A Measure of Transparency in Local Government
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006Mark Peters, one of the founders of Orange County political forum SqueezeThePulp and a school-focused activist, created this report card to publicly track local governments fulfillment of their stated goal of greater online efforts to promote e-democracy .
Mark’s site, OrangeRecordings, serves as a clearinghouse for podCasts of school board, council, board of alderman and other public meetings. The archival value of audio recordings and the ability for “time shifting” concerned citizens to “listen in” on proceedings should spur any elected body interested in greater transparency to deploy them.
Unfortunately, while Carrboro leads the way with a %90 rating, Chapel Hill has laid a big fat goose egg (%0).
Chapel Hill’s Town Council is still dragging their feet on using the simplest of technologies to draw citizens into the governance process. Quite unfortunate.
Great work Mark.
