Texas Ranked #1 In Government Transparency

Sunshine Week, an organization focused on open government and public access to information, designated Texas as having the most transparent state government in the nation; Governor Rick Perry started got the ball rolling when he began voluntarily posting the governor's office's quarterly expenditures online in the winter of 2006. Over the past few years, Perry has made spending transparency a plank of his budget reform agenda.

Sunshine Week:

Teams of surveyors scanned government Web sites in every U.S. state to look for 20 different kinds of public records. The results were released today at the start of Sunshine Week 2009, which runs March 15-21. The study was developed by Sunshine Week, the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Freedom of Information Committee, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and the Society of Professional Journalists' FOI Committee.

"Digital technologies can be a great catalyst for democracy, but the state of access today is quite uneven," said Charles N. Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition. "The future of Freedom of Information is online access, and states have a long way to go to fulfill the promise of electronic self-governance."

Using a standardized worksheet surveyors rated each section on its usability, looking at factors such as whether the information was clearly linked, if full reports or only summaries were available, whether viewing and/or downloading was free, and whether the data were current.

The categories for the survey were selected for generally serving the overall public good — the kind of information people need for their own health and well-being and that of the community. The categories were: death certificates, financial disclosures, audit reports, project expenditures, department of transportation projects, bridge inspection reports, fictitious registration of business names, disciplinary actions against attorneys, disciplinary actions against medical physicians, hospital inspection reports, nursing home inspection reports, child care center inspection reports, statewide school test scores, teacher certifications, school building inspections, school bus inspections, gas pump overcharges, consumer complaints against businesses, environmental citations, and campaign finance information.

Among the major findings:

The information least likely to be found online were death certificates, found on the Web sites of only five states, and gas pump overcharge records, available online in eight. Also infrequently posted online were schools' building inspections and/or safety ratings, which are posted by only nine states, and school bus inspection reports, which only 13 states posted online.

Information most frequently found online were statewide school test scores and DOT projects/contracts, online in 50 and 48 states, respectively. Close behind was campaign data, reported in 47 of the 50 states; disciplinary actions against medical physicians, 47 states; and financial audits, 45 states.

Death certificates are apparently a revenue source for many states, as they charge relatives and "legitimately" interested parties for copies of the records, or farm out the work to a third-party service such as VitalChek. Some states provide historical access online to older death certificates, mostly prior to 1960, although there generally is a fee for hard copies.

The only state found to provide information online in all the categories surveyed was Texas. New Jersey was a close second with 18.

The state with the least information online was Mississippi. It posted only DOT contracts and projects, fictitious business name registrations, statewide school test scores, and political campaign contributions and expenses. Though it did have some information about hospitals and nursing homes, these were perfunctory lists, not inspection reports, or links to other sites.

To learn more, visit Sunshine Week to read about the results.