February 9, 2007

Open House

The AP reports that Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen will include funding in his budget proposal for a state ombudsman who would help people when they run into problems obtaining government records under the state's public records laws. A.C. Kleinheider comments:

This a good and necessary step. As much as we all want open government with new media skyrocketing more and more citizens will be requesting government documents. There needs to be a facilitator for this process that can determine whether a request is being properly processed.

Any effort by government to make it easier for people to get access to public records is a good thing, so I applaud Bredesen's plan to hire a public records ombudsman. But I also look forward to the day when the ombudsman is no longer needed because government at all levels simply routinely posts all documents online to an indexed, searchable public database.

As most documents are now either produced or ultimately stored electronically, this process could be automated, with records ranging from policy memos to emails to checks and receipts flowing automatically onto the public database during the normal course of business. Ultimately, in the future, you shouldn't have to ask for copies of public records - they should be made available in their entirety automatically, something that is possible now with the technologies of the Internet.

Update: Sen. Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, already filed an ombudsman bill, Senate Bill 1074, but it is Bredesen that's getting the credit so far in the media, as the Tennessean story linked above, and today's City Paper story here, show.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville, has filed legislation to create the Taxpayer Transparency Act of 2007, which would create a public database of state spending searchable by the public. The legislation is Senate Bill 1066. The Taxpayer Transparency Act is a bipartisan proposal, sponsored in the House as House Bill 0915 by state Rep. John Mark Windle, an Iraq War veteran and Democrat from Livingston. The legislation appears to be modeled after the federal Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act that was sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, and was eventually passed with the help of a bipartisan army of bloggers.