{"id":29425,"date":"2011-05-19T23:27:24","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T05:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=29425"},"modified":"2011-05-20T14:10:34","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T20:10:34","slug":"a-renewed-passion-for-open-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/05\/a-renewed-passion-for-open-government\/","title":{"rendered":"A renewed passion for open government"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Tracy Dingmann<\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to attend an event called transparency camp<\/a> in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

The two-day gathering was sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation<\/a>, 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\u2019Reilly, iStrategyLabs and Forum One. I was able to go thanks to a scholarship from Sunlight.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t quite know what to expect from \u201cnerd camp,\u201d as I found myself referring to it before I went.\u00a0 \u00a0What I got was a bunch of brainy people from a wide spectrum of fields \u2013 journalists, web developers, data jockeys, government officials, activists, viewpoints \u2013 all on the same page about the importance of keeping information public, and all of us just parts of a chain.<\/p>\n

We spoke different languages \u2013 literally, because people were there from all over the world \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

The open format of Sunlight\u2019s \u201cun-conference\u201d 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<\/a> in journalism at Stanford University and editor of the investigative site westerncitizen.com<\/a>, 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<\/a>, Sunlight pledged to provide support and space for our group\u2019s ongoing conversations.<\/p>\n

Egregious breaches of open meetings and open records law<\/h3>\n

One thing I was pretty sure Tcamp folks would do is swap stories about particularly egregious breaches of open meetings and open records law \u2013 and on that, I was not disappointed.<\/p>\n

A writer from Utah told us how his state legislature recently jumped through hoops to try to keep public documents private.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 information that is clearly and indisputably public under Maryland law.<\/p>\n

I introduced the activist to lawyer Mark Caramanica of the D.C-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press<\/a>, who I\u2019d met and chatted with the previous day. As the venerable group\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve me, I hear horror stories like this all day long,\u201d he told us.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just in the United States.<\/p>\n

Two brave journalists from Brazil told us there\u2019s 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<\/a>, the women are among just a few Brazilian journalists who dare to comb federal documents for information behind drug-related crimes and government corruption.<\/p>\n

Lucky to live in NM<\/h3>\n

It feels weird saying this, but going to Sunlight\u2019s TCamp made me consider myself almost lucky to live in New Mexico, transparency-wise.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t, judges in New Mexico aren\u2019t shy about slapping down fines and penalties.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got some great fighters for open and transparent government right here in New Mexico \u2013 including the Foundation for Open Government<\/a>, the Rio Grande chapter<\/a> of the Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors<\/a>, all of whom have held workshops in New Mexico within the past year for reporters or citizens concerned about maintaining government transparency.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also got bloggers like Heath Haussamen, who\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

More to do<\/h3>\n

But there\u2019s still more work to do. All-too-frequent incidences in towns around New Mexico and even in state government \u2013 past and present administrations included \u2013 have the power to keep me and other reporters constantly dismayed.<\/p>\n

Particularly high-profile or egregious violations of open records or open meeting law are usually settled reasonably and quickly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the day-to-day actions I experience from some New Mexico government officials that seem to show a grudging resistance to transparency.<\/p>\n

For example, New Mexico\u2019s Inspection of Public Records Act gives public officials up to 15 days to fill public information requests. That doesn\u2019t mean they should draw the thing out for whole 15 days, just because. But more often than not, they do.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another pet peeve \u2013 and this one should concern everyone: It shouldn\u2019t take an act of God \u2013 or a threat of a formal IPRA request \u2013 to get a governor\u2019s 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\u2019s a reporter asking that question, or just any average New Mexican. Yet all too often, it does.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m glad I went to transparency camp. Not only did I renew my passion for open and transparent government \u2013 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 \u2013 in front of you.<\/p>\n

Tracy Dingmann is an independent investigative blogger and commentator. She is a former\u00a0newspaper reporter and columnist for the New Mexico Independent who most recently was new media director for the Center for Civic Policy.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent trip to Washington to attend transparency camp made me realize I\u2019m lucky to live in New Mexico, where we have open records and open meetings laws and people who fight to enforce them. But it also reminded me that there\u2019s more to be done, and renewed my passion for open government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[111],"class_list":["post-29425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-open-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}