Tracy Dingmann
Earlier this month I was lucky enough to attend an event called transparency camp in Washington, D.C.
The two-day gathering was sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to making government more transparent and accountable by digitizing government data and developing the best tools, websites and collaborations available to analyze it and present it to the public. Co-sponsors of the international confab included Google, Microsoft, Governing, O’Reilly, iStrategyLabs and Forum One. I was able to go thanks to a scholarship from Sunlight.
I didn’t quite know what to expect from “nerd camp,” as I found myself referring to it before I went. What I got was a bunch of brainy people from a wide spectrum of fields – journalists, web developers, data jockeys, government officials, activists, viewpoints – all on the same page about the importance of keeping information public, and all of us just parts of a chain.
We spoke different languages – literally, because people were there from all over the world – but also in a more subtle sense. Web developers from Google and Microsoft soon discovered that talking to otherwise whip-smart journalists about managing databases and writing code was often like talking to three-year olds. On the other hand, journalists struggled to explain to smart-guy developers and database people exactly what information they need, how they like to get it and what tricks they have use to get readers to understand and to care.
The open format of Sunlight’s “un-conference” allowed participants to suggest and present workshops as the need arose. On the second day, Wendy Norris, former editor of the Colorado Independent and now a Knight fellow in journalism at Stanford University and editor of the investigative site westerncitizen.com, asked to me to co-present a workshop with her on how journalists and data/web geeks can best converse and collaborate. It was a hit! As has done with other information-sharing projects, Sunlight pledged to provide support and space for our group’s ongoing conversations.
Egregious breaches of open meetings and open records law
One thing I was pretty sure Tcamp folks would do is swap stories about particularly egregious breaches of open meetings and open records law – and on that, I was not disappointed.
A writer from Utah told us how his state legislature recently jumped through hoops to try to keep public documents private.
In a conversation later, a parent/activist from Montgomery County, Maryland told me that her school board has repeatedly refused to hand over basic salary data – information that is clearly and indisputably public under Maryland law.
I introduced the activist to lawyer Mark Caramanica of the D.C-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who I’d met and chatted with the previous day. As the venerable group’s freedom of information director, I thought Caramanica might be able to help her shake that information loose. Sure enough, her story was old hat to him.
“Believe me, I hear horror stories like this all day long,” he told us.
And that’s just in the United States.
Two brave journalists from Brazil told us there’s no First Amendment, no freedom of the press and absolutely no culture or expectation of transparency among people living there. With their nonprofit, nonpartisan group Contas Abertas, the women are among just a few Brazilian journalists who dare to comb federal documents for information behind drug-related crimes and government corruption.
Lucky to live in NM
It feels weird saying this, but going to Sunlight’s TCamp made me consider myself almost lucky to live in New Mexico, transparency-wise.
I mean, we have open records and open meetings laws that most public officials are at least aware of. And if you call them on it, they at least try to comply. And if they don’t, judges in New Mexico aren’t shy about slapping down fines and penalties.
We’ve got some great fighters for open and transparent government right here in New Mexico – including the Foundation for Open Government, the Rio Grande chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors, all of whom have held workshops in New Mexico within the past year for reporters or citizens concerned about maintaining government transparency.
We’ve also got bloggers like Heath Haussamen, who’s not afraid to use his site as a bully pulpit to pressure local and state government officials to be more open – and to call them out when they are not.
More to do
But there’s still more work to do. All-too-frequent incidences in towns around New Mexico and even in state government – past and present administrations included – have the power to keep me and other reporters constantly dismayed.
Particularly high-profile or egregious violations of open records or open meeting law are usually settled reasonably and quickly.
It’s the day-to-day actions I experience from some New Mexico government officials that seem to show a grudging resistance to transparency.
For example, New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act gives public officials up to 15 days to fill public information requests. That doesn’t mean they should draw the thing out for whole 15 days, just because. But more often than not, they do.
Here’s another pet peeve – and this one should concern everyone: It shouldn’t take an act of God – or a threat of a formal IPRA request – to get a governor’s staffer to return an e-mail or phone call asking for a reply to a simple question involving state business. That goes for whether it’s a reporter asking that question, or just any average New Mexican. Yet all too often, it does.
So I’m glad I went to transparency camp. Not only did I renew my passion for open and transparent government – I picked up a whole new panopoly (okay, I am a nerd) of new tools and resources to get public information and put it where it belongs – in front of you.
Tracy Dingmann is an independent investigative blogger and commentator. She is a former newspaper reporter and columnist for the New Mexico Independent who most recently was new media director for the Center for Civic Policy.