Download or read book Government Transparency and Secrecy written by Grant Faulconer and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beginning of the American federal government, Congress has required executive branch agencies to release or otherwise make available government information and records. Some scholars and statesmen, including James Madison, thought access to information -- commonly referred to in contemporary vernacular as "transparency"-- was an essential cornerstone of democratic governance. Today, the federal government attempts to balance access to information with the need to protect certain information (including national security information and trade secrets) in order to achieve transparency. As a consequence, access and protection are often in tension with one another. This book first assesses the meaning of transparency and subsequently examines the statutes, initiatives, requirements, and other actions that make information more available to the public or protect if from public release. Also discussed is whether existing transparency initiatives are effective in reaching their stated goals.
Download or read book Government Transparency and Secrecy written by Grant Faulconer and published by Nova Science Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beginning of the American federal government, Congress has required executive branch agencies to release or otherwise make available government information and records. This book first assesses the meaning of transparency and subsequently examines the statutes, initiatives, requirements, and other actions that make information more available to the public or protect if from public release.
Download or read book Government Transparency and Secrecy written by Wendy Ginsberg and published by . This book was released on 2012-12-27 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Transparency and Secrecy written by Suzanne J. Piotrowski and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-07-17 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaining access to government information is a perpetual concern of citizens. This is due in large part to the relationship between transparency and the issues of ethics, corruption, administrative malfeasance, and accountability. The last few years have proven that governmental transparency is a burgeoning academic subfield spurred on by contemporary political events and attention generated by the popular press. This reader addresses the topics of governmental transparency and secrecy and includes original discussion, classic readings, and primary source documents. Transparency and Secrecy is organized according to a theoretical model fully developed in the introduction. Governmental transparency is the degree to which access to government information is available through various channels. These avenues of access to information include governments proactively releasing information, freedom-of-information type requests, open meetings, and whistleblowing and leaks. The reader addresses each of these components as well as values that compete with openness such as privacy, security, and efficiency. The chapter discussion sections begin with the presentation of cases to make the material relevant to students. The cases together with the review of the literature help readers understand how each aspect of transparency is relevant to contemporary public policy debates. The discussion sections include a brief summary of the included articles and place these readings within the scholarship at large. Integrative study questions, suggested class projects, recommendations for case studies, movies, and supplemental reading all make Transparency and Secrecy ideal for classroom adoption.
Download or read book Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency in Eighteenth Century France written by Nicole Bauer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces changing attitudes towards secrecy in eighteenth-century France, and explores the cultural origins of ideas surrounding government transparency. The idea of keeping secrets, both on the part of individuals and on the part of governments, came to be viewed with more suspicion as the century progressed. By the eve of the French Revolution, writers voicing concerns about corruption saw secrecy as part and parcel of despotism, and this shift went hand in hand with the rise of the idea of transparency. The author argues that the emphasis placed on government transparency, especially the mania for transparency that dominated the French Revolution, resulted from the surprising connections and confluence of changing attitudes towards honour, religious movements, rising nationalism, literature, and police practices. Exploring religious ideas that associated secrecy with darkness and wickedness, and proto-nationalist discourse that equated foreignness with secrecy, this book demonstrates how cultural shifts in eighteenth-century France influenced its politics. Covering the period of intense fear during the French Revolution and the paranoia of the Reign of Terror, the book highlights the complex interplay of culture and politics and provides insights into our attitudes towards secrecy today.
Download or read book Crs Report for Congress written by Congressional Research Service: The Libr and published by BiblioGov. This book was released on 2013-11 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Right to Know written by Ann Florini and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Right to Know is a timely and compelling consideration of a vital question: What information should governments and other powerful organizations disclose? Excessive secrecy corrodes democracy, facilitates corruption, and undermines good public policymaking, but keeping a lid on military strategies, personal data, and trade secrets is crucial to the protection of the public interest. Over the past several years, transparency has swept the world. India and South Africa have adopted groundbreaking national freedom of information laws. China is on the verge of promulgating new openness regulations that build on the successful experiments of such major municipalities as Shanghai. From Asia to Africa to Europe to Latin America, countries are struggling to overcome entrenched secrecy and establish effective disclosure policies. More than seventy now have or are developing major disclosure policies or laws. But most of the world's nearly 200 nations do not have coherent disclosure laws; implementation of existing rules often proves difficult; and there is no consensus about what disclosure standards should apply to the increasingly powerful private sector. As governments and corporations battle with citizens and one another over the growing demand to submit their secrets to public scrutiny, they need new insights into whether, how, and when greater openness can serve the public interest, and how to bring about beneficial forms of greater disclosure. The Right to Know distills the lessons of many nations' often bitter experience and provides careful analysis of transparency's impact on governance, business regulation, environmental protection, and national security. Its powerful lessons make it a critical companion for policymakers, executives, and activists, as well as students and scholars seeking a better understanding of how to make information policy serve the public interest.
Download or read book Transparency in Government Operations written by Mr.J. D. Craig and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1998-02-03 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transparency in government operations is widely regarded as an important precondition for macroeconomic fiscal sustainability, good governance, and overall fiscal rectitude. Notably, the Interim Committee, at its April and September 1996 meetings, stressed the need for greater fiscal transparency. Prompted by these concerns, this paper represents a first attempt to address many of the aspects of transparency in government operations. It provides an overview of major issues in fiscal transparency and examines the IMF's role in promoting transparency in government operations.
Download or read book National Security Secrecy written by Sudha Setty and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers how excessive national security secrecy undercuts democracy and the rule of law, necessitating comparative and critical analysis toward potential reforms.
Download or read book Behind Closed Doors written by Yan Campagnolo and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era where government transparency and accountability are considered fundamental values, does Cabinet secrecy still have a place? Behind Closed Doors is the first comprehensive exploration of the legal and political rules protecting the confidentiality of collective decision-making at the highest executive level of the Canadian state. Yan Campagnolo defends Cabinet secrecy as essential to the proper functioning of responsible government while criticizing its associated statutory provisions as excessively broad and possibly unconstitutional. Comparing Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, this meticulous work proposes feasible, specific reforms that would achieve a better balance between transparency and confidentiality.
Download or read book The Transparency Fix written by Mark Fenster and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the government too secret or not secret enough? Why is there simultaneously too much government secrecy and a seemingly endless procession of government leaks? The Transparency Fix asserts that we incorrectly assume that government information can be controlled. The same impulse that drives transparency movements also drives secrecy advocates. They all hold the mistaken belief that government information can either be released or kept secure on command. The Transparency Fix argues for a reformation in our assumptions about secrecy and transparency. The world did not end because Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Edward Snowden released classified information. But nor was there a significant political change. "Transparency" has become a buzzword, while secrecy is anathema. Using a variety of real-life examples to examine how government information actually flows, Mark Fenster describes how the legal regime's tenuous control over state information belies both the promise and peril of transparency. He challenges us to confront the implausibility of controlling government information and shows us how the contemporary obsession surrounding transparency and secrecy cannot radically change a state that is defined by so much more than information.
Download or read book Radical Secrecy written by Clare Birchall and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagining transparency and secrecy in the era of digital data When total data surveillance delimits agency and revelations of political wrongdoing fail to have consequences, is transparency the social panacea liberal democracies purport it to be? This book sets forth the provocative argument that progressive social goals would be better served by a radical form of secrecy, at least while state and corporate forces hold an asymmetrical advantage over the less powerful in data control. Clare Birchall asks: How might transparency actually serve agendas that are far from transparent? Can we imagine a secrecy that could act in the service of, rather than against, a progressive politics? To move beyond atomizing calls for privacy and to interrupt the perennial tension between state security and the public’s right to know, Birchall adapts Édouard Glissant’s thinking to propose a digital “right to opacity.” As a crucial element of radical secrecy, she argues, this would eventually give rise to a “postsecret” society, offering an understanding and experience of the political that is free from the false choice between secrecy and transparency. She grounds her arresting story in case studies including the varied presidential styles of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump; the Snowden revelations; conspiracy theories espoused or endorsed by Trump; WikiLeaks and guerrilla transparency; and the opening of the state through data portals. Postsecrecy is the necessary condition for imagining, finally, an alternative vision of “the good,” of equality, as neither shaped by neoliberal incarnations of transparency nor undermined by secret state surveillance. Not least, postsecrecy reimagines collective resistance in the era of digital data.
Download or read book Secret Government written by Brian Kogelmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a comprehensive philosophical analysis of transparency in government.
Download or read book Reclaiming Accountability written by Heidi Kitrosser and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans have long treated government accountability as a birthright. However, accountability is frequently tossed about in a rhetorically effective but substantively empty way. We often feel that those in government “work for us” and therefore must “answer to us,” but fail to grapple with the conditions under which we can really assess how accountable our government is. This is especially true with respect to matters of secrecy and transparency in government as, while we routinely voice support for transparency and accountability, we too often tolerate secrecy when associated with “national security.” The government plainly needs to keep some information secret, and there are ways to reconcile secrecy with accountability. In Reclaiming Accountability, unchecked secrecy is the primary concern as insufficient checking breeds unnecessary, even counterproductive, secrecy and is also deeply antithetical to accountability. Heidi Kitrosser shows how, for all of its influence, “presidentialism” badly misreads the Constitution. The book first explains presidentialism and its major component parts – “supremacy” and “unitary executive theory.” It then details how supremacy and unitary executive theory manifest themselves as arguments for a broad presidential power to control information. The descriptive elements lay the groundwork for Kitrosser's two normative arguments. The first is that the Constitution situates the presidency within a substantive accountability framework that entails substantial congressional and judicial leeway to impose and enforce external and internal checks on presidential power to foster transparency and accountability. And, closely related, the second argument is that supremacy and unitary executive theory misread the Constitution.
Download or read book Government Transparency written by T. Erkkilä and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transparency has become a global concept of responsible government. This book argues that the transnational discourse of transparency promotes potentially contradictory policy ideas that can lead to unintended consequences. It critically examines whether or not increased transparency really leads to increased democratic accountability.
Download or read book The National Security Sublime written by Matthew Potolsky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do recent depictions of government secrecy and surveillance so often use images suggesting massive size and scale: gigantic warehouses, remote black sites, numberless security cameras? Drawing on post-War American art, film, television, and fiction, Matthew Potolsky argues that the aesthetic of the sublime provides a privileged window into the nature of modern intelligence, a way of describing the curiously open secret of covert operations. The book tracks the development of the national security sublime from the Cold War to the War on Terror, and places it in a long history of efforts by artists and writers to represent political secrecy.
Download or read book Democracy More or Less written by Bruce E. Cain and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies how American political reform efforts often fail because of the unrealistic ideal of a fully informed and engaged citizenry.
