Government CFOs' view of transparency principles

[Steve Clyburn]

Thought you would be interested in what might be the first set of
function-specific principles for transparency in government
information. It is based on a 2009 survey of about 500 government
financial professionals in the U.S. (federal, state and local) and
Canada (federal only). The survey included 168 in-person interviews,
with the balance being on-line responses.

Every year since 1996, the Association of Government Accountants (AGA)
has sponsored a survey of federal chief financial officers (CFOs) and
other financial leaders. Grant Thornton LLP carries out the survey.
This year, the main topics were recovery and transparency.

I understand that to many folks, transparency means full disclosure of
relationships and decision processes. In the survey, our focus was on
financial and performance data about government operations, results
and outcomes, because that is the realm of the government financial
function (which in some cases includes performance reporting).

Based on the results of the survey, we developed eight principles of
transparency for financial and performance information provided by a
government to the public. We were not aware that others were also
working on eight principles, so it is just a coincidence that we used
the same term and number of them. The principles are for financial and
performance data that a government produces about its operations.
Financial information includes revenues collected, transactions,
budgets, financial statements, business cases, financial analysis and
related information. Performance data includes operations measures
(cost, quality, speed, error rate, productivity, efficiency), results
and outcomes. (Note: there is nothing about IT in the list of
principles. No one in the survey talked much about IT, but then, we
did not ask specifically about it.)

Here are the eight principles:

1. Have a process for ensuring that data you disclose are accurate and
reliable, and show that process to users. (“…show that process to
users” means the same as “make the process transparent” but one should
not define a concept with the concept itself.)
2. Understand the information that people want, and deliver it. They
may not be sure what they need, so help them define it. Along with the
information you provide, show them how to get more.
3. Be as open as possible without creating risk. The default setting
for disclosure is anything that does not violate security or the law.
4. Provide information that helps make decisions.
5. Do not just react to requests—active outreach is important.
6. Give context to data: show goals, benchmarks and other information
with which to compare them.
7. Take action yourself based on the information, and tell people what
you did. This includes using it to make policy and budget decisions
and to manage and improve operations.
8. Be conscious of the dollar cost of transparency, and invest wisely
in it. Set priorities for disclosure, and strive for the best return
on investment.

Some of the principles are a bit different than what I have heard and
read about transparency. For example, I haven’t heard much discussion
around numbers 6, 7 and 8. Regarding number 8, some of the survey
respondents said that you cannot put a price on transparency, but
being accountants, others said you have to because there is a cost to
disclosure. Hence there is a need to set priorities for transparency:
the things the public wants most to know about, information will be
most useful for making decisions and data will help to mitigate major
financial and mission risks.

Thanks,

Steve Clyburn
Grant Thornton LLP

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Steve Clyburn<steven...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Thought you would be interested in what might be the first set of
> function-specific principles for transparency in government
> information. It is based on a 2009 survey of about 500 government
> financial professionals in the U.S. (federal, state and local) and
> Canada (federal only). The survey included 168 in-person interviews,
> with the balance being on-line responses.
>
> Every year since 1996, the Association of Government Accountants (AGA)
> has sponsored a survey of federal chief financial officers (CFOs) and
> other financial leaders. Grant Thornton LLP carries out the survey.
> This year, the main topics were recovery and transparency.

Fascinating! Will you be releasing the results, write-up, instrument,
design, etc.? best, Joe

--
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
ACCURATE Postdoctoral Research Associate
UC Berkeley School of Information
Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
http://josephhall.org/

[Josh Tauberer]

Thanks for sharing that, Steve. Those are very nicely written and
definitely useful beyond financial transparency.

- Josh Tauberer
- GovTrack.us

http://razor.occams.info

"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation! Yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation!" Achilles to
Tortoise (in "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter)