Advances, Setbacks, and Continuing Impediments to Government Transparency

I heard yesterday about the good, the bad, and the edgy in open government at Computers, Freedom & Privacy, being held this week in Washington, DC. A panel that covered open meetings laws and social networking started with a summary by Andy Wilson of Public Citizen Texas of how Utah and Texas trended in different directions.

Utah state legislators recently suffered embarrassments when email messages were demanded and released under the open records law in that state, the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA). In their urgency to protect future email from public exposure, they passed (and the governor signed) a bill called HB 477 that went to the extreme of cutting off public access to most records. Widespread outrage accompanied the act, predictably organizing under the slogan "Don't Kill GRAMA!", and succeeded in restoring access to records.

In Texas, during the same period, activists succeeded in moving the state forward in terms of open records. Public utilities were required to put data online, over their objections that it represented "competitive information." Electronic filing was instituted for new classes of government information.