for Library & Information Innovation in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. He is the Associate Editor of Library Quarterly. Dr. Jaeger's research focuses on the ways in which law and policy shape information behavior. He is the author of more than ninety journal articles and book chapters, along with six books. His most recent books are Information Worlds: Social Context, Technology, & Information Behavior in the Age of the Internet (Routledge, 2010) with Gary Burnett and Public Libraries and the Internet: Roles, Perspectives, and Implications (Libraries Unlimited, 2010) with John Carlo Bertot and Charles R. McClure. His research has been funded by the Institute of Museum & Library Services, the National Science Foundation, the American Library Association, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

    Dr. John Carlo Bertot serves as Professor, Director of the Center for Library & Information Innovation, and Associate Director for Research for the Center for Information Policy and Electronic Government in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. His research spans library and government agency technology planning and evaluation, information and telecommunications policy, and e-government. Bertot serves as chair of the International Standards Organization's (ISO) Library Performance Indicator working group and serves as a member of the National Information Standards Organization's (NISO) Business Information Topic committee. Bertot is past Chair of the American Library Association's (ALA) Library Research Round Table, and was recently elected to the Board of the Digital Government Society of North America. Also, Bertot is editor of Library Quarterly and Government Information Quarterly.

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