by Tiago Peixoto
I am currently a PhD researcher at the European University Institute in Florence (EUI). My main research interests are related to identifying factors that contribute to successful policies aiming a... More about Tiago Peixoto
The Price of Transparency
The use of websites by governments as a means to increase budgetary transparency by providing easily accessible information doesn’t stop growing. The Center for Fiscal Accountability does a great job by periodically tracking these initiatives across the United States and its latest update, in March, provides a listing of 26 websites that have gone live since 2007.
More impressive is the growing number of legislative initiatives across the U.S. aiming at increasing and deepening the information provided to citizens in an easy and accessible way. The Center for Fiscal Accountability report on State Legislative Transparency Efforts shows that since the beginning of this year 34 bills have been sponsored across 21 states. However, between proposing a bill and having it translated into policy output there is a long and winding road where political and organizational constraints may affect the outcomes originally intended by the legislator (assuming that he/she acts in good faith).
For instance, this week the New Mexico Senate voted unanimously to create a searchable, online database of state spending. According to the sponsor of the measure, Sen. Sander Rue, such a measure will "demystify the state budget" and increase public interest and participation in spending decisions. According to The New Mexican, during the Senate floor debate Sen. Rue humorously commented on the measure “I’m doing this purely for selfish reasons: So I can better understand the budget” and added “and if anyone else wants to follow after me, that’s fine”.
However, resistance seems to have come from many fronts, such as New Mexico’s Department of Information and Technology (DoIT). The DoIT makes the obvious declaration that it supports initiatives related to budget transparency (would it ever say the opposite?) but claims not to have the resources to comply with the measure. According to a report prepared by the Legislative Finance Committee the DoIT - in a rather dissuasive manner - claims that depending on the depth of data provided, the fiscal impact on the agency could vary from US$25.000 to US$1 million. That is not all: the agency estimates that implementation costs will range from US$ 1 million to US$ 3 million.
The Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) itself does not see much importance in the initiative either. In its Fiscal Impact Report it states that legislation is already searchable on the internet in various formats such as New Mexico’s state website and the Secretary of State’s website. Last, but not least, the LFC report also adds that “public entities are subject to the Freedom of Information Act and information is available through that avenue.” Finally, the report concludes that in case Sen. Rue’s bill is not enacted, “The public will continue to access State of New Mexico appropriations through the web using other alternatives”. A quick overview of both websites and LFC’s mention of the Freedom of Information act raises serious doubts about LFC’s concept of what easily and accessible information consists of. The bill was approved by the Senate with a score of 38 votes in favor and none against. Now it goes to the House and we shall see what happens next.
Having interviewed many stakeholders in similar processes, I believe that the New Mexico case is far from just anecdotal evidence. Rather, it illustrates the often-underestimated role (positive or negative) that civil servants might have in turning the will of a political agent (in this case Sen. Rue) into a policy output. As Michel Crozier pointed out in 1964, considering the privileged possession of information and expertise, civil servants naturally dispose of discretionary margins that enable them to reinterpret and alter demands that are made to them. It should be expected that civil servants’ influence and discretionary margin is particularly accentuated when it comes to the highly specialized domain of ICTs, where the asymmetry of technical knowledge between elected officials and civil servants is clearly to the advantage of the latter. For instance, concerning estimations of the amount of resources necessary to implement the system proposed by Sen. Rue the DoIT has the upper hand, and the estimated budget presented by the DoIT (between US$25.000 to US$1 million) is typical of implicit negotiations that take place in processes of this nature: “we can do it of course, but to do it well all depends on what you give us”.
Easy access to information involves many factors and in the end, the website that we will see in New Mexico will be among other things the result of a compromise between actors’ preferences: civil servants might be compelled to implement it, but unfortunately or not, it would be a bad idea to tell the DoIT to just do it.
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Comments
At the risk of rehashing one of the main themes of my blog (there's a tag called transparency - here) I'd like to question whether such transparency is an unqualified public good (I'd argue the opposite) and whether it just empowers the usual suspects at the expense of valuable democratic input. It certainly leaves people who have been elected at the mercy of well-funded pressure groups - and that will undoubtedly damage the quality of governance in almost every way imaginable.
posted about 1 year ago
Paul - I am sure you have more direct experience of this than me, but I would disagree. I do think Web 2.0 can involve people in local politics who might not otherwise have got involved and I do think this is likely to be a good thing, even if the additional people brought into the process are not representative of the whole population. My impression is that a highly limited group of people are currently involved in much local politics and that this can have extremely negative impacts. I would tend to think that any expansion of the circle is a good thing. Surely Mrs Meldrew might take part in something like the Redbridge Conversation? And have you not come across any exercises of this kind that avoid dominance by the Victors?
posted about 1 year ago
"And have you not come across any exercises of this kind that avoid dominance by the Victors?" A lot of organisations don't do them because they can't get people to get involved and they nearly always result in unrepresentative responses. You say that you think it would be a good thing to get more people involved even if they aren't representative - but you don't say why. I'd urge you never to underestimate the degree to which people will get involved in a consultative exercise, or how much work it is to keep them focussed to get any valuable output from them. Given that there are strong warning noises from political scientists against doing so anyway, I'm surprised at the amount of energy that goes into it in the first place.
I'm also not sure why you say that the relatively small number of people who do get involved in local politics results in an 'extremely negative impact' - how? Generally, those who are involved are there because they were elected. I'd sooner have them making decisions than an ad-hoc bunch of 'active citizens' who have a vested interest.
It goes back to public choice theory - Small, vociferous interest groups would hold sway against an apathetic majority. Worse than the status quo, inelegant and unfashionable as it may be surely?
posted about 1 year ago
Paul - we probably don't disagree as much as it might seem. I absolutely agree that it is really difficult to get people involved and that the easiest people to get involved are not necessarily the people you most want to get involved and certainly not the only ones you want to get involved! But my answer to that would be that we need to try to find ways of making easier and more attractive to get people involved, so that we can beyond those most likely to respond.
Obviously small vociferous interests groups often are best placed to get involved, but my sense would be that quite a lot of individuals who might not otherwise get involved do get pulled in via online exercises. I would accept that these individuals are often better educated and/or middle class, but I do not think that is always the case, and again I would hope one could work to pull in more and more people from more diverse backgrounds.
I don't think everything should be decided by direct democracy, so I do see a role for representatives who can take a long view and can be held accountable, but my impression of local politics in the UK is indeed that too few people are involved and that in many local authorities there is not as strong as sense of democracy as one might wish. I am sure there are many great local councillors but I would see plenty of scope for creating a strong sense of local democracy and would hope that online engagement tools and transparency could contribute to that. But as your comments show, there will also need to be safeguards - one of which would be that ultimately decision-making would still rest with the elected representatives.
posted about 1 year ago
I think that the real answer is to find ways of getting the public to have conversations that include real content and evidence - and often the way to do this is to not have them initiated by public bodies or politicians - when this happens, all you hear is a lot of shouting.
Asking people to make predictions, enlisting their help in explaining a subject or mapping it out so that representatives have something more coherent to respond to - those are the forms of civic engagement that we need a great deal more of.
My worry is that a great deal of effort goes into direct representation projects that are both undesireable and unworkeable.
posted about 1 year ago
sounds great. be really interested for you to share any good or interesting examples of projects doing this as you come across them. tks for your participation. Paul
posted about 1 year ago
Dear Paul (Evans)
You seem to be quite resistant to participatory initiatives that are gov / politicians led, which leads you to state that
" initiated by public bodies or politicians - when this happens, all you hear is a lot of shouting."
I am really sorry that the experiences that you have come across seemed to be a "lot of shouting". I would say your experience is statistically funny, because that is not what happens most of the time when there is a good participatory design.
I would be happy to provide you with evidence of initiatives by public bodies / politicians that are far from being a "lot of shouting", including initiatives in the UK.
posted about 1 year ago
Tiago,
I've no doubt that there are well-structured participatory initiatives that are led by governmental bodies. I'm being a bit figurative here. I just think that there is a paradox here - if a consultaton *looks* like it will offer the ability to make actual change, people 'game' it. If it looks just like a conversation, they may not - and that can often have a better outcome.
posted about 1 year ago
Paul,
Thanks for that, I do think I see your point and that may well be the truth: “if a consultation *looks* like it will offer the ability to make actual change, people 'game' it. If it looks just like a conversation, they may not - and that can often have a better outcome.” But another perspective can be also possible:
One could argue that the degree of engagement of a citizen in a dialogue is proportional to their perception of the importance of the issue and of their actual impact in a certain decision-making process. The fact that citizens will engage strategically (e.g. by maximizing benefits) does not invalidate the process. On the contrary, it is an important part of a learning process, which renders evident to participants the tension that there is between their self-interest and the collective interest. In that case, one might argue, you will have much better results both in terms of process and outcomes.
Finally, one could argue that giving citizens the idea that they do not have an actual impact on the decision-making can be a major “turnoff to turnout”. For instance, there is systematic evidence that budget consultations (non-binding) have much lower turnouts than actual PB initiatives (binding). In this case, you might be left dialoguing with the same old suspects that would have found a way to have their voices heard anyway.
updated about 1 year ago, posted about 1 year ago