Transparency Should not be an option; A proposed amendment

The Obama Administration is aiming at greatly increasing government transparency. While this is a good thing, such an important matter should not be left up to the whim of a president.

I'd like you to consider the following Amendment:

A person's right to relevant information about public institutions shall not be infringed. This right shall not be construed as to infringe on any other rights. Congress shall have power to enforce this amendment by appropriate legislation.

There are a few words in here that are a bit unclear:

• Relevant: By this I mean any information you as a citizen might use in forming an opinion about the efficacy of the institution, and its use of your tax dollars. A public hospital is a fantastic example. Citizens could use the information to form an opinion about the efficacy of the institution (how good is public hospital-A over public hospital-B with regards to heart transplants? What is the survival ratio, etc....) This would foster competition amongst hospitals, which was proven to be a good thing - Pennsylvania has such transparency with their hospitals and since doing so costs have decreased (for both hospitals and insurance) and quality of care has increased.
• Information: By this I mean two things. Firstly, machine readable data, available in the popular formats such as xml and csv. Secondly, PDF summaries.
• Public Institutions: The Freedom of Information Act is only concerned with the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Public Institutions is broad on purpose. Like FOIA, we would need the relevant exceptions.

On Privacy:

The second sentence is important, and is used to assuage the privacy concerns some might raise over the hypothetical situation of Citizen Joe demanding to know nurse Jane's salary, etc... When dealing with these decisions, it should not be too difficult for the the judiciary to adjudicate properly.

The flow might be as follows:

1. Congress passes a bill stating some road-map and timeline for this process.
2. The data is used
3. A citizen/organization requests new metrics from an institution.
4. The institution either complies or does not.
5. The citizen/organization raises signatures or appeals to a representative or...
6. The citizen/organization takes the institution to court
7. Based on points 4/5 the institution either adds the new metric or does not.

What Would It Be Like:

Imagine our country with such an amendment. To give an idea as to the scope of significance, consider the following questions, all of which would be answerable if the mentioned institutions complied with the amendment:

• What percentage of my city's budget is spent on administration, in comparison to every other city with a similar population?
• What is the ratio of crime to officer/capita in my city compared to every other city with a similar population?
• What ratio of my child's school's budget goes to teachers in the rubber-room?
• What is the average salary of school teachers in my state versus every other state?
• Which hospital in my state offers the highest probability of single-surgery hip-replacement? (OK, I totally made that up but you get the point)

It should be clear that we could go on and on and on. And it should also be clear that every one of those questions could seriously alter the decision process of a citizen both when making personal decisions, as well as voting on public decisions.

On the Availability of New Metrics:

Suppose a citizen asks the city of Los Angeles to deliver a report indicating the average speed of cars for every 100-yards of the freeway throughout Los Angeles. The citizen argues that this information would help him stay away from the sections of the freeway where people tend to drive too quickly (and by extension dangerously). The request is reasonable, and certainly fits the criteria. That being said, the technology and infrastructure to supply such information does not (say) exist in Los Angeles; there are not sensors every 100 yards. So then the question is, given this amendment, would the city of Los Angeles be required to build the sensors in to supply the data? I hope you were not expecting me to answer the question! While I have my opinion, the only answer I'll offer here is this: The judiciary will decide, if it comes to that. My guess is they will consider things like cost/reward ratios, and a slew of other situation specific criteria, that we could never account for when writing the amendment.

Why an Amendment

FOIA came about in 66, then despite Ford's Veto (partially due to the brilliant but totally demented Antonin Scalia) the powers were expanded in 74. Clinton expanded them. Bush contracted them. Obama expanded them again. As stated in the opening of this blog post, the right to this information can not come at the whim of our executive. So in an effort to mitigate this yoyo-ing, I suggest a constitutional amendment.

Conclusion

We must remember who runs our country. Our ability to articulate and advance good government is proportional to the quality of data which guides our decisions. Our job should always be to strive for better government. But we must do it constructively. To do this, we must have the tools to offer constructive criticism. I believe that such an amendment would empower us, at the local, state, and national levels to better sculpt our government, and consequently our lives.