Does Increasing Government Transparency Help or Hurt Professional and Trade Associations?
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 01:54PM 
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Does increasing government transparency help or hurt professional and trade associations? Here are two answers:
- Government Transparency Helps Associations. By making government actions more visible to the public, the need for specialized associations of individuals and organizations is increased because:
- Groups with specialized knowledge are more able than members of the general public to understand the meaning and significance of information about Government programs that relate to their areas of expertise.
- This understanding can lead to action sooner than would be the case if society had to wait for members of the general public to voluntarily or spontaneously organize around specialized topics that impact them.
- By generating faster action than would be possible through sole reliance on the general public the role and importance of associations are thereby strengthened.
- Government Transparency Hurts Associations. By making government actions more visible to the public, the need for specialized associations of individuals and organizations is lessened because:
- Those members of the public most impacted by government programs learn about Government program impacts faster than if they had to wait for specialized associations to communicate these impacts to them.
- There is no guarantee that specialized associations have the interest of the general public at heart.
- By cutting out the “middleman” the public is better able to organize and feed back responses to the government programs that most impact them
Actually, I don’t really believe this question has a distinct “either/or” type of answer. A lot will depend on the program being publicized, the existing state of structure and communication within affected communities, and the nature of the dollars and public welfare that’s at stake.
There’s much more to government transparency than just dumping data “out the window” and hoping someone is there to catch it and make it usable and understandable. Responding to questions about Recovery.gov in February 2009 I wrote:
Whatever methods are developed to represent and report on the various processes that are involved in implementing the stimulus, they need to be understandable to professionals and to the public.
There needs to be developed a way to render the same data set in terms that are meaningful both to policy makers and to the public.
And, we need to makes sure that purely quantitative measures can be supplemented by the actual commentary provided by those affected.
The development of such measures for reporting on progress should be conducted openly as there are many interesting viewpoints that can contribute value in the process.
Finally, beware the involvement of vendors who insist on restricting access through incorporation of proprietary tools and techniques that cannot be easily copied and re-used by others.
In other words, just making data about government programs accessible isn’t enough; the data also has the be made available in a form that can be understood and applied by those involved with the programs the data describe.
In the past, this wasn’t always the case. Government program data were hidden, hard to find, hard to organize, and hard to interpret. Those with a direct [read: “financial”] stake were willing and able to devote the time and expertise to gathering, organizing, and interpreting government-sourced data. Professional and trade associations often played this role, especially when the actions of government programs had the potential for impacting the interests of their members.
With increased program transparency the possibility exists that, if government programs open up enough, members of the unaffiliated general public might be able to wrangle the data themselves without the need for professional intermediaries — or gatekeepers. This could actually reduce the need for professional and trade associations.
But a lot will depend on how the government “opens up.” Look at the increasing use of public social networks such as Facebook by individual Federal agencies (disclosure: one of my clients, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, is one such Federal agency that is increasing its use of Facebook).
Use of Facebook by both civilian and military agencies varies widely in terms of actual engagement. Some agencies use Facebook as an extension of their web site’s one-way publishing activities. Others take seriously the potential for two-way engagement that Facebook enables.
Is there a role for professional and trade associations in an environment where a Federal agency can speak to and engage directly with members of the public? My answer is a qualified “yes” assuming that associations actually help their members to learn about and use emerging social media, social networking, and collaboration systems to communicate honestly and openly with the government agencies that impact them, their professionals, and their businesses.
Based on my own experience, some associations are doing this. Others still view social media and social networking with suspicion. What seems clear is that traditional roles of government agencies, associations, and media are changing as people increasingly learn how to organize and communicate on their own using readily available public media.
Copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald. Please comment below or contact Dennis at ddmcd@yahoo.com.
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Reader Comments (9)
I suspect the answer depends on where one is in the policy making process.
Having all data transparent all the time will likely bring out an array of "analysts" who may or may not understand what they're dealing with and may or may not be helpful. As I type I'm thinking of how people like Cheney insisted on getting "raw" intelligence and the cherry-picked their way into a war. Making all data open to all people all the time will feed that kind of beast.
As your post indicates, the other side of that coin is equally dangerous. Still on the macabre subject of intelligence and war, McNamara et al HID all kinds of intelligence that, if available to others, may have prevented, and certainly limited, the Vietnam War. Had we only known.....
So I end up wondering if a policy development process can be defined that says when summary and more detailed analysis are to be available and when the data behind that analysis is available, and where and how dissenting views can be seen.
I think the secret for associations is figuring out how to use social media to help members accomplish members' own goals. The more distance there is between member goals and association goals the worse off the association will be.
Doug -
The more people that are let into a process the harder it is to game the system. People will always cherry pick the facts to match their goals. Making government operations more transparent won't change this. It will, however, make it more difficult to blatantly lie about things.
- Dennis
I agree; increased transparency (and data) is an opportunity that some will be able to take advantage of, while others won't.
- Dennis
You make a very good point. You need to be listening in order to hear something that might help - or hurt - your constituencies.
- Dennis
It would be instructive to extend the time horizon of your observations. Your focus on the effects, rather than the technology, is the approach to take. (McLuhan) Open Government/Government 2 is in the early days. Professional and Trade associations (like unions) suffer from the organization=oligarchy problem (Michels).
Prior to virtual social networking, organizations were the most effective method to advocate government change. The nature of both government and associations will change. Associations will be affected by the availability of information, as you point out. Associations will also be affected by the ease of collaboration among people. Citizens will be able get together to advocate change in virtual groups that assemble and disassemble without the need of administration. Associations will cease to have a significant economy of scale advantage.
The nature of government will also change beginning with participation on problems and solutions across populations. Many back-office government functions will cease to be black boxes. Government will become a platform for economic development (O'Reilly) as information is exposed. People will engage more deeply.
Another way of looking at this is that networked collaboration and communication provide an opportunity to see "disintermediation" in action -- cutting out the "communication middleman." Why have gatekeepers and intermediaries when I can go directly to my constituents?
- Dennis